GaNitha

gaNitha means Mathematics.

Today I attended a special lecture on "Number partitions as an extreme value problem" by Dr. Rajesh from IMSc, Chennai, as a part of my Physics Minor course. It was an extremely interesting lecture.

Some how this made me look back and see how my interest in Mathematics grew and realized how blessed I am when it comes to Mathematics teachers. Since school (class 5th) I have always had really good mathematics teachers. This blog post to is dedicated to all my mathematics teachers.

I still remember my first Algebra Class in 5th standard by my Math teacher (Ms. Vasudha ?? Cannot recall her name now :( ). The way she introduced the concept of algebra was enchanting. I was so thrilled how we could solve for unknowns! Somehow the x,y,z s in the equations looked fascinating. Later I had Ms. Jayashree, Sister Royaline, Mrs. Cinthia D'souza teaching me Mathematics in school. During +2 I had Vasudeva sir teaching in the college (Pre-University college).

At the pre-university level, I had the opportunity to learn mathematics under HLS Rao sir. The most amazing mathematics teacher I have encountered till now. A teacher who can teach mathematics without writing a single word on board! The motivation that he gave us during those days is something that I shall cherish through out my life. I will require a full post dedicated to him.

Here at IIT Madras, I have been lucky to have really good Mathematics teachers. Prof. A V Jayanthan, under whom I did my first two semester Math courses (Calculus I and II) and also my Linear Algebra course and Prof. Natarajan who taught me Probability and Random Processes.

Currently I am doing Basic Graph Theory under Prof. Choudum. Another amazing teacher. Its a pleasure to do the course under him.

The frien(I)DLY dinner

We had a very Special Dinner on 24th of October, 2009.

I entered the mess ignoring the board which read Special Dinner. Over-estimating the level of my hunger, I ended up taking a plate full of variety of items (which looked weird). There were finger chips which were really over-sized, gulab jamun which looked unhealthy, something that resembled manchurian, some special rice and curd rice.

The dinner was being served by the mess people (generally we help ourselves). The man in-charge of serving curd rice seemed too stingy. Even after requesting twice, he was reluctant to put more than two spoons of curd rice. Fortunately(?), he had to leave the place for a moment and I was quick enough to make use of his absence to fill my plate with a heap of curd rice.

I went to a table and sat with a bunch of juniors. They started to laugh looking at my plate. I ignored them and started to eat.

The gulab jamun tasted idly-ish! Moving to the manchurian, it tasted idly-ish too. The finger chips was no exception and the curd rice was not curd rice! It was crumble idly mixed with curds. Everything was IDLY!!

So, it was actually a "IDLY" dinner! It was too heavy and of course tasted too idly-ish.


The Menu :

1. Idly Finger chips
2. Idly Manchurian
3. Idly Rasa Vadai (read Rasa as "Rasam").
   
4. Idly Briyani ! (Biriyani :-P )
   
5. Idly Usilli (we never figured out what this was.)
6. Idly Curd Rice(?).
7. Idly Gulab Jamun (Wow!!)

This was to our frien(I)DLY dinner menu.



My final Dinner :



Banana saved the day!



P.S : Thanks to Tejaswi and her camera for the pictures!