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A story of Prof. Shiv Dutta Joshi

Prof. S.D.Joshi would not appear to you as the stereotypical professor of IIT Delhi shown in "3 idiots" (Bala Sir may..but then that is a different post altogether). He won't appear to you as any stereotypical teacher, if you meet him outside. He is simple, sober, smiling and intelligent. He appeared exactly that way when he came to our hostel for the STIC-D(Students Teachers Interaction Council Dinner) last year. Till that day we all regarded him as a chill prof, who knows his subject through and through and who is modest enough not to intimidate others by his knowledge.Now the respect has increased manifolds. That day he told us one of the most amazing first person account you can ever here. Its genuineness and the genius was evident just like that. I will try to tell it in first person, almost verbatim, though it is difficult because it happened one year back I started working on my PhD thesis in IIT, I was lucky to be able to work in a field I liked. But all my work w...
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The ' What if ? ' illusion

As humans, our mere ability to think 'What if?' makes us believe that we are in control. But do we really change things, do we affect the reality. If we do , to what degree? It is said that if a butterfly makes an extra flap of its wings, the reality can change so much so that after a decade a nonexistent cyclone can result.Is it really true? Even if it is, does the butterfly really have a control enough to make that extra flap? Is it really free will or an illusion of free will? A very fascinating example is seen in first person games like Prince of Persia or God of wars and so on.The game makers try hard to give the gamers a feeling that they can do anything in that virtual world. The game programmers know very well though that they can program only a limited number of options. There cannot be more than a finite number of stimulus- response pairs that they would have programmed. Even then, while we play the game we feel that we are in complete control (at least that is the ai...
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IIM Ahmedabad interview

14th March 2010, IIFT Delhi Morning 8:45 exactly around 28 call getters were divided into 4 panels .Then we were called in for writing our essays. In ten minutes we were supposed to write an essay on "Is banning politicians with criminal records from contesting election violation of their rights?". At first I felt it was a bouncer, so I only had two choices, either duck down and give up or hook. I could not have played a defensive shot. It was a bouncer because I had to be sure that I don't mention any random political proper nouns in the essay which i could be questioned upon later in the interview. so very carefully i put forward two points, in a fairly structured way. Firstly, that in india politicians are looked upon as leaders, and there is a need of immaculate integrity at the top.Secondly, if thousands of citizens' rights are at stake, we can forgo a chance of violating one politician's rights and if he is a true servant, he won't mind it. I thoug...
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