Hello,I am a teacher of Computer Science, from India.

Recently, i was invited by Rajagiri College of Social Sciences, Kochi (Cochin), Kerala,  to participate in their national conference on computational science and engineering (NCCSE 09). It was a memorable visit to a memorable institution. I was amazed and impressed by their commitment to socially responsible activities. I visited their waste disposal facility, verimculture facility, bio-gas facility, and ground water conservation facilities. Very thoughtfulof them. I am strongly convinced that big and beautiful buildings do not make a great institution. Thoughtful and responsible people create such institutions. The conference itself was very enlightening. The best part of my visit was to notice the amount of attention they give to hospitality. Right from the moment we stepped out of the train, till we were safely on our way back home, we had student volunteers pampering us.

Thank you Rajagiri for this excellent experience.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Sanjiv Kumar from India's (and perhaps Asia's) largest university -- Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). We discused the idea of settingup some organised activities to promote the usage of Scilab in India. there were lots of ideas and lots of suggestions and of course the feeling of having a lot of work to do.

Scilab is an amazingly rich software for doing mathematics. Comes from INRIA, Europe's most respected institute for research in computer science. Scilab (and FOSS) is the answer to the prayers of teachers and students of developing countries like India.

I wish IGNOU's initiative will be realised during my lifetime. I would be proud to have been a  part of that vision. If you are interested in joining in, just send me an email. Together, let us build a great India !

The usual 100 day countdown started on 24 january 2009. In 96 days from today, i will leave IIITMK and will be packing up, to go back to Hyderabad. It will be the start of another new adventure.

Wish me good luck.

Also visit my newest website :

http://drpartha.googlepages.com/professor5.htm

or send me a mail drpartha@gmail.com

partha

Are you writing a mathematically-rich document, report, paper, book ? Need Help in type-setting the text ? Your favourite word-processor just cant do it ? Here is help. Use LaTeX.

To help you get started, we give you a document, typeset with LaTeX. All you have to do is hack the source of this document, and create your own, and then thank Dr. Partha, and then send him a box of chocolates.

Start by taking a look at :

http://info.algolog.googlepages.com/lat4maths.pdf

partha

Happy New Year -- commemorating a historical blunder

We have just started a New Year according to our common Gregorian calendar. The earth just completed going around the sun once. We have just seen 366 sunrises, since the last new Year's Day. There goes a story many of us have not heard of, or have forgotten. Early mathematicians who invented the science of "geometry" decided to divide a circle into 360 degrees. The word geometry itself is inspired from geo -- earth, metry-- measurements. They saw the earth going around the sun in some 360 days (according to their crude and primitive measurements).

Although, later this was proved wrong, we continue to stick to the 360 degrees rule of circles (each degree reminds us of one day in earth's annual excursion), a big blunder which the world has accepted since ages. So, every time we celebrate New Year, we must think of this historic blunder which we made several centuries ago.

Subsequent generations of mathematicians, corrected all this, giving rise to a bewildering variety of calendars. A good collection of calendar related information can be found at ::: http://www.hermetic.ch/cal_stud.htm

The science of geometry grew into the science of astronomy (now we start looking at the stars). We have now come to the stage when we can actually hope to visit these celestial bodies. All this started with a faulty premise of 360 degrees to a circle.

 partha