Personal Productivity

I thought that it was time to rethink over the way I work, prioritise tasks and implement them.
Hence, I read up a few things on the web.
Found a couple of good resources and suggestions.

I have bookmarked the links at:

http://del.icio.us/amirivija/Productivity

I also subscribed to a couple of blogs on productivity.

Here are a few notes I made for myself based upon what all I read:

Things to implement:
1] Keep a record of the start and end times of different activities
2] Cut down e-mail alerts. cut down IM. Look at the e-mails only 4 times a day. [Morning, After Lunch, Before Leaving - set aside time for rss feeds ets]
3] Clarify objectives, before starting any work
4] Break down the big problem into smaller ones

5] Work tends to expand in the time available.. [so compartmentalize the work] Hence, shrink the time you are going to work.. [ Plan to work only for 5 hours per day]

6] Stop multi tasking..

7] Do the task that gives the most benefit.

8] Join a group to keep you motivated
1] Apping group
2] Build an online programming network

9] Picture of a goal : expert computer science engineer

10] be patient

11] seek inspiration - blogs, people , articles

12] never skip anything two days in a row

13] Apply the ""do it, delegate it, defer it, drop it"" rule for all the stuff that' clogging your system

I also stumbled across the book "Getting Things done" by david allen. I would like to read this book too.

This one also has pointers to some good stuff
http://zenhabits.net/2007/02/beginners-guide-to-gtd/

And last but not the least, I reorganised my Google reader feeds

I am a Kinesthetic Learner

This is what http://www.metamath.com/multiple/multiple_choice_questions.html has to say about my learning style.

The results of Amirisetty Vijayaraghavan's learning inventory are:

Visual/Nonverbal 30 Visual/Verbal 28 Auditory 24 Kinesthetic 36

Your primary learning style is:

The Tactile/ Kinesthetic Learning Style

You learn best when physically engaged in a "hands on" activity. In the classroom, you benefit from a lab setting where you can manipulate materials to learn new information. You learn best when you can be physically active in the learning environment. You benefit from instructors who encourage in-class demonstrations, "hands on" student learning experiences, and field work outside the classroom.

Strategies for the Tactile/ Kinesthetic Learner:

To help you stay focused on class lecture, sit near the front of the room and take notes throughout the class period. Don't worry about correct spelling or writing in complete sentences. Jot down key words and draw pictures or make charts to help you remember the information you are hearing.

When studying, walk back and forth with textbook, notes, or flashcards in hand and read the information out loud.

Think of ways to make your learning tangible, i.e. something you can put your hands on. For example, make a model that illustrates a key concept. Spend extra time in a lab setting to learn an important procedure. Spend time in the field (e.g. a museum, historical site, or job site) to gain first-hand experience of your subject matter.

To learn a sequence of steps, make 3'x 5' flashcards for each step. Arrange the cards on a table top to represent the correct sequence. Put words, symbols, or pictures on your flashcards -- anything that helps you remember the information. Use highlighter pens in contrasting colors to emphasize important points. Limit the amount of information per card to aid recall. Practice putting the cards in order until the sequence becomes automatic.

When reviewing new information, copy key points onto a chalkboard, easel board, or other large writing surface.

Make use of the computer to reinforce learning through the sense of touch. Using word processing software, copy essential information from your notes and textbook. Use graphics, tables, and spreadsheets to further organize material that must be learned.

Listen to audio tapes on a Walkman tape player while exercising. Make your own tapes containing important course information.

to READ

http://code.google.com/edu/content/submissions/uwspr2007_clustercourse/listing.html

Another Idea - Speech recognition

2-3 years ago I had looked up some work on speech to text conversion.
The approaches were based on Neural networks, and I did not find them helpful.

I dont know the as it is now, but here is the Idea that sprung to my mind yesterday.

Towards Semantic web. One step at a time

I was traveling back from my hometown to bangalore when I came across this good science fiction article which revolves around semantic web and embedded devices.
Just reinforcing my vision of a world with information at the time we want and at the place we need. Basically it is the availability of information when needed.

I had been reading a few papers on Information retrieval, the semantic web [collaborative filtering/ social networks]. Few of these papers have fascinated me and I believe that they are going to make the world a easier place to live in.

Here is my iota of contribution towards this end:
This is a continuation of my efforts started here.

I implemented the concepts mentioned in the paper above to come up with a program capable to developing a concept map for a small document corpus.

Here is the concept map:


I used the Stanford NLP parser to extract the nounphrases from the document.
JGraphT to represent the graph (I used the DirectedGraph) and JGraph to display the graph.

Lots of improvements to be done:

1. At present all the document processing and generation of the concept map is done online. That sucks up a lot of memory. Hence I'll have to use persistent storage store the nounPhrase - Document association, the Document information, the nounPhrase - nounPhrase association. I am planning to try hsqldb for this. It supports inmemory databases.
   
2. Need to speed up the execution by having some parallel processing. I will try getting help from a professor at IISc [SERC] for this.
3. I need to add the relationship between two entities (alongwith their weightage). For example: Google has a relationship with yahoo. Right now my program just tells that there is an association. but what type of association [I can be competitors/ successful startups/ young CEO's/ web companies/ great places to work at/etc etc]
4. Optimise the code.
   

And I want to learn developing applications for embedded devices too.
I will start with image processing in mobile phones. I bought a second hand nokia 6600 for this.
The two thing I have in mind for mobile applications are:

• An image processing program that will tell me the destination of the bus when I click the photograph of the destination board of the bus (which is in Kannada) so that I dont have to rush to the bus to ask "Bhaiya, majestic jayega?"
• An image processing program (again) which converts my notes (which are quite random) into a good power point presentation (It should at least capture the shapes and the content)

Hmm.. seems that I talk a lot. Let me get back to work!

Distance Learning MS in CS

This one looks good:

http://www.grad.iit.edu/bulletin/programs/cs.html#mast-sci-comp-sci

Cost: 20 760 U.S. dollars = 8,47 ,796.79 Indian rupees

Programming core courses
CS 522 Data Mining
CS 525 Advanced Database Organization
CS 529 Information Retrieval
CS 540 Syntactic Analysis of Programming Languages
CS 546 Parallel Processing
CS 551 Operating System Design and Implementation

Systems core courses
CS 542 Computer Networks I: Fundamentals
CS 544 Computer Networks II: Network Services
CS 547 Wireless Networks
CS 550 Advanced Operating Systems
CS 555 Analytic Models and Simulation of Computer Systems
CS 570 Advanced Computer Architecture
CS 586 Software Systems Architectures

Theory core courses
CS 530 Theory of Computation
CS 532 Formal Languages
CS 533 Computational Geometry
CS 535 Design and Analysis of Algorithms
CS 536 Science of Programming
CS 538 Combinatorial Optimization

The germ

The 16th International World Wide Web conference was held at Banff, Alberta Canada from May 8 to 12th this year.
The web has revolutionalized the way information flows, the way people learn, the way people do their everyday things, the way people socialize and a zillion other things. In short, it has revolutionized the way we live.
And each year the www conference sets the stage to accelerate this revolution in the years to come.

Here are a few papers that I'd like to read up in the limited time I have.
I collected these docs by searching for pdf site:http://www2007.org/ with google.
I have skimmed through the abstracts of the interesting papers of the first 90 results
I found around 29 papers interesting.

Track: Semantic Web (2)

1] Analysis of Topological Characteristics of Huge Online *

Social Networking Services

http://www2007.org/papers/paper676.pdf

2] Combating Spam in Tagging Systems [Stanford]

http://www2007.org/workshops/paper_97.pdf

Track: Search, Information organization, retrieval and processing (17)

1] Navigation-Aided Retrieval

http://www2007.org/papers/paper162.pdf

2] Supervised Rank Aggregation *

http://www2007.org/papers/paper286.pdf

3] Functional Faceted Web Query Analysis [NSU, Singapore] *

http://www2007.org/workshops/paper_44.pdf

4] Efficient Search in Large Textual Collections *

with Redundancy

http://www2007.org/papers/paper800.pdf

5] Formalization, User Strategy and Interaction Design:

Users’ Behaviour with Discourse Tagging Semantics

http://www2007.org/workshops/paper_30.pdf

6] Sponsored Search with Contexts [upenn]

http://www2007.org/workshops/paper_83.pdf

7] Towards a Semantic Knowledge Base for Yeast Biologists

http://www2007.org/workshops/paper_130.pdf

8] Detecting Near-Duplicates for Web Crawling [google] *

http://www2007.org/papers/paper215.pdf

9] Robust Methodologies for Modeling Web Click [yahoo]*

Distributions

http://www2007.org/papers/paper056.pdf

10] Random Web Crawls[criteo]

http://www2007.org/papers/paper339.pdf

11] An Adaptive Crawler for Locating Hidden-Web Entry Points [Utah]*

http://www2007.org/papers/paper429.pdf

12] Web Projections: Learning from Contextual Subgraphs of the Web

[Microsoft, cmu]*

http://www2007.org/papers/paper551.pdf

13] The Discoverability of the Web [yahoo]*

http://www2007.org/papers/paper592.pdf

14] Extraction and Search of Chemical Formulae in Text

Documents on the Web [PSU]

http://www2007.org/papers/paper100.pdf

15] Summarizing Email Conversations with Clue Words [ucb, cancada] *

http://www2007.org/papers/paper631.pdf

16] Answering Relationship Queries on the Web [IBM]*

http://www2007.org/papers/paper058.pdf

17] Do Not Crawl in the DUST: Different URLs with Similar Text

http://www2007.org/papers/paper194.pdf

Recommender systems, Collaborative filtering (4)

1] Improving Ontology Recommendation and Reuse in

WebCORE by Collaborative Assessments

http://www2007.org/workshops/paper_8.pdf

2] The Complex Dynamics of Collaborative Tagging [Princeton] *

http://www2007.org/papers/paper635.pdf

3] Scaling Up All Pairs Similarity Search [google] **

http://www2007.org/papers/paper342.pdf

4] Applying Collaborative Tagging to E-Learning

http://www2007.org/workshops/paper_56.pdf

Data Mining: (2)

1] Towards Domain-Independent Information Extraction

from Web Tables

http://www2007.org/papers/paper790.pdf

2] Page-level Template Detection via Isotonic Smoothing [yahoo]* omi

http://www2007.org/papers/paper588.pdf

Miscellaneous but interesting (4)

1] Optimal Audio-Visual Representations

for Illiterate Users of Computers

http://www2007.org/papers/paper764.pdf

2] A Mobile Application Framework for the Geospatial Web

http://www2007.org/papers/paper287.pdf

3] Communication as Information-Seeking: The Case for

Mobile Social Software for Developing Regions [Washington]

http://www2007.org/papers/paper669.pdf

4] Tag-Cloud Drawing: Algorithms for Cloud Visualization

http://www2007.org/workshops/paper_12.pdf

Know thy self

I came across this blog post and found it very insightful.

I could relate myself to the author of this post.

A few points that I found interesting. [verbatim from the post]:

-
Beware the traps of justification and attribution when thinking about your life. Many people justify past decisions because they want them to make sense and feel better.

^-- This is what I have been doing the past one year! Fooling myself.

Yes, most clouds have silver linings. But sometimes getting hit in the head with a shovel is just getting hit in the head with a shovel. It’s not fun, there’s not much educational value, and your life really is better without it.

-
I really don't know what I want.
The author gives simple and effective tips to understand what you want:
1. A feel good list <-- In this, you note down the events that made you feel good. eg: understanding the paper on semantic search. eg: Explaining Sudhir on why I feel that semantic search would be better than textual search. eg: Telling a colleague that google patent search would be better than delphion.
eg: Helping a colleague finding a solution to the problem he was facing.


2. An ideas list <-- In this you note down the ideas that come to your mind. The author mentioned sometimes he gets a great idea in the sleep and he just gets up and notes that idea down. This happened to me a couple of times :). 3. Finally, get external inputs. Understand your personality and get inspired. I took up this personality test on: and found that : I was and ENJF http://typelogic.com/enfj.html

Extraverted	Intuitive	Feeling	Judging
Strength of the preferences %
33	38	12	11

I'd like to read it again.
In short, it says that people like me like to find solutions, look for greener pastures, help others and are pedagogues of humanity.
That is true I believe, but it is for the people around me to tell me that.

Here is something from a test that I took up previously.


More good talk. From the same blog:


This talk is good:

Richard St. John: Secrets of success in 8 words, 3 minutes

• Do what you love: Passion
• Determination: Hard work, focus, push yourself, get good in one thing
  
• Make something useful: Ideas, serve others
• Keep your chin up: Persist

I need to look at the highlighted points

One needs to persist in the face of failure and other CRAP:

• Criticism
• Rejection
• Jerks (or another word for a non-nice person)
• Pressure

Personality development for Kids

Here is something I wrote on a piece of paper.. This was an effort for the kids of SEEK, VISHWAS, Bangalore. A part of it has been implemented

Syntactic to Semantic Web. The search engine that "Understands" what you want!

I have been looking for current work on text mining, knowledge representation/extraction from unstructured data. I have bookmarked

I found this paper particularly interesting:
"Knowledge Discovery from Semi-Structured Data for Conceptual Organization"


The authors talk about

• creating a concept map (a graph of co-occurring [in other terms, related] concepts [noun phrases]) from a corpus,
• then extracting cliques of a particular concept [using a topological sort],
• and then assigning the documents to that particular clique

What you get a the end is the mapping of a document to concepts. In short, what are the noun phrases that describe the document.
These noun phrases may not always contain all the noun phrases that occur in the document [eg. red soil, which may have occurred in one of the documents containing the concept "rose", but it did not co-occur in any other document containing "rose"]
On the other hand, these noun phrases may include some concepts which were not obvious from that particular document [eg. a document containing "school kids" may not contain the concept "chocolate", but these two concepts have co-occurred in a significant number of documents in the corpus]..

I liked the paper, the concept is very similar to what we do in real life.
We have concepts stored inside our brain [connection between neurons?]. To extract the concept map stored in your brain, you just need to think about all the things that come to your mind when you think about a concept say "s e x".
When ever we come across something new (a new concept), we just associate it to an already existing concept map in our brain. These concepts are in turn linked to information about them (related documents?)

We can even take this a step ahead by assigning weights to the edges [based upon how frequently they co-occur, label the edges[and nodes] with all possible verbs that connect them ]

btw, the authors the Stanford Parser to extract the noun phrases.

you can try it online here.
Moving from syntactic to semantic.. arent we?

why are we [Indians] prosperous but not happy

This post gives a good idea..
I'd like to read it once more in my leisure and ponder over it.

http://harmanjit.blogspot.com/2007/04/notice-period-to-god.html

Portal for Kids

I feel that this idea would be a hit..

resources here
http://www.memory-key.com/Parents/strategies.pdf
http://www.journal.naeyc.org/btj/200407/OnlineAndPrintArtResources.pdf
http://www.surreymuseums.org.uk/somethingelse/psycho.htm

Cognitive Sciences

I dont know what that means.. but some of the things sound interesting..
and maybe complex..

will just make a note of few things that I come across..

Please correct me if I am wrong..
Wordnet is a collection of synsets.. collection of groups of words which relate to a similar concept

Some resources:
A course at MIT OCW [mentioned in my previous post]

Some Papers:
http://www-tsujii.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~yusuke/paper/eacl2003.pdf
http://www.d.umn.edu/~tpederse/wnsim-bib/

MIT OCW. Real Cool Studd here

I feel that I need to constantly keep learning..

understanding new things has always facinated me..
So has looking at the same thing from a different point of view.


Now and then, I take up a topic which it vaguely related to what I know or what I can comprehend easily and try to understand it.. But such efforts have not led to something concrete till now..
The good this is that I learn.. what next? What do I do with the things I learn?

cut the crap..
Here are a few courses that I'd like to look at in the coming months: [Apart from occasional Google Videos]

• Natural Language and the Computer Representation of Knowledge, Spring 2003
• Operating System Engineering, Fall 2006
• Introduction to Algorithms (SMA 5503), Fall 2005

Will keep on adding to this list over time

Google Tech Talks I'd like to see

Update [ Aug 5, 2007]: These are the ones that I would like to add - From the Google Scalability conference - from glinden
The Google tech talks are quite informative. Ranging from mysql query optimisation to psycology and economics.

Here is the list of videos that I'd Like to watch over the next few months...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=236331448076587879




Building GUI applications with Python, GTK and Glade
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5838951374743244232

Haiku: The Operating System
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=236331448076587879

Joomla!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7035976321528074794

7 Ways To Ruin A Technological Revolution
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8538240380002213699

Should Google Go Nuclear? Clean, cheap, nuclear power (no, really)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606



Comparing American and Chinese Negotiation Styles
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4634363396909200237

GeoServer and Architectures of Participation for Geospatial Information
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3923618086187138447



Search Engine Strategies - Eric Schmidt interview
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5651532968895500419

Spatial Query Processing Utilizing Voronoi Diagrams
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2755539754474649930



A Live Motion Portable 3D Video Camera
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3656494784112768834



Toward the First Revolution in the Mind Sciences
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=983112177262602885

You Are What You Say: Privacy Risks of Public Mentions
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6474169875352273382



Code Generation With Ruby
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1541014406319673545

Peer to Peer Web Search with Minerva
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8710122769175704670

Journey Towards The Center Of The Earth
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5797001505961854840



Near-optimal Monitoring of Online Data Sources
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2567976561168591576



The New Digital Sky
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4364162621957872851



Python 3000
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6459339159268485356

How can we better understand customers?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1932851428624192110

Some Python Integrated Development Environments
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8158216898634409900

15 Views of a Node Link Graph: An Information Visualization Portfolio
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6229232330597040086



Competing and Collaborating in China with Bi-Cultural Competence
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6672770494265798071

People to People Lending with Prosper
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8082730452536323779



Becoming a Software Testing Expert
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6852841264192883219



Impact of Technology on Reducing Poverty and Alleviating Social Issues in India
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6671271293722797569



Introduction to Perl: The friendly programming language
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-876009974056913377



Building Large Systems at Google
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5699448884004201579



Leveraging India As India Stands Up
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2089147957292061314

Strike Up The Brand: How to Design for Branding
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5654878583447435228




Team Server / Ajax Development with IntelliJ IDEA
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5548138713037707664

The Next Fifty Years of Science
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6119231548215342323



Our Lives, Our Facebooks

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3910777240176719644



django: Web Development for Perfectionists with Deadlines
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-70449010942275062



Biofuels: Think Outside The Barrel
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-570288889128950913



Urban Sensing, Social Networking, And The Third Thing
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7829327427683569548



Predicting bugs in code changes using SCM information
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7802818288058377867

General Purpose, Low Power Supercomputing Using Reconfiguration
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4969729965240981475

The Reiser4 Filesystem
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6866770590245111825

Stanford Experts on Climate Change and Carbon Trading
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2226061573523196174

Food for the soul

Nowadays I feel that I am being overly disappointed with myself and with the things around me..
I told my friend about this and he told me that I tend poke my nose into other affairs..[ The things that are not in my "Department"!].. and that I tend to judge others..

I guess thats true..

I feel that one way to get rid of this disappointment and "blue" feeling is to look at some practical spiritual quotes.. I chose tao te ching.. and buddhism

Here are some quotes applicable to me that I collated

--

Therefore, stubborn people are disciples of death, but

Flexible people are disciples of life.

-Be impeccable with your word.

Speak little

Bold action against others leads to death

Bold action in harmony with Tao leads to life

-Don't take anything personally.

Be wary of both honor and disgrace

Honor is founded on disgrace

and disgrace is rooted in honor

Both should be avoided

Both bind a person to this world

Words born of the mind are not true

True words are not born of the mind

Those who have virtue do not look for faults

Those who look for faults have no virtue

-Don't make assumptions.

Through the course of nature

Muddy water becomes clear

Through the unfolding of life

Man reaches perfection

Stillness benefits more than action

Silence benefits more than words

Rare indeed are those who are still

Rare indeed are those who are silent

Rare indeed are those who obtain the bounty of this world

-Always do your best.

She who gives herself to this path

is like a block of wood

That gives itself to the chisel

Cut by cut it is honed to perfection

Only a student who gives herself

Can receive the master's gift

Buddhist Values

1. Right Viewpoint - Realizing the Four Noble Truths
2. Right Values - Commitment to mental and ethical growth in moderation
3. Right Speech - One speaks in a non hurtful, not exaggerated, truthful way
4. Right Actions - Wholesome action, avoiding action that would do harm
5. Right Livelihood - One's job does not harm in any way oneself or others; directly or indirectly
6. Right Effort - One makes an effort to improve
7. Right Mindfulness - Mental ability to see things for what they are with clear consciousness.
8. Right Meditation - State where one reaches enlightenment and the ego has disappeared.

Buddha Noble Truths

1. Suffering

There is suffering, dukkha.

Dukkha should be understood.

Dukkha has been understood

2. Desire

There is the origin of suffering, which is attachment to desire.

Desire should be let go of.

Desire has been let go of.

3. cessation of suffering

There is the cessation of suffering, of dukkha.

The cessation of dukkha should be realised.

The cessation of dukkha has been realised.

4. The eight fold path

--

I am gonna take the printout and keep it in my drawer and have a look at it now and then..

How good it would be if we had some "reminder" system that would just pop out an applicable wise saying based upon a situation..

dream along

list

1. ST wildfire - Market, competitor survey
2. Portal for farmers - move it ahead
3. test humaa, be in touch with v Fernando
4. Improve intonation
Download, test adn choose onr speech analyzer.
5. get GRE podcasts/wordlists for the mobile
6. e-bike
7. webhosting and deploying my web-harvest application
8. goals, points for ems discussion, fix the tcp

Improving intonation, accent reduction

I need to improve the "impact" of my delivery. This was one of the development needs that my manager has in mind for me.

Thats true, even if you have stuff, and you are not able to convey it in a manner people are impressed, most of the hardwork goes waste..

My voice is monotonous - no up's and down's in the frequency.. It is a drone.. When you listen to me, you would feel that you are listening to a truck that speaks :)..

I also need to improve my accent [So that my US counterparts get me properly]

I need speech processing software to analyse, improve and monitor my voice.
http://linguistlist.org/sp/SearchWRListing-action.cfm

http://www.sil.org/computing/speechtools/download.htm

Free Speech analysis softwares: http://www.personal.rdg.ac.uk/~llsroach/phon2/freespeech.htm

It is known by: [Google search keywords]

voice training - this applies more to singers
speech therapy
improve intonation
speech training
speech analyzer
...

I will keep this post updated with my progress.

I should be done by end of March [Thought it is a continuous improvement process :)]

btw.. Clipmarks is a good mozilla addon to mark the pages that you would like to store..

Improving intonation, accent reduction

I need to improve the "impact" of my delivery. This was one of the development needs that my manager has in mind for me.

Thats true, even if you have stuff, and you are not able to convey it in a manner people are impressed, most of the hardwork goes waste..

My voice is monotonous - no up's and down's in the frequency.. It is a drone.. When you listen to me, you would feel that you are listening to a truck that speaks :)..

I also need to improve my accent [So that my US counterparts get me properly]

I need speech processing software to analyse, improve and monitor my voice.
http://linguistlist.org/sp/SearchWRListing-action.cfm

http://www.sil.org/computing/speechtools/download.htm

It is known by: [Google search keywords]

voice training - this applies more to singers
speech therapy
improve intonation
speech training
...

I will keep this post updated with my progress.

I should be done by end of March [Thought it is a continuous improvement process :)]

btw.. Clipmarks is a good mozilla addon to mark the pages that you would like to store..

The best way to improve upon your speech is to be conscious of your speech.

Listen to good speakers[auditory training].
-> Knowledge@Wharton [Management podcasts], BBC and a whole lot of other podcast sites are good sources for materila to listen.

Record your speech [Impromptu speech, reading from a textbook, etc]
Anf then listen to it.. where are the places where you do not sound good, the places where you may be misunderstood, places where you stumble, etc

Note down the areas of improvement.

Practicing in from of the mirrir also helps. Pay special attention to lip movements [In my case, I do not flex my lips to the extent that is needed..]

And.. you need patience.. one cannot perfect it with a day/week etc.. it is a continuous process..

Gene Expression data analysis

Paper: Graph-based iterative Group Analysis enhances microarray interpretation
Rainer Breitling,Anna Amtmann,Pawel Herzy
src: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/5/100

Gene Expression data analysis :
[from micro array data of a partcular cell state (during a particular phase in the cell cycle/diseased (brain tumor)/healthy) which we want to analyse]
microarray data only gives the magnitude of cDNA's of different genes

One needs to derive the relationships [cause -effect relationships]

• metabolic pathways
• signallin pathways
• protein interaction maps

Identifying subgraphs (that form a community? [PNAS art]subgraphs having high clustering coefficient )

bigraph - Graph with two types of nodes

Good information on the existing methods of Gene Expression Analysis [And gene expression data too]
http://smd.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/search/QuerySetup.pl

good presentation : http://genome-www5.stanford.edu/help/TUTORIALS/SMD_Analysis.ppt

Slide 6 : Factors for Measurement/Process errors
Data smoothened out using normalization : doping controls

Imp: Clustering algorithms
good example begins: slide 21

Heirarchical clustering/Self organising maps

gene Expression microarray data converted into n dimensional vector

x[i] = log(ratio)[i] i=1 to n

How close the two genes are is defined by the distance between those vectors
Metrics:

1. Euclidiean - the distance between the two vectors in space v-u v and u are ntruple vectors
2. Manhattan - http://mathworld.wolfram.com/TaxicabMetric.html
3. Pearson correlation coefficient : It measures the tendancy of both the variables to increase and decrease together.<-- This is also a part of datamining

• This can imply that the change in them is the effect of some other vector
• or both the vectors influence each other [infinite loop till saturation?]
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson_product-moment_correlation_coefficient

4. Cosine Similarity? [this is used in document similarity] : It is the cosine of the angle between two vectors.

Cluster the expression data [patterns] based upon the similarity[ metrics given above]
Similar to Kruskal's Minimum spanning tree algorithm.

this can lead to erroneous results (why?)

SOM's (self organising maps) <-- This is also a part of datamining
This is a single layer feed forward network connected to a grid of 2D/3D vectors.

Why dont I use edge betweenness based algorithm? [PNAS: community structure in social and biological networks]

Tools:
PAJEK
SMD - Stanford dataset