Sunday, February 7, 2010

Be strong in Basics - II

A person who could calculate standard deviation of first 100 prime numbers in just 2 minutes in college struggles to multiply 2 digit by 2 digit number now because of technology. Yes he is a quality coordinator of a company for the past two years. He has been using excel,calculator etc... now he has lost interest in numbers !!!

A person who could write an english essay without any spelling mistake , now he struggles to write a paragraph in notepad with out spell check.

Just try calculating numbers with out calculator or computer then we people will find the difficulties.Write a paragraph in notepad then we will find the difficulties and last but not least try to write two pages of a letter then we will find the difference in our handwriting from college days to now !!
(this is meant to people who had good handwriting , maths skill and english skills,
if we do not have please do not try unduly .. results may not be significant difference)

There are so many examples .. this post is because we develop so many skills through technology. Even One day if we do not have technology we struggle a lot in very basics which is much more important than the former..

I am not blaming technology .. we need to practise to calculate mental maths , grammatical english everyday 10 mins to exercise our basics. It will help in teaching our next generation. When we are asked to teach linear algebra or number theory to our son / daughter or relations that time we should not feel ashamed !!

Thanks
Jithu (One of the victims !! )

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Be strong in basics !!!


Go back to School days and retrieve basics !!
http://ncertbooks.prashanthellina.com/
I am going through books from 9 th standard to 12 th standard. Excellent books. It reminds me my school days. I studied in state-board school. I concentrated more on mathematics than other subjects. When I was going through ‘properties of matter’
I was thinking for 15 min about those things.We have lots of subjects in college level to study.How does it matter to read school books. Yes it matters. Starting from attraction between the particles inside an atoms which decide solids , liquids , gases with respect to state and electrical conductor , heat conductor with respect to Electricity !! Yes I admire the way it was written. It paved me the path to think about electro-static force between two charged particles , hysteresis etc…
I am studying now in 9th standard science book 1st lesson . http://ncertbooks.prashanthellina.com/class_9.Science.Science/CHAP%201.pdf
I would suggest people go through basics , i.e to our school days and start reading. It will give you mental pleasure and we can feel today’s computer science(base from silicon) , wireless networks (electromagnetic waves using properties of waves ) and we can wonder how these fields are emerged and especially the curriculum our government keeps to step up us from basic science to computer science !!!
I learnt from my one of the favorite professors of IIIT Bangalore Dr.G N S Prasanna,MIT,US that If we are strong in Physics/science and Mathematics we can rule the technical world. He has more than 15 patents in all the fields from combinatorial game IChess to Magnetics in Robotics. I admire him !!
We should be strong in basics which is like a land and our engineering concepts are like buildings. In general land is more valuable than buildings !!