What a crazy week! 4 class tests- out of 30 marks, then reduced to 2.5 (yeah, I KNOW). I didn't care too much for them, I mean...who cares about 2.5 marks in the final year once you're placed? The tests were pretty entertaining...one of the supervisors from the M Tech class screeched like Ross making dinosaur sounds(for the non-FRIENDS addicts, don't bother). Another professor made us draw margins on both sides of the answer sheet...whaddehell has gotten into these people!!
Once they were all finally over I decided it was time to relax. The whole month of August had been pretty hectic, beginning with GRE, then placements, then these pain-in-the-ass tests.
I have virtually stopped going to theaters to watch movies, since I watch them on the computer, and due to my miserly nature. But this was a point of celebration, so I decided to catch a movie.
I caught the morning show(so at half rate) of Mumbai Meri Jaan. The movie is based on the train bomb blasts that happened two years ago. As most Bolly flicks these days, it has 5 different stories interconnected. A reporter whose life tragedy is made into a melodrama by her own colleagues (Soha), a police officer about to retire who thinks about what he has really achieved in his career (Paresh Rawal), a young executive who ponders over his principles (Madhavan), a struggling madrasi trying to get foot in Mumbai(Irfan Khan), and an anti-Muslim defeated businessman(Kay Kay Menon). All performances are brilliant with each character delineated with depth. I would recommend this movie to all those who consider Mumbai as their home town, and especially those who travel by local trains.
That evening, the entire wizards gang had gathered at Classic to celebrate a birthday. We came up with am impromptu plan to watch the first day first show of Rock On. In true wizards style, within minutes, money was collected, the attendance sheet was passed, and about 20 people signed up for the movie. *Sigh*, I am going to miss all this next year. The final toll went up to about 30.
After a meeting with a prof that lasted unto 10 mins before the movie (I wont go into the details), we just about made it to the movie.
Rock On does live up to its expectations. Farhan is truely an all-rounder. He has already proved his directorial capabilities by making a masterpiece like Dil Chahta Hai, but we get a glimpse of his singing and acting talent as well. Prachi Desai is demur and rather stoic at some parts. I wonder who her hair stylist was- it looked like she has run a road roller over her hair and stuck it together with fevicol. The lack of hair dresser talent is compensated by that of the interior decorator. Farhan and Prachi's house was WO-HOW. I was totally enthralled by the decor and furniture of the apartment, with the balcony and water wall. Arjun Rampal and Luke Kenny have given memorable performances, but the cake is taken by Purab Kohli, with his charm and sense of humour. He had always been my favourite VJ on channel V, and his charisma was the highlight of his performance. The music, of course, is mostly hardcore rock. Though most of the band songs are similar, Tum ho toh and Socha Hai remain amongst my favourites. The non-band songs Ye tumhari baatein and Phir Dekhiye are refreshingly soft. [:D] The story is somewhat old and gets predictable at some places. But overall, great movie and brilliant music. There's just one problem, you can’t dance in the theatre during the songs.
I can't believe I watched 2 movies in a week in the theatre!! I have to get back to my first love...computer/ipod shows [:)]
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
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13 comments:
hey...missed u guys for mumbai meri jaan.... if u ever happen to download it....send it across..... n as for rock on.... i believe i am the ONLY person who didntfeel like it lived up to the expectations.... i cant put my fingfer on it but i m sure thr was something missing in the movie.... neway.... i LOVED arjun rampal... even as joe he is perfect for the character.... purabis next...he is so funny.... luke looks good with long hair.... n as for farhan.. i didnt like the hairband...his voice sounded raspy... the songs are awesome though....
P.S. nice to see u posting.. [:)]
yea farhan's voice is kinda raspy...but he sounds good singing.
no plans to download Mumbai meri jaan. but i do plan to download rock on :)
oh btw.... love the part where u call urself a miser.....[:P]
lol...though i don't seem to be too miserly compared to certain other people, do I? ;)
Well, after having actually seen how results are done at our prestigious coll, I must say 2.5 can make a huge diff and can conveniently change grades for people who like to perch at the top niches of the grade ladder. :P
Sir, please enlighten us about the grading system in our reputed institution. :)
No prof till date has been able to tell us how the system works. As far as I can figure out, the exam dept guys toss a die, or the more tech savvy ones use a random number generator function to give us grades.
D'abord, don't call me sir. This arrangement is my way of getting back all the money I've wasted on this pathetic insti. :P
As for the grades, the distribution function is apparently supposed to be normal. However, when I told Bhirud sir as to why we couldn't simply rank students on the basis of their marks and slice block chunks off the rankings for allotting grades, he told me that they did not want fixed number of students at each grade. Lolzzzz. I wish them success with fitting data to normal distribution. They will probably do it in a million light years, given that light exceeds its speed by n times where n tends to infinity.
There is a software which does this math for them. It's quite obviously flawed as our HoD commented in the exam section. But it's not affecting anyone involved so they just let it be.
All that I saw of the software was that it calculates the average score and uses this, the minimum and the maximum to normalize the skewness of marks. It outputs the range of marks for each grade, so (marks==>grades) a simple function once the range of marks for each grade is known.
The two good things are: Grades follow the order of marks. So if a student has less marks than another student, he will have a grade <= grade of the latter.
Secondly, teachers have complete liberty to change the ranges generated by the software thus making it pretty useless. In fact, after the grades are given, they're necessarily verified by the teacher for accuracy of distribution. That most of the teachers simply don't utilize this chance to correct errors is a sad state of affairs. So your teachers are equally to blame and not the exam section.
And trust me... a random number generator is their equivalent of theoretical physics.
Thanks for the detailed explanation. At times I feel that figuring out the exam dept mechanics can be tougher than trying to understand a terrorist's psyche.
About the normal distribution- that's the system followed at IIT. VJTI people wanna copy anything the IITs follow, so they probably call it a "normal distribution without fixed no of students".
BTW, how long does it take to recover the money we waste as "tution and other fees" at our dear college?
@Abhinav: So basically what you're saying is that a random number generator would probably have been more accurate than the marriage of this fantastic software with our esteemed professors.
Pardon me, but my skills in mathematics are somewhat lacking ;-)
@Zai: In this economy? Well, we'll just have to wait and see.
@Zai:- Well, from the various fantastically skewed distributions that I came across for the short while that I was in there to verify grades, I guess that their distributions do not fit any of the standard distributions, right from uniform to normal. Simply put, the software is flawed beyond redemption, which is why the director sent back results with recommendations of changes. And though our HoD has an acid tongue, she's quite exacting, which is why she chose to correct many distributions manually and actually sat and did it herself. I think that we would be much better off if good people like the director and our HoD actually took a stand and dictated things to the remaining ignoramuses instead of assuming anything at all.
@Aditya:- Where did you get that from? I can assure you that my skills at Math are the worst, and I brook no comparisons. Nevertheless, even I would have great difficulty in following a chain of logic from my statement to yours. Sometimes we get the point without getting the point. :P
For those who don't remember what a normal distribution is, check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution
If I remember right, we studied this in the 5th sem.
No wonder the result isn't out yet. Bless Sane for taking the trouble to do all this!! Considering that she's a Ph D in maths, she ought to get the distribution controversy fixed.
I was trying to be sarcastic- following from your critique of the flawed software that the exam department uses and the subsequent efforts (or lack thereof) of the professors in the verification process- I simply speculated that a random number generator would (in our college specifically) probably be more accurate than the confluence of the software and the professors.
Again, my skills in sarcasm are also lacking, but that is somewhat less distressing than my skills in mathematics :D
And surely you jest- you expect logic of me after having been through 3 1/2 years of this place?
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