This and that

First off, the new Airtel logo: whoever the ad agency is, they made a killing alright ('Let's take the logo we did for the mobile services company, who was it, yeah Videocon, rotate it by 90 degrees, invert it, and, just in case someone calls us on it, we'll change the colour'). Probably the easiest crore or so they've ever made.

The 2G scam is devolving into a tit for tat, with the BJP government in Karnataka being fingered in retaliation. I don't know if anybody still believes that these scams are 'discovered' just when they can be leveraged to the full. Odds are near certain that there are people from the opposite camp watching all the irregularities and filing them away for future use.

It also proves the adage that it is better to ask for forgiveness than for permission, since moves are now afoot to 'regularize' the deals -- through tap-on-the wrist penalties, no doubt -- by which the violating companies got their licenses.

Staying on the subject of mobile services, yeah, mobile number portability is just around the corner, I promise.

Update: This from Reddit.

Speigel interview

I don't know if the questions were really this hard hitting or if the translation is to blame (italics mine):

Schäuble: I'm not that pessimistic in this regard. Although the Irish have accumulated huge debts to bail out their banks, they are making good progress in cleaning up their economy. And I also have great respect for the Greek government's resolve. A few months ago, hardly anyone would have believed that the Greeks would manage to implement such a drastic austerity program. They're moving in the right direction now.

SPIEGEL: Conditions in Europe are not as orderly as you describe. Just two weeks ago, the European Council (the EU body in Brussels that includes the heads of state and government of the membber states) decided to introduce a new crisis mechanism for over-indebted euro nations. Are you satisfied with the result?

and

Schäuble: The Council's decisions are a great success. Only a few weeks ago, many predicted that France would never support Germany in its commitment to a European crisis mechanism. And that the French would be willing to change the European treaties to do so was seen as completely out of the question. But then Chancellor (Angela) Merkel and President (Nicolas) Sarkozy met in Deauville and achieved a historic breakthrough on both issues. It's completely in line with the approach we Germans have always supported.

SPIEGEL: You can't possibly believe what you're saying. Until recently, Germany was demanding automatic penalties for countries that violated the debt rules of the euro zone. That demand is now off the table.

Ballsy, alright. Can't imagine our fawning media (or, for that matter, the American press) doing this.

Predicting the English Premier League - Part 1

My current project is to come up with a predictor for the English Premier League. Football + coding in Lisp + modeling/statistics -- throw in a fat man and it's Christmas. Not to mention, if the predictor is any good, a chance to make some money as well.

The bulk of the coding is complete -- the data loading, extracting the various bits from the match statistics, and so on. It's the prediction part that's tricky, as it should be.

The idea is to identify the predictors first. This is the first cut:

1. The home record for the home team


2. The away record for the away team


3. The overall records for both teams (points scored out of the maximum possible so far)


4. The recent records for both teams (recent == last three matches)


5. Goal difference for the teams

These variables are not strictly fully independent (goal difference and overall record, for example), but I'm going to go with them for now. The prediction takes into account only the current season's matches, though ideally it would be better if it included all the match stats available -- this would help facts like 'Team A has never beaten team B in since 1973', for example, to come through and influence the prediction.

In machine learning terms, the problem is a multiclass classification problem, with the classes being 'home team win', 'away team win' and 'draw'; I am not looking at predicting scores, only results -- I assume one can bet on (and make money with) just results.

I turned to the venerable Elements of Statistical Learning to beef up on the theory, but soon beat a hasty retreat -- if you're just looking for overviews of the different techniques/algorithms and how to implement them, this book is not for you. I next turned to Wikipedia and found it somewhat better, though the sections on statistics and machine learning are still too heavy for my liking.

Anyway, I started with a) a linear regression model, with the three classes represented as equal intervals in [0,1] (I hope this is kosher) and b) the k nearest neighbours algorithm. I wanted to implement both of these methods myself, but the linear regression seemed too much of a diversion, and I settled on using R's glm() function for this instead. KNN proved pretty easy to implement, on the other hand.

The season is only eight match-days old, so there's not a lot of training data. Both the methods' predictions are pretty abysmal (accuracy of around 30-40%), and my own predictor which just looks at the total record and recent form matches these methods' performance (not to mention the method based on random number generation that behaves like the fricken Rain Man).

The next step is to try out other methods and read up on model selection.

Speaking of using Lisp, I have sort of come to a decision with respect to programming languages: it's going to be Lisp from now on (more particularly, Common Lisp). Yeah, I know about Stroustrup's quote about being fanatic about a single language, and the warm, fuzzy feeling I get when I think about Smalltalk, but Lisp is, to paraphrase Robert Pirsig, the high country of the programming world, what with its purity and elegance, "code is data", and the way you're able to accomplish so much with so little, with code that simply flows. I had considered this question earlier, and had settled in favour of Smalltalk, but I guess you gotta do what you gotta do. Anyway, Smalltalk and Haskell are still going to be in the toolbox. Another thing in favour of Lisp is that I made the effort to get to know the Allegro CL IDE better, and have taken a liking to it -- while the shortcomings I have mentioned earlier are still there, my productivity has definitely improved because of the increased familiarity with the shortcuts and IDE features. Oh, and the fact that I took the time to fully grok the chapter on CLOS in On Lisp and had my mind blown helped, too.

Update: Part 2 is here

RIP Bloglines

Bloglines is shutting down. It was (the future tense is a bit premature, since the service will be up till October 1) easily the best online newsreader, Google Reader notwithstanding. I have also tried out alternatives like Newsgator and Feedshow in the past, but I didn't feel as comfortable with them as with Bloglines.

One of the reasons for Ask.com shutting down the service: the supposed waning popularity of RSS as compared to Twitter and Facebook as more effective means of real-time information flow. Doesn't sound very convincing to me. Twitter and Facebook have a place -- e.g., when I want to know how Amitabh Bachchan's digestive system reacted to the new breakfast he tried yesterday (not to mention herding away from Blogger and Wordpress all the non-serious twats with short attention spans and few original things to say), but this in no way reduces the importance of RSS; reports of its death are vastly exaggerated.

Sweden

Got back from a three-day trip to Sweden last night. It was actually a one day trip, if you consider that I was in transit for two of the three days.



Sweden is a lovely country with friendly people. The climate was good too, with summer drawing to a close. But one thing that struck me was the number of smokers I came across -- I don't know where the country ranks in terms of number of smokers per capita, and so on, but people don't seem to be bother about emphysema, cancer, and the like. No regulations on public smoking also meant that I was exposed to quite a lot of second hand smoke during my waits at the railway station. One more thing: people are permitted to take their dogs inside trains too. Good for them.



I spent the one day I was there at Lund, a charming university town more than a thousand years old. The only negative aspect (two, if you count the taxi driver whom I think charged me double the actual fare) was my missing the train to Stockholm because of mistaking the inbound train for the outbound one (in my defence, both trains arrived at the same time, and no train numbers are displayed on the departure and arrival boards), and having to rush to Copenhagen and take an alternate flight, with all the attendant worries about changing your ticket, catching your connecting flight on time, and so on.

Lisp interpreter

From an old interview with Richard Stallman, via comp.lang.lisp:

LinuxCare: Wasn't the LISP interpreter written using lex and yacc?

Stallman: No, absolutely not. There's no reason to use lex and yacc to write a LISP interpreter. The syntax is so simple you don't need it. You'd just be making things harder.

Oops, I never got the memo - a while back I wrote a Lisp interpreter using the venerable old tools. Now is as good a time as any to release the interpreter in the wild -- here it is.

Fare jumpers insurance

Via Xymphora:

[T]urnstile hoppers in Paris have formed an insurance fund so that whenever one of them is caught by the police, their fine/expenses are fully covered.

You guys are just a decade or so late; maybe you can take some pro tips from the experts in Ulhasnagar.

Italy's exit

Italy's exit from the World Cup has been blamed on ageing defenders, unimaginative play, and so on, but I think there's a more direct reason: Buffon's injury. All the three goals conceded by Italy against Slovakia can be attributed to errors by Marchetti, Buffon's replacement -- inability to adapt to an unforeseen loss of possession at the edge of the box (goal #1), not fully covering the near post (#2), and being a step too late to smother the attack (#3). The reason for the attack being lacklustre was Pirlo's absence; witness the improvement in the accuracy of passing and the incisiveness once he came on.

My already low opinion of footballers has sunk even lower, watching their histrionics. Unless something is done to curb their cynical behaviour (allowing post-match usage of video footage to dish out liberal punishment would be a start), using 'football' and 'beautiful game' in the same sentence would make sense only if there is a 'not' somewhere in between.

Some vuvuzela humour (courtesy Reddit):

1. A web site that adds the vuvuzela blare to your browsing experience
2. Vuvuzela instruction manual
3. A vuvuzela hits CD
4. Heaven and hell
   

By the way, the broadcasters seem to have done something to reduce the noise -- things are much quieter in the round of 16.

All time favourite musical moment in a movie

Someone asked the question "What is your all time favourite music moment is a movie?" at Reddit. The first thing that comes to mind is the climax of The Last of the Mohicans, and it's not just me:

I like the part of Last of the Mohicans when they are running up the mountain path to exact revenge. Awesome instrumental accompanied by chopping people up with large blades. Gives me the chills every time.

Amen to that -- goosebumps time, alright.

World Cup

1. Yes, please do ban the fricking vuvuzelas. I had to twiddle with the sound system in my TV for half an hour to figure out a way to create a custom audio profile that reduces the impact of their blaring.


2. I've realized something which has been gnawing at me for quite a while: 90% of football -- 90% of all matches, as well as 90% of any match -- basically sucks. Unless it's your team playing, watching the ball being swatted about as if it's a pinball machine, with nary a goal-mouth action for practically the whole match brings no joy. Stuff like this and this make more and more sense.


3. Some advice to footballers: if you're already on a yellow card, depending on the referee's interpretation of the rules to avoid a second yellow and get off with just a foul is plain dumb, so spare us the indignant looks and hangdog expressions when you're given marching orders. Oh, and stop being such pansies.


4. Maybe it's just me, but the African teams' corner flag celebrations after scoring goals are starting to look cliched and lame. Roger Milla you guys aren't.

Is it just me

... or is the new Parle LMN ad featuring the two bushmen searching for water incredibly racist?

What's with the telecom scam?

Headlines Today have been going hammer and tongs with their expose for the last two or three days, while there's not a peep from the likes of The Hindu, Deccan Chronicle, and The Times of India. Isn't a tapped telephone conversation involving a minister -- in the central government, no less -- in which he discusses portfolio allocation with a corporate lobbyist ("My case is cleared?") worthy of at least a couple of centimeters of column space?

This government has to be the sleaziest one ever, by a long mile. What with doubts being raised about our voting machines, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that they came to power by rigging the EVMs. Having somebody like Manmohan Singh at the helm only makes it worse.

Are we alone?

Stephen Hawking has recently weighed in on the question of whether we are alone in the universe. His logic is that there are a hundred billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars, so it's unlikely that Earth is the only planet where life originated. Sounds plausible, but here's a counter-argument: suppose a phenomenon occurs once in 10^100 times. We know that there are 10^20 samples, which is a large enough number, and erroneously conclude that it is large enough for the phenomenon to occur more than once. The moot point here is the actual probability of the event, i.e., the 10^100 figure -- there's no reliable and/or scientific way to validate this.

Just throw the bums out

When the President of the United States cannot stay in office for more than two terms, there's no justification for these people to cling to their chairs.

Indian EVMs vulnerable to fraud

Well, all the folks patting themselves on their backs have some explaining to do. From a University of Michigan study:

Electronic voting machines in India, the world's largest democracy, are vulnerable to fraud, according to a collaborative study involving a University of Michigan computer scientist.

Even brief access to the paperless machines could allow criminals to alter election results, the seven-month investigation reveals.

Must read for Farmville affcionados

Well, 'afficionado' doesn't really reflect my opinion of those who play this game, but anyway, this article is a must read. A choice passage:

My mother began playing Farmville last fall, because her friend asked her to join and become her in-game neighbor. In Farmville, neighbors send you gifts, help tend your farm, post bonuses to their Facebook pages, and allow you to earn larger plots of land. Without at least eight in-game neighbors, in fact, it is almost impossible to advance in Farmville without spending real money. This frustrating reality led my mother—who was now obligated to play because of her friend—to convince my father, two of her sisters, my fiancée and (much to my dismay) myself to join Farmville. Soon, we were all scheduling our days around harvesting, sending each other gifts of trees and elephants, and posting ribbons on our Facebook walls. And we were convincing our own friends to join Farmville, too. Good times.

Another worthwhile quote, this from an RI forum post:

Here are some recent FB updates from my circle of friends:

"Big Ben to the Raiders? I think you need a little more than just a sexual harrassment claim for your steet cred before acceptance here, beyotch."

"So the President just gave an intro to American Idol where he said to the contestants: "You're all my dogs!". 2010 rules sometimes."

"Farmville neighbors - I need 3 eggs, 1 blanket, and 5 bottles. Thank you very much."

Bliss really is unaware...

Enough said.

Thoughts on the IPL Controversy

On one level, it's easy to dismiss the whole thing as a falling out between thieves and say no more, but certain facts stand out:

1. Not giving Modi the requested five days or so to prepare his response is very fishy. After all, the guy has busted his hump organizing a glitch-free tournament (here's a thought: with the preparations for the Commonwealth Games going as well as they are, asking him to have a look at things -- only for the logistics, not financial -- would work wonders), and denying him this time smacks of vendetta. All the more so when you regularly see the respondents of a show-cause notice given a whole month to, well, respond to allegations against them.


2. Sashi Tharoor did nothing that his colleagues (both in the ruling party and the opposition) don't indulge in on a daily basis; he only had the misfortune to get caught. The sheer hypocrisy of other politicians in baying for his blood is disgusting. Not holding a brief for him, but one needs to be fair.


3. If everybody claims to be in favour of transparency, why would Modi releasing the details of the ownership patterns of the teams (which, BTW, is already out in the open, so I don't know what is hidden here) "complicate matters" and should not be done in haste? Which leads me to my next point.
   


4. A fundamental issue is the transparency with respect to property rights. In India, it's practically impossible to figure out who owns what. It's not like in the States, for example, where any citizen can walk into the local administration's office and find out that the corner store is owned by so and so. Try doing this in India, and you'll be paid an unwelcome visit by unsavoury characters in the middle of the night. In fact, I'm not even sure this is legally possible here.


5. Why the fsck don't we ban all transactions originating from entities registered in places like Mauritius? It's a given that these are nothing but fronts for corrupt scumbags. I know, the stock market will lose something like 50% of its value if we do this, but screw it -- rooting out corruption is more important.


6. To think that all this is came out in the open because of a single intemperate 140-character web post is to dwell upon the delicious strokes of fate that the universe engineers for us mortals from time to time, irrespective of whether we are clueless celebrities addicted to Twitter or one of the 200,000 followers of these celebrities looking on with awe and wonder. Almost makes me believe in the Big Bang Theory.
   

Quote of the day

In baseball terms, the Contagion Team is at bat. Portugal is in the batter's box and Spain is on deck. Greece is on second base in scoring position. The EU is on the mound lobbing softballs while the IMF is in the bullpen warming up. Germany plays for team EU but refused to dress for the game.
-- Mish Shedlock

Obligatory IPL Post

1. The level of commercial crassness has gone up (c.f. the middle-of-the-over ad intrusion). No surprises there.


2. The slipping in of sponsors' names at the drop of a hat continues to irritate -- Citi moment of success, Karbonn Kamaal Catch (or is it 'Katch'?), and the worst of them all: the fricking MRF blimp that serves no purpose other than for the camera to be aimed at it and the commentators reading from the script ("do you know that MRF makes motorcycle tires too? MRF Pace Foundation blah blah Dennis Lillee blah blah 20 years blah de blah").


3. What the hell is Mukesh Ambani's wife doing, sitting in the players' dugout with a bored yet stoic expression on her face? It's not like she's in the same boat as Preity Zinta, with a need to grab whatever chance she gets to be in the limelight -- she's got enough money to take out full page ads for a year with her portrait on them, for heaven's sake.


4. Testing the patience of the viewers eager to know the third umpires' decision by delaying the result with animations of flying jets is not a Good Thing. In fact, empirical studies have shown that such practices may result in an 8% drop in airline passenger revenues. To be fair, the Kingfisher ad featuring the singing players is almost as good as the zoozoos.


5. What's up with Indian spectators? All you have to do is train a camera on them, and they faithfully prove Darwin's theory over and over again.
   

One-line question; 8000-page reply

From The Hindu:

It was quite literally a bundle of a reply that left its recipient flummoxed. Choudhary Rakesh Singh Chaturvedi, Deputy Leader of the Congress Legislature Party in Madhya Pradesh, received a reply running into 8,000 to 10,000 pages to a one-line question he had asked in the State Assembly. The bundles of paper were sent to his home through an autorickshaw.

Mr. Chaturvedi called it a “cruel joke.”

“During the monsoon session on July 7, I had asked a question to which the State Housing and Environment Ministry last week sent me a reply in the form of number of huge bundles,” he said. The reply came early this month.

Mr. Chaturvedi said he had asked Housing and Environment Minister Jayant Malaiyya to state the names of industrial units which were issued No Objection Certificates from January 2006 to December 2008 regarding permissible emission limits.

“I was astonished when eight to 10 bundles containing the answer were delivered at my residence,” he said

Technology provides a way to deal with such intransigent babus: ask them for the documents in soft copy, host the entire thing in a server, and let the crowds pick them apart. Oh, and by the way, ten years' hard labour for any bureaucrat exposed because of this scrutiny (twenty years for the smartypants who came up with the 'let's send them an autorickshaw full of documents' idea).