Once again - DevBagh

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PS: I haven't posted para sky-ing, water scooter and few other photos.
Few more photos are with my friends and I will post them shortly!!

Kart @ Devbagh!!

Last weekend I had been to the paradise on earth - Devbagh, an island near Goa. I had real fun there and I am planning to blog my adventures. Here is the prelude before the full fledged blog...

The Monty Hall Problem!!

Kart's rating - 4/5

There used to be a column called Ask Marilyn in a magazine called Parade in America. She had the highest IQ in the world and in the column she answered maths questions sent in by readers. And in September 1990 this question was sent in by Craig F. Whitaker of Columbia, Maryland.

"You are on a game show on television. On this game show the idea is to win a car as a prize. The game show host shows you three doors. He says that there is a car behind one of the doors and there are goats behind the other two doors. He asks you to pick a door. You pick a door but the door is not opened. Then the game show host opens one of the doors you didn't pick to show a goat (because he knows what is behind the doors). Then he says that you have one final chance to change your mind before the doors are opened and you get a car or a goat. So he asks you if you want to change your mind and pick the other unopened door instead. What should you do? "

Marilyn vos Savant said that you should always change and pick the final door because the chances are 2 in 3 that there will be a car behind that door.

But if you use your intuition you think that chance is 50-50 because you think there is an equal chance that the car is behind any door.

Lots of people wrote to the magazine to say that Marilyn vos Savant was wrong, even when she explained very carefully why she was right. Of the letters she got about the problem, 92% said that she was wrong and lots of these were from mathematicians and scientists. Here are some of the things that they said

I'm very concerned with the general public's lack of mathematical skills. Please help by confessing your error. -- Robert Sachs, Ph.D., George Mason University

There is enough mathematical illiteracy in this country, and we don't need the world's highest IQ propagating more. Shame! -- Scott Smith, Ph.D., University of Florida

But Marilyn vos Savant was right. And here are 2 ways you can show this.

Firstly you can do it by maths like this

Let the doors be called X, Y and Z.

Let Cx be the event that the car is behind door X and so on.

Let Hx be the event that the host opens door X and so on.

Supposing that you choose door X, the possibility that you win a car if you then switch your choice is given by the following formula

P(Hz ^ Cy) + P(Hy ^ Cz)

= P(Cy)·P (Hz ¦ Cy) + P(Cz)·P(Hy ¦ Cz)

= (1/3 · 1) + (1/3 · 1) = 2/3

The second way you can work it out is by making a picture of all the possible outcomes like this

So if you change, 2 times out of 3 you get a car. And if you stick, you only get a car 1 time out of 3.

And this shows that intuition can sometimes get things wrong. And intuition is what people use in life to make decisions. But logic can help you work out the right answer.

It also shows that numbers are sometimes very complicated and not very straightforward at all. And that is why I like The Monty Hall Problem.

Source: Curious incident of the dog in the night time, a novel by Mark Haddin.

PS: I really enjoyed reading the book. The author is a chap called Mark Haddon who wrote children’s books and decided to get into the mind of one, but this time an Autistic child. It must have been a daunting & painstaking idea because from the efforts, one can easily make out that he eventually learnt precisely how to go about it. It must have been a really huge effort, because not only did he get into Christopher’s (15 year old autistic child) mind, he also created an engrossing whodunit. It's really funny to find the chapter numbers as 2, 3, 5, 7, 11.... yup, they were prime mumbers.

Bonus: Here are few interesting lines from the book...

1) "It was nice in the police cell. It was almost a perfect cube, 2 meters long by 2 meters wide by 2 meters high. It contained approximately 8 cubic meters of air.

I wondered how I would escape if I was in a story."

2) "I find people confusing. This is for two main reasons.

The first main reason is that people do a lot of talking without using any words. Siobhan says that if you raise one eyebrow it can mean lots of different things. It can mean "I want to do sex with you" and it can also mean "I think that what you just said was very stupid."

The second main reason is that people often talk using metaphors. For instance,

They had a skeleton in the cupboard.
We had a real pig of a day.

The word metaphor means carrying something from one place to another, and it comes from the Greek words µετα (which means from one place to another) and φερειυ (which means to carry), and it is when you describe something by using a word for something that it isn't. This means that the word metaphor is a metaphor.

I think it should be called a lie because a pig is not like a day and people do not have skeletons in their cupboards. "

3) This will not be a funny book. I cannot tell jokes because I do not understand them. Here is a joke, as an example. It is one of Father's.

"His face was drawn but the curtains were real. "

I know why this is meant to be funny. I asked. It is because drawn has three meanings, and they are (1) drawn with a pencil, (2) exhausted, and (3) pulled across a window, and meaning 1 refers to both the face and the curtains, meaning 2 refers only to the face, and meaning 3 refers only to the curtains.
If I try to say the joke to myself, making the word mean the three different things at the same time, it is like hearing three different pieces of music at the same time, which is uncomfortable and confusing and not nice like white noise. It is like three people trying to talk to you at the same time about different things.
And that is why there are no jokes in this book.

Hope, it is enough to make u read the 110 page novel.

Beware of the Petrol Bunk cheats!!

Last weekend, I had been to a petrol bunk in BTM, a place in south Bangalore, to fill petrol for my two wheeler - A black Pulsar. As usual the petrol bunk was crowded. It took 10 minutes for me to reach the fag end of the queue but I had fun time ogling at a call center girl (I guess so) who was standing before me in pink T-Shirt and skin tight blue jeans. Then all of a sudden, I heard a male voice - 'yashtu guru' (meaning 'for how much boss').

There were couple of guys standing near me - a petrol bunk worker to my right and a cash collector to my left. To my surprise, both those guys were unusually very friendly. The cash collector smiled at me and asked me for how much should he fill my tank. I asked him to fill for 100 bucks. He ordered the first guy to fill my tank and asked me to check for zero reading. He asked me if I am from Madras. I nodded my head and paid all my attention to catch the last glimpse of that pink T-shirt, who was flying away in her scooty. As and when the other guy was filling the tank, the cash collector got 100 bucks from me. The first guy stopped filling the tank, when the reading showed 'Rs. 30'. I got shocked and I shouted at them that I paid 100 bucks but they filled my tank only for 30 bucks. The cash collector, in turn shouted at the other guy and asked him to fill the remaining petrol. The other guy, immediately opened the petrol tank knob and started filling the petrol. I was sort of relieved.

As and when I turned my head towards the petrol tank to have a look at the reading, the cash collector asked me if I needed any bill (Strange!! Till that day no petrol bunk-wala asked me this question?!). I replied in negative and turned the other side to look at the reading- it read 'Rs.70'. I shouted at him that I paid 100 and not 70. The other guy was very cool and told me that he filled for 30 bucks initially, then for 70 bucks and so totally 100 bucks. I was about to loose my temper. But then, the cash collector told me, "Yenna sir, namba oor karar neenga. ungala poi yemathuvoma?!" (then does it mean that he cheats all other people?!). Though I wasn't convinced, I moved out of that bunk.

I forgot the incident until today morning, when my vehicle stopped running in the middle of the road. I checked the meter to find that I had driven my bike only for 65 Kms since I filled my petrol tank - normally it will be a number close to 100. I realized that those guys filled the tank only for 70 bucks.

In retrospecting the whole incident, I realized that it was a well planned cheat. I remember, few months ago, my room mate (Murali) was screaming that he was cheated by some petrol bunk-walas. Now, I realize how bad he would have felt that day!

In spite of being extra careful, I wasn't able to dodge from those rogues. :-(

PS: For all of you arguing that I wasn't careful enough, I should say - Me ogling at that girl in pink T-shit definitely didn't contribute to the plot !

The Beach!!

I had been to an interesting place few weeks before. It's a restaurant called "The Beach" at Indira Nagar. It was a birthday treat and we (seven of my friends) reached there around 7 PM that friday straight from the office.

As we entered the restaurant, we were thrilled by it's very look - sand everywhere, open sky with small huts here and there covered by palm leaves, a pillow on top of a cut coconut trunk replacing the traditional chairs, a mini flat bole of a tree supported by two bamboo sticks replacing tables, spherical candles everywhere that were the only source of light, a mini light house at one corner, small pool of water at another corner (supposed to be the beach but it had very little water), a small but deep pit containing water that had fishes, crabs and couple of water snakes, heavy rock music in the air, cute girls all around....I should say nothing short of an electric atmosphere.

We were welcomed by a Chinese cutie who led us to a small hut. Next to us were a couple who were resting their body on a bed (yeah... there were few beds in the restaurant on a corner and they had two cylindrical rests as well). My friend ordered some side dishes - 'Californian potato with Skin', 'Mexican veg fry' and chicken/prawn dishes, which had some fancy names. We were stumped when we saw - 'un-pealed salted potato cut into slices', 'masal vada', 'chicken bajji', and 'prawn bajji' on our plates. I could not believe that we spent 15o bucks for 1 plate of masal vada!! We ate hell lot of side dishes - mostly sea food, mocktails, and finally some rice. If I say that the food wasn't all that great, it is definitely euphemistic- I was puking that night.

At 9 PM, the DJ stepped in. Rocks transformed into Hip-hops. One girl alone was dancing for half an hour. Then all of a sudden, few more guys and girls stepped in. At 10:30, almost everyone in the place, except us were dancing. A couple were twisting their body ferociously and my friend told me that it is called "Salsa" (It should be some weird form of dance!!). At 11 PM, after watching all those fun around us, even we shaked our head for sometime (it's strange to find most people dancing with their head and hips; but legs glued on the ground) and left the place by 11:30, not before spending a memorable evening at ' The Beach'.

You know what... girls get unlimited beer for free of cost during wednesdays - should we call them 'feminists' ?!

Definitely worth going there once, only if some one else pays!!

Cross Posted here

Love...

Here is my first attempt to write a poem...

I wrote your name in the sand,
but the tide washed it away.

I wrote your name in the clouds,
but the wind blew it away.

I wrote your name in the water,
but the sun scorched it away.

I wrote your name in the air,
but the cyclone swirled it away.

I wrote your name in the fire,
but the rain flung it away.

I wrote your name in my heart,
but then I realized, you stole my heart away!!

PS: Check out for tamil version in the comments!!

Disclaimer: Seems like there are few poems in the internet which carry the words "I wrote your name..." but they are purely coincidental.

Pirates Puzzle

I thought I will use this blog to post some good puzzles or algos that I come across. Here is my first attempt.

There are 5 pirates who jointly looted 100 gold coins. The pirate-A has 1 year of experience, the pirate-B has 2 years of experience... and the fifth pirate-E has 5 years of experience.

Below is the agreement b/w the pirates in sharing the gold coins among them.

1) Pirate E would propose an approach to share the 100 gold coins. If atleast 50% (means 50% or above) of the pirates agree on his approach, then his approach would be followed in spliting the 100 gold coins. If his proposal doesn't get the majority, then he would be killed and the next most experienced guy (ie. Pirate D) would propose his approach and all the rules apply to him as well.

2) Each of the pirate would try to get maximum number of gold coins possible.

Given this, what should the pirate-E propose so that he can save his skin by winning the majority as well as get the maximum number of gold coins?

PS: The question has a very logical answer. I will post the answer tomorrow.