Yantrakaal

In the evolutionary ascent of man, the idea of time is perhaps the first concept that differentiates him from his animal past. Unlike a human being, an animal, say a cow, has no -- or very rudimentary -- memories of the past, and certainly no hopes and plans for the future. It lives in the perennial present and is motivated only by the current state of its environment and its own current state of hunger, fear, libido or discomfort. Time is also an enigmatic concept that defies definition. Trapped in a peculiar case of circular logic, where “the snake swallows its tail”, we say that “Time is what is measured by clocks and a clock is what measures time”.  We obviously sense the passage of time but this flow is another mystery because if it indeed flows, like the water of a river, then what exactly are the banks of the river that it flows through? Then again, do we sit still while time flows past us? Or do we move along through stagnant time? There have been questions galore but hard...

Every morning, when the sun rises, birds wake up and start chirping. We are not surprised because we see a very clear connection between a cause, the increase in ambient light, and the effect it has in waking up the birds. But when the sun rises, the Ispat Express moves out from Howrah station as well. Even in this case we are not surprised even though there is no obvious connection between the ambient light and behaviour of the engine. We explain the first phenomenon through causation and the second through correlation. Perhaps if we look very hard we might find a causative mechanism that explains why the Ispat Express departs at the crack of dawn and not at any other time, but frankly that is of little interest to the passenger. We are happy with the correlation, we are not really bothered about the causation. That is the crux of this article where we explore astrology from the perspective of data science and machine learning. Traditional scientists would of course hesitate to view...

The three ‘R’s -- Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic -- are the three fundamental skills that are compulsory in the curriculum of all primary schools. Should another R --  computer progRamming --  be also included as the fourth fundamental skill?  Computer programming -- as in Java or C++ -- is already being taught as an optional subject in many schools in classes  IX and X as  and Computer Science is generally available as the “fourth” subject in classes XI and XII. Then why do we need to make it compulsory and burden our already stressed out kids with one more subject? Before we address this question, we must first stop viewing computers as just another career option, a vocational skill, on par with, say, medicine, accounting, music or sports.  Instead, we need to see it as an enabling tool that impacts all aspects of life. Programming teaches students to think logically, solve problems in a systematic manner and stimulates creativity. Eventually it will ...

Bitcoin is the rage! With an unbelievable appreciation in prices, many people want to invest in this red-hot cryptocurrency but whether the current valuation is a bubble that will burst is an open question. What is indisputable however is the immense versatility of the blockchain technology that is used in bitcoin -- and all cryptocurrencies. GST too is the rage, or rather the cause of rage because of the inefficiency of the software implementation. This article explains how a decentralised blockchain application could solve GST problems. But what is bitcoin? image borrowed from financeminutes A bitcoin is a unit of value , like an equity share of a company, that can be owned and transferred. It resides in an account in a ledger, like a dematerialised share in a demat account with NSDL. The account number, the public key of the account, is known to all and so anyone can send or deposit demat shares into this account. However to sell or transfer shares out of this account, t...

The Google App Suite ( or G-Suite) of products is a powerful and free alternative to the traditional Office Suite and includes among others Docs, Sheets and Slides. Google Sheets offers full spreadsheet functionality and in this post and sample, we show how data stored in Google Sheets spreadsheets can be accessed with SQL. This post assumes that the reader is familar with standard spreadsheet terms like sheet, range and functions. Google Script The primary programming language used here is Google App Script, a javascript look alike that can be used to enhance and extend G-Suite products. Google script can also be interleaved with traditional HTML / CSS / JavaScript to create an elegant user interface as is shown in this example. A Google Script project sits in the Google Drive just like any other Sheet, Doc or Slides and consists of code in a code.gs file along with html files for the interface. Google Script functionality can be built into other Google products but in this exam...

My presentation on Quantum Computers at the Cypher 2017 conference in Bangalore on 21 September 2017 more information about Quantum Computers is available in an earlier blog post .