If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written It Shorter

Today is 21st July, 2015. Today I moved stuff from my bedroom and apartment to get ready to move in to a different apartment on a new lease and with roomies who are two of the dearest friends here at Purdue. No sooner I started packing my stuff than I realized that its been almost a year now in the States and Purdue. 

Looking back at this year personally and professionally I feel really good that I’ve been able to develop my own social circle. A circle of special people who are unlike high school or college buds. These guys are different, this is adult friendship I guess. Its very mature, very rich and intellectually stimulating. It doesn’t involve judgements or silly jokes on personality types. There are jokes but they are truly funny and doesn’t involve any pretense. I’ve been able to expand my personality, my knowledge, my behavior and my take towards various relationships. I’ve become an adult. This feeling of adulthood actually came when I started driving my own car. It wasn’t puberty or porn or living alone. It was driving for me. The sheer responsibility of your own life and the possible impact financially, personally and professionally in case of an accident is just too high to mess around with any rule or be ignorant about it.

Financially looking back, although with the measly pay as a graduate student I believe I did a good job on my savings. A macbook pro, a trip to NYC, a trip to Omaha and several trips to Chicago were some of the perks of my savings. I still don’t count my car as my own, as I still have a loan but I’ve managed 7k payment and about half is left to pay off. Well that will happen with time too :)

Socially, well in alphabetical order, Akancha, Ishant, John, Kshitiz and Parul have become the closest of buddies. I spend almost all of my leisure time with them. Gym buds include Parul, Shitty and Akancha, recently Ishant too. It’s just brilliant. These guys know every detail that there is to know about me. Like everything! It is just surprising how much power they have to fuck me over lol.

Intellectually, my research is extremely intriguing and I am glad I chose Purdue, DELP. I am working on crowdsourcing in engineering systems design. More specifically, I am working on game theory and behavioral experimentation. You see, game theory assumes rationality of players. Kahneman and Tversky in their seminal paper have already proved that people are irrational and are not driven by the utility of their decisions but on their gut feeling and misconceptions. This means that depending on the context, game theoretic models can be completely useless despite such mathematical brilliance involving probability. That’s where the role of behavioral experimentation comes into the picture. Understanding the behavior of people and integrating it into the game theoretic model can actually and pragmatically be of some use. However behavioral experimentation is unlike the “social experiments” we see as viral videos on Facebook. This is the field of design of experiments which helps you understand the painstaking task of setting up controlled experiments where the behavior you want to test is exclusively dependent only on the control parameters you want to correlate to and no other bias should be involved. This is an extremely difficult task because you never know what might bias the participants. Each word of the problem statement needs to be carefully constructed to ensure such that, for example, previous experience doesn’t interfere if thats not a part of the control parameter. Having an experiment and problem statement ready isn’t just gonna get you the results either. Firstly, a mathematical model of the tournament is important. The theoretical assumptions are as important as actual behavior. So I started reading a lot about contest theory. This is where I was also introduced to hypothesis based research where developing hypothesis on “intuitive” relationships and then rejecting or not rejecting the null plays a very important role. Thats where statistics comes into the picture. To talk simple, my research objective is to understand outcomes in engineering systems design by studying design under competition. Outcomes mean, solution quality, profit and innovation. If designers of a contest can predict the solution quality especially in a crowdsourced tournament where spamming is one of the greatest concerns then it can be realistically implemented and well that will be fantastic. So back to the research objective. Outcomes in systems design. What affects it? Peoples decision making in a tournament. What affects decision making? Their behavior and the tournament itself. Behavior is easy to understand, that an experienced person will tend to make the better decision, a risk prone person will tend to make the less probable choice etc. When it comes to design of the tournament in itself, i can explain from an example: Consider a 1 million$ competition and a 10$ competition. Of course the higher the price the higher the motivation to win it. Thats how your decision is affected by solely the price. There are other options, like single stage, multistage types, the distribution of the price as winner takes all or multiple winners etc that will affect the behavior in not so intuitive ways unlike simply increasing prize. So studying all of this synergistically to predict outcomes in engineering systems design is what my research is about. I have been able to publish a conference paper in decision making using an eye tracking device and well I am excited for my Boston ASME IDETC conference on the 2nd of August. 

Academically, I have been maintaining a 4.0 GPA which to be honest is nothing great. A lot of grad students manage that, but of course it feels great. I have my PhD qualifying examinations coming up this September and well I am bucking up for it too in the mere 24 hours that we unfortunately have in a day. Wish there were more. 

And finally, personally, I am just feeling grateful that I decided to pursue a PhD. It is not just an academic decision. Its a lifestyle choice. I end this with a note to myself that 

"If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter”-Blaise Pascal

John Oliver, Alaina Hembree ( and alright, Dio)

There is no better teacher than your own life experiences. I’m those sorts who loves to be an open book, transparent and innocent with my ideas and actions. I cannot plan or plot things consciously to do something hurtful to even the worst of people. What I forgot was that there are people who can do that. It’s such a dilemma. I’ve always been told to be who I am. The problem is if I be that self, I will make myself so vulnerable to some people whom I think are friends and land up being sad and lonely. I call it the sieving process. It’s funny how, be it relationships or be it friendships, you have to go through a bunch of sad people to finally boil down with some decent ones with whom you can share everything, not be judged, be respected and have a great time. Since all of this is probabilistic, some find a good bunch of friends too fast and for some it takes ages. I consider myself extremely lucky in this case because I do have a bunch of great friends. John and Alaina this ones for y’all. I love you both (and Dio haha) . I am glad you were born :P

I would...

I like the word serendipity. The sound of it, it’s meaning, it’s all very perfect. The same perfect that one expects and hopes and wants for one’s own life. Haven’t we all spent those countless moments being lost in the “if only” of a situation? Especially when the “if only” is associated with someone whom you’ve become fond of, with whom these recent emotions of happiness and joy, like you’ve never felt before, have started emerging, with whose existence you feel reason enough to live that perfect moment you’d imagined. That someone whom you so dearly want to call special but still hesitate because you don’t know if it is too early to say so. Love, affection and fondness are the three hot balls ones heart juggles through while keeping up its beats. Anxiety, worry and fear are the three hotter balls. Fear and love go hand in hand because of the value and preciousness associated with the person in concern. But sometimes the fear is uncalled for. Sometimes a leap of faith is more necessary than anything else. If one gets too scared of heart breaks, before even getting into a situation that one assumes to create such a conclusion, it is no point falling in love. You never will. There is all the good and the perfect associated with love but there is compromise and commitment too. There will be jealousy, there will be misunderstandings but it’s that very love that would help over power all of the imperfect. We spend so much time thinking about our “if only” that we forget about the importance of imperfect. When it comes to love, imperfect is the perfect. No one seems to acknowledge it. Including you and me. We all eliminate millions and millions of possibilities with so many people just because of some stupid reasons which if you think deeply about wouldn’t have mattered to you if all worked out well. Sometimes the practicality of a situation will be totally different from what your heart wants and that’s where I guess the tightrope walk of fear and leap of faith comes into play. Just so you know, I would take the leap of faith. 

Night's grown warmer

Every night when I close my eyes,

In disguise, you just quietly come into my dreams..

I’m wondering now if I wanna open these eyes,

And realize, whats the reality..

I spend my time thinking all day

About the way, in which

your warm breath tickles my neck..

I don’t keep a check, on what should I feel..

That soft touch of those gentle lips

that tight grip, that passionate kiss…

I cannot miss, that look and moan..

Oh our nights grown, warmer …

The way your skin in raw feels..

Makes me kneel, and worship you

Baby.. take me through, this journey

Oh honey! That’s what I would call life…

Grad life @ Purdue

Woaaah! Finally got some breathing time to sit and write my blog. Graduate life!! Things have begun so quickly and I’m surged into the current of research in such a way that there was hardly any time to think about anything else or give myself that “slow start” cushion. Days and nights are just passing by. Every day there are these small tasks that need to be done which if carried over to the next day could turn out to be a BIG problem. Everything spoken to everyone, every little detail, needs to noted, carefully calculated and made sure that it fits your schedule. Any task be it personal or professional needs to be done with royal time management. Well it’s more like doing professional work and then accommodating the personal chores within howsoever less free time you get.

Returning to Purdue has been great. Being an intern here has helped a lot to get me adjusted to everything so very quickly that I have hardly wasted any time figuring out the way of life here. Starting with my apartment I guess I have made an excellent choice this time especially when the name of the apartment complex is a French one ;) Beau Jardin Apartments is a very well connected complex to Purdue with Payless supermarket right next to it and all the junk food chains around the supermarket. Basically you can never go hungry there. Also, some of the most important roads like the Northwestern Avenue and Salisbury Street are cutting across this area which makes the busses easily available. It’s great to have 2 apartment-mates, one being the brother of my batchmate from IIT Guwahati and the other is his friend with whom I met for the first time and realized he is too paranoid about insects in the house apparently from his past experiences. This led him to give me a lengthy explanation about how things are to be kept in the house and how I am supposed to wash off everything in the kitchen ASAP. It was quite interesting and funny as I was remembering my mom just a week ago giving me the same instructions whilst I am living in the States. Nevertheless, we landed up having a good conversation and I realized he has a healthy way of life so I just expressed my wish of being healthy too and most probably join the gym. It all went well.

Being to Europe for an exchange semester and then returning to IIT Guwahati and then to Pune and then flying to US was really tiring. Everything just went very fast. I had left all my scholarship in the European bank as I was waiting for one last payment and then I had asked the banker to transfer it to my US account. France did not fail to disappoint me one last time. The banker did not transfer the money which resulted in me being a pauper in the States with hardly any cash to buy even food. Luckily some good friends in US and in France facilitated the process and I received my wire after a week. With the account decent, I finally went to the supermarket and by now I was used to the huge markets with infinite useless options for infinite useless things. I saw ice creams of course and decided to buy two tubs of them ( What? They are just for 5$ here!! ) It was death by chocolate of course and I went back home and was relaxing during the weekend coolly enjoying the taste of USA when my roommate (the paranoid one) came and asked me for a taste of the ice cream. Very happily I shared the tub and he approach the tub with his spoon looked into it and just smashed the tub on the kitchen table looked at me and started laughing. This is by far the weirdest scene that has happened with me. I looked at him bewildered and stunned and of course I asked him “Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?!!” He looked at me, still trying to control his laugh and told me, “I thought you were worried about your health and all.” I had absolutely no clue what he meant by that and I was like “Yeah, of course I am” to which he very amusingly expressed that finishing half a tub of ice cream in a day is gonna take me very close to my aims, just hypothetically. In that very moment a gush of embarrassment, horror and sadness engulfed me. I can never forget that moment. It was that day I had decided to turn that wish into a reality and actually do something about my health and live a healthier life. A lot of past experiences in my life have given me enough reason to believe that health is the biggest priority however nothing ever pushed me that hard to actually go and do something about it. That moment. That very laugh was and is a very strong motivation for me to continue gymming and I am glad that since then I have hardly been eating junk food or unhealthy stuff. My food intake and eating habits have changed drastically coming here and I am so very thankful to Mr. Lalit for this. He is like the Dark Knight roommate. Not the one you need but the one you deserve. :P My other roommate is as cool as a cucumber. Well, he is a PhD student. ‘Nuff said! I am glad I was able to find three other really amazing set of people in Beau Jardin –Shitty, Aalu and Pahrool who are becoming really good friends with time. The Lake Michigan trip organized by the ISS at Purdue kick started a series of events which led to finding friends like John, Shitty, Aalu, Parul, Akancha, Alper, Diogo, Felipe etc.

Regarding my lab and my research group, I am super happy and excited to be a part of DELP which is such a dynamic design group at Purdue. Some faces are familiar and some are new. Everyone seems to have blended really well. Working on interesting topics like game theory, economics, design innovation and getting to know more about cryptography, 3D printing, crowd sourcing etc. There is so much to learn and so much to read and so less time. Things are going well. Super hectic but so so so glad to be doing something worthwhile. As for now, 6 days to go for the next stipend and then party wohhuu ;) Cheers!