If Blue Was Green
What a weird question is that? How can blue be green? “Green” is “Green” and “Blue” is “Blue”. That’s how it is supposed to be and that’s how it is.
So let’s see if blue can be green. We'll start by defining what is blue and what is green. As a common man I would say that they are both colors. As a science student I would say they are wavelengths which are part of the visible spectrum and each of them produces a different sensation on reaching your eye. That’s why a science student would say blue is blue because it has a particular wavelength and so is the case with green.
Coming back to the question of how can blue be green. Suppose there was a country which did not follow the normal notations that we follow and they called the part of the spectrum we call blue as green. Now for them blue will produce essentially the same sensation as produced by green for us. Now what will happen is, that when I call a color green, a citizen of that country would call it blue. So, Green becomes Blue. For the people of this fictitious land, the sky would be green and grass would be blue, but both would appear as they appears to us. Basically what I mean to convey is that, blue and green are only names and not things that are actually there.
How does it matter if I call blue as green or green as blue? It’s only a thing for recognition and that recognition doesn’t change by changing names.
So I would rather put it like this:
I would interchange the names of colors too i.e. lets change the definitions of blue and green. So that the sky remains blue and grass remains green. Easy isn’t it?
With the help of my HR Manager I circulated this question in my office and here are some of the answers I got.
1. We will get Blue Label (Rs.12000) at the cost of Green label (Rs.400)
2. If ‘Blue was green’, then blue will look like this -> Blue Or
If ‘Blue was green’, then now ‘Blue is Blue’ only (since was is a past tense) Or
If ‘Blue was green’’ then ‘Green will be Blue’...
3. Green card in US will be blue card. Then “Green” would have been more attractive than “Blue”
4. Blue can be green too. It's called Turquoise
5. If Blue was Green Environmentalists would preen!
6. If blue was green, and green was still green, all the cows and buffalos would be confused ... they would want to eat the sky and this would lead to shortage of milk as the poor creatures would be upset.
New ideas are welcome.......
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
The Circle
How do you define a circle? A student of class 1 can draw a circle with any round object. A student of class 3 can draw it with the Campus. A Student of class 10 can write a ‘C’ program to draw a circle. Thus, basically any one can make/draw a circle.
So what is it about a circle that we don’t know? Are there some things that we don’t know about a circle? Let’s also discuss how a circle can be used to explain different things/experiences.
The Circle as defined by an engineering graduate would be the locus of all the equidistant points from a given point. Sounds pretty good. One curious thing associated with circle is the mystical number pie. A number that is generally defined as irrational. A number that does not repeat even after 1 million decimal places. A mathematics student would define pie as the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of the circle. The two parameters mentioned above (the diameter and the circumference) are both physical in the world. By physical I mean that they practically exist and we can measure them. But, the weird thing is that the ratio is a number that cannot be expressed. Or a number that cannot be drawn with the same equipment as the circumference and the diameter. Why is this anomaly? Is this the anomaly of the number system or some basic in Maths that I have not been able to figure out? I have heard that a circle is the most symmetric figure in a plane but the pie is almost perfectly non symmetric.
Let’s leave pie out and discuss how a circle can be used to explain some practical things or experiences. Of all things, I would like to write about how life moves in a circle. 16th June was a big day in my life; I got to see the first glimpse of the corporate sector. There has been a long debate about the money and time in this sector. How this sector gives you all the money that you want and at the same time takes away all the time that you have in the world?
I was also thinking on the last two statements when I met an elderly person and asked her what she felt? In her reply she quoted the example of a corporate person who was earning in six figures a month. His wife also brought home almost the same amount. Once their only kid fell ill. The problem was that they both were so entangled in their jobs that they could not take leave. So they decided to leave their kid with the parents of their neighbors (whom they were very friendly with). Now the entire day the kid was feeling low and kept missing his parents. So what impact is this day going to have in the child’s life? I feel when he grows up, he would probably say that no matter what happens I will not leave my kid alone when he/she is ill. So the present generation which we say is more attracted to the corporate sector will eventually give way to a generation which feels that time is more important than money. And the Generation that comes in next will probably feel that there is huge amount of time which might yield more money and hence better comforts, again getting pulled/attracted back into what is “The Corporate” sector.
I guess this is precisely what happens while moving in a circle, the farther you go the more you come back to the origin. This is how life moves in a Circle. Hence if I were to explain it in terms of Math, I would put it like this. Consider a circle with its center at the origin. Now let the upper half represent the corporate sector and lower the so-called public sector having a more regular schedule (i.e the 10 to 5 jobs) and less salaries. There will be a time when people will be more attracted to corporate sector and after its peak, the attraction reduces and a time reaches when people are more inclined to the public sector. The Circle completes and once again it is time for the “money”.
A circle which is most symmetrical, having some asymmetrical parameters defines something which is very abstract.
I guess it’s been long and I think I am getting back to the origin.
So what is it about a circle that we don’t know? Are there some things that we don’t know about a circle? Let’s also discuss how a circle can be used to explain different things/experiences.
The Circle as defined by an engineering graduate would be the locus of all the equidistant points from a given point. Sounds pretty good. One curious thing associated with circle is the mystical number pie. A number that is generally defined as irrational. A number that does not repeat even after 1 million decimal places. A mathematics student would define pie as the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of the circle. The two parameters mentioned above (the diameter and the circumference) are both physical in the world. By physical I mean that they practically exist and we can measure them. But, the weird thing is that the ratio is a number that cannot be expressed. Or a number that cannot be drawn with the same equipment as the circumference and the diameter. Why is this anomaly? Is this the anomaly of the number system or some basic in Maths that I have not been able to figure out? I have heard that a circle is the most symmetric figure in a plane but the pie is almost perfectly non symmetric.
Let’s leave pie out and discuss how a circle can be used to explain some practical things or experiences. Of all things, I would like to write about how life moves in a circle. 16th June was a big day in my life; I got to see the first glimpse of the corporate sector. There has been a long debate about the money and time in this sector. How this sector gives you all the money that you want and at the same time takes away all the time that you have in the world?
I was also thinking on the last two statements when I met an elderly person and asked her what she felt? In her reply she quoted the example of a corporate person who was earning in six figures a month. His wife also brought home almost the same amount. Once their only kid fell ill. The problem was that they both were so entangled in their jobs that they could not take leave. So they decided to leave their kid with the parents of their neighbors (whom they were very friendly with). Now the entire day the kid was feeling low and kept missing his parents. So what impact is this day going to have in the child’s life? I feel when he grows up, he would probably say that no matter what happens I will not leave my kid alone when he/she is ill. So the present generation which we say is more attracted to the corporate sector will eventually give way to a generation which feels that time is more important than money. And the Generation that comes in next will probably feel that there is huge amount of time which might yield more money and hence better comforts, again getting pulled/attracted back into what is “The Corporate” sector.
I guess this is precisely what happens while moving in a circle, the farther you go the more you come back to the origin. This is how life moves in a Circle. Hence if I were to explain it in terms of Math, I would put it like this. Consider a circle with its center at the origin. Now let the upper half represent the corporate sector and lower the so-called public sector having a more regular schedule (i.e the 10 to 5 jobs) and less salaries. There will be a time when people will be more attracted to corporate sector and after its peak, the attraction reduces and a time reaches when people are more inclined to the public sector. The Circle completes and once again it is time for the “money”.
A circle which is most symmetrical, having some asymmetrical parameters defines something which is very abstract.
I guess it’s been long and I think I am getting back to the origin.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Long Tails
If you would have asked me a few days back what long tail was ? i would have probably not been able to answer. I probably might have started thinking of orangutans or probably other members of the family, the animals that have longer tails than most of their counterparts in the animal kingdom. i don't know how many of us would think that ways but with sheer optimism i feel that i would not be the only one. Come to think of it, is it of relevance who has longer tail ? may be no.
Quite a few of us would have heard about the 80-20 principle. For those who haven't , the 80-20 principle is named after Vilfredo Parteo who showed that in Italy "80 percent of the land was owned by 20 percent of the people " but then later it got spread to all possible generalizations and this is probably true wherever you try to apply it. In the marketing world a few years ago if you asked a music store guy he would say that his 80 present of the sales come from 20 percent of the bands.Does the 80-20 principle still hold good or has it changed with the changing world.
Let us pose a simple question how is an online music store different from the traditional offline one? The instant answer would be you don't get a hard copy of music CD at the online music store, what you get is a soft copy of the song you required. Does it matter whether i listen to the song i like from the CD or from my pc , probably no. Another thing that is different here is that you like a particular song you don't need to buy the whole CD , you just pay for the song that you wanted. Another very important difference is that an offline store requires space .i.e. i cannot afford to have all the bands on my stand because i am paying for every inch of the space. So only the band that will give me good ROI (Return on Investment ) is what i will have in my store, but what about the online store? With the advancement of technology the amount of space required to store a song has gone down amazingly.Therefore on an average computer today i can have almost 1000 million times the songs available in the worlds largest music store. Thus an online music store will not only have the hits but also the songs that could not make to the Hits but were popular ones.
With all the knowledge you have got till now i guess it is the right time to introduce long tails to you. There is a very interesting observation if we look at the sales of an online Music store. As most of us would have imagined the highest selling songs would obviously the Hits, but the interesting point is that the graph drops down after the Hits have been accounted for but it does not drop down to zero even after an extremely large number of songs.These songs never made it to the Hits but were definitely popular among certain sections of society. This continues line is called the long tail. Here if we try to put the 80-20 principle in practice it would not work. The 80 percent of the sales of an online music store does not come from the 2o percent of the songs(HITS) but a huge chunk comes from the songs that never made it to the top.
May be here we have an indication of how things are changing around us. What used to make absolute sense yesterday has become fuzzy. This is how the modern business is shaping up. Are we ready to take the challenges it poses ? Has the market simplified or has it become more complex? Is it heading towards rationality or irrationality , stability or randomness?
Is the entropy decreasing ? well may be its the time we need to look into the questions before we invade the market to find a place for ourselves.
Quite a few of us would have heard about the 80-20 principle. For those who haven't , the 80-20 principle is named after Vilfredo Parteo who showed that in Italy "80 percent of the land was owned by 20 percent of the people " but then later it got spread to all possible generalizations and this is probably true wherever you try to apply it. In the marketing world a few years ago if you asked a music store guy he would say that his 80 present of the sales come from 20 percent of the bands.Does the 80-20 principle still hold good or has it changed with the changing world.
Let us pose a simple question how is an online music store different from the traditional offline one? The instant answer would be you don't get a hard copy of music CD at the online music store, what you get is a soft copy of the song you required. Does it matter whether i listen to the song i like from the CD or from my pc , probably no. Another thing that is different here is that you like a particular song you don't need to buy the whole CD , you just pay for the song that you wanted. Another very important difference is that an offline store requires space .i.e. i cannot afford to have all the bands on my stand because i am paying for every inch of the space. So only the band that will give me good ROI (Return on Investment ) is what i will have in my store, but what about the online store? With the advancement of technology the amount of space required to store a song has gone down amazingly.Therefore on an average computer today i can have almost 1000 million times the songs available in the worlds largest music store. Thus an online music store will not only have the hits but also the songs that could not make to the Hits but were popular ones.
With all the knowledge you have got till now i guess it is the right time to introduce long tails to you. There is a very interesting observation if we look at the sales of an online Music store. As most of us would have imagined the highest selling songs would obviously the Hits, but the interesting point is that the graph drops down after the Hits have been accounted for but it does not drop down to zero even after an extremely large number of songs.These songs never made it to the Hits but were definitely popular among certain sections of society. This continues line is called the long tail. Here if we try to put the 80-20 principle in practice it would not work. The 80 percent of the sales of an online music store does not come from the 2o percent of the songs(HITS) but a huge chunk comes from the songs that never made it to the top.
May be here we have an indication of how things are changing around us. What used to make absolute sense yesterday has become fuzzy. This is how the modern business is shaping up. Are we ready to take the challenges it poses ? Has the market simplified or has it become more complex? Is it heading towards rationality or irrationality , stability or randomness?
Is the entropy decreasing ? well may be its the time we need to look into the questions before we invade the market to find a place for ourselves.
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