HP Internship: A Year and a Half in the Fast Lane

During my 15-month internship at HP Inc., I dove into machine learning forecasting, tackling challenges from SKU-level predictions to data management. Collaborating with the SPaM team, utilizing innovative tools, and embracing HP’s culture of innovation and failure, I emerged with invaluable skills, insights, and memories.

August 21, 2023

Reflections from KDD 2023

My notes on talks I attended (mostly on LLMs) at 29th ACM SIGKDD 2023 at Long Beach, CA

August 14, 2023

What makes a good coffee?

Series: Latte Love

This piece explores the intricacies of coffee, from the influence of its origin and roasting process to the importance of freshness and brewing techniques, primarily from my experience.

July 1, 2023

How does GPT work? Understanding Generative AI Models

Curious about ChatGPT, the AI chatbot that’s making waves? Dive into this article to learn how it generates human-like responses and its many applications. Get insights into both its strengths and limitations, while understanding why it’s essential to approach its responses with a critical eye.

April 26, 2023

Who are Twitter Blue Users?

In this blog post, I explore who are the Twitter Blue subscribers. It is not celebrities, businesses or governments. It is our regular old Joe with fewer than a hundred followers.

April 1, 2023

Planning Cities with People

Height of the building determines the sunlight exposure, chess-block organisation helps with high-rise congestion and how zoning laws are hurting Americans.

March 16, 2023

How to Hack Your Own Mind?

Instead of relying solely on previously published psychological research, I suggest conducting personal experiments on oneself to test and develop new behaviors and attitudes. Experimentation is a cheap and effective way to determine what works best for you, and it allows for personalised results that can be applied directly to one’s life.

February 25, 2023

What happens when you meditate ten hours a day?

Series: The Question of God

Between Dec 15 and 25 of 2022 I attended a meditation course called Vipassana. Vipassana is a Pali word that means ‘seeing things as they are’. The course promised me to teach how to have a clear awareness of exactly what is happening as it happens. It is a form of mindfulness meditation.

February 1, 2023

From Mythology to Modernity: The Dual Faces of Pushkar

Series: Footprints & Photographs

This winter I visited Pushkar, home to the iconic Pushkar Lake and one of the few Brahma temples in the world. It is a town where tranquility and vibrancy coexist, where ancient mythology mingles with a modern lifestyle. Explore the flavors of Pushkar, the colorful markets, and learn the stories behind the rarity of Brahma temples.

January 20, 2023

Moving Next from Revue to Substack

Twitter is shutting down Revue, the newsletter platform that I use for Next. Thus, I’m migrating to Substack. You shouldn’t need to do anything on your side.

December 30, 2022

DLTGH: Days Left to Go Home

Today, I was at Chaiyos. It’s a Thai restaurant near my home in Knoxville. I asked for lo mein with spice level 8. I thought it’d make me feel homely. I was wrong.

December 1, 2022

Infallible Memory: The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling

You rarely come across a story so powerful that you experience so many different feelings — at the same time. Ted Chiang’s ‘The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling’ does that. It evokes several strong feelings, one after another, that will leave you soul-searching.

November 24, 2022

History of Coffee

Series: Latte Love

Coffee’s captivating history, from its discovery in Ethiopia to its influence on global health and productivity, unveils the transformative impact of this beloved beverage across centuries and continents.

November 22, 2022

Is the world population going to collapse?

Population collapse is a theory that says if the growth rates continue to decline the way they are decreasing right now, we would reach population zero. It is a stage where the population neither grows, nor declines. That is, the number of births plus in-migrants equals the number of deaths plus out-migrants. While this may sound cheerful, you may not have considered the pitfalls yet.

November 10, 2022

Bullets of Wisdom

Life is short for learning from your own mistakes; you need to play catch-up with people who tried new things. Most people do not document their learnings. The rare culturati group that notes their understandings in an essay easily trumps the large group, which keeps their learnings to themselves. I have read many interesting essays. Some of them stuck with me — like fingers working with super glue. I revisit them often.

October 7, 2022

Small Improvements

Bihar is one of the poorest states in India. Their over all literacy rate is 70% but there’s stark difference between girls (50%) and boys (70%). In 2007, the government decided to distribute bicycles to all girls for free in the hope to get higher school enrollment. The program was called Mukhyamantri Balika Cycle Yojna (Chief Minister’s Programme on Cycle for Girls). The program had astonishing improvements.

September 20, 2022

Being Optimistic

Things are bad. We know that; everyone knows that. But you can choose to look at the positives. Granted, we’ll sometimes be cherry-picking. But not always. Life is like a box of chocolates; there will be good things about every negative thing and bad about most positive things. I want to be happy, so I look at the positives.

August 12, 2022

Stoned to Death at the Public Square

A problem with learning in public is keeping a strong note of how to avoid heresy. Back in the seventeenth century, if you said anything against God, even if the statement were true, you would be penalised. Sometimes it meant death. It didn’t matter if the statement was true. If you don’t believe me, just ask Galileo.

August 10, 2022

Script monkey! 🐒

Use a Script Monkey in your codebase at all locations where you need to change things manually. All that involves is writing an extra comment saying ‘Script Monkey’. Later on, search for all monkeys in the script and make the changes. Simple.

August 1, 2022

The Ascribed Advantage

How does gender affects pay? In this short exploration, I use #tidytuesday dataset provided by UK Government to visualise gender gaps using R. And why are women working at churches paid 40% less bonus than men?

July 9, 2022

The best stats you’ve ever seen

There’s a famous saying: All models are wrong but some are useful. How much of statistics is wrong and how much of it is useful? Some thoughts on Hans Rosling’s popular talk on global economic development and optimism.

July 3, 2022

The Song of The Lord

Series: The Question of God

Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, or the song of the lord, is a 700 verses long conversation between Lord Sri Krishna and Arjun. It discusses key principles of action and embodies more wisdom than I can grasp.

June 12, 2022

Food Choices in America

I had always wondered about the ubiquity of unhealthy food in the US and the blatant absence of fresh fruits and vegetables. Why are our supermarkets full of unhealthy chips, why does bread have corn syrup, and why do berries cost $9.99 and berries snacks cost $1.99!?

June 5, 2022

Street Maps (of Some Cities)

Over the last few days, I dabbled with maps in R. Two days ago, I made a map of all the cities I’ve visited. Today, I thought to make street maps of some of them (and other cool cities).

May 28, 2022

Biggest Social Advertisers on Facebook

Facebook provides data on all ad funding related to social issues, politics and elections. Here is a simple plot and table to explore the most prominent advertisers.

May 26, 2022

Some Website Stats

This is my digital garden. Here is it’s report card via Google Analytics.

May 23, 2022

Trying New Things

It is essential to keep experimenting with new things in life. We don’t know what would stick and be successful; we can only take guesses. Take notes; that’s the only way to keep a log.

May 13, 2022

Harvard’s Website

A university’s website tells a lot about it. Harvard — like all things in education and research — is a prime example.

May 11, 2022

Making Nails

Once upon a time, there was a nail-making factory during the peak of the industrial revolution in rural England. The workers arrived there every morning at 8 am and worked till 4 pm to make nails. Just plain nails. One day, the factory owner’s son visited the plant.

April 22, 2022

Billionaires and Taxes

How much do the super rich really pay? Until now, the answer was unknown — thanks to privacy laws. Recently, tax returns of the super rich was leaked to ProPublica. I thought of exploring the billionaires and their tax rates.

April 14, 2022

Arguments

There are three types of arguments. You can argue about what happened (past), you can argue about what’s happening (present), or you can argue about what’s gonna happen (future).

April 10, 2022

Imaginary Reality

We know less than we think and we don’t even know what we don’t know.

March 11, 2022

My Name

I do not have a last name and it freaks people out.

December 8, 2021

How fast is M1?

Comparing Apple M1 processor with Other Systems in R

November 8, 2021

Is COVID-19 Data tampered?

Is there any evidence of tampering or manipulation in COVID-19 daily cases reported by countries? Using Benford analysis in R, I try to reach at some conclusion.

February 15, 2021

Gartner Hype Cycle

Technologies come and go. The real question is can you predict its popularity?

November 25, 2019

Museums and Experience Tourism

Museums are a thing of past. Google has more over-the-top information than I need. Why not target for the experience instead of expertise?

May 5, 2019