Give some RAIN....!!!!!!!!

We had planned for ages of throwing a party on completing our Post graduation. Not everything that we expected was happening in the days after our grading exams.. I didnt top..Murtu got screwed in the vivas even after topping the theory...Omu ..got posted to a non family station....well part of life isnt it.

Yet like the Unsinkable Molly Brown aboard the Titanic .. nothing could really keep us down for long .. the trip to Pondicherry was refreshing to say the least.

We worked at making this party memorable and well ensure that folks miss us sorely and surely .. when we leave.

Omu was cajoled into writing the framework of a skit and it soon attained the full colours under the wildly imaginative minds of me and murtu.

The evening was spent fighting with the system to waggle out the larger speakers and three microphones. It never ceases to amaze me the way people hold on to things that belong to and institution as if it was meant to exist for infinity .. ya getting possessive about the Tajmahal is one thing, caring for it is another, but covering it up with a shed so that no one sees it or it doesnt get damaged is ..well basically defeating the whole purpose isnt it..!!

anyway it was horribly hot and humid and not a shred of cloud in the sky till 6:45

Anyway the party started ..lit up like a christmas tree with music and games in waiting ..

Omu goes to the mike and says the party starts with the theme song "Give me some sunshine...give me some rain " ..and by God it rained .. not just rained it poured .. and it poured and poured ...for the next two hours. the party was a disaster .. with the music system wet , no chance of a rain dance either.

We moved to the mess and the the hand of God showed it self again and a plywod partition crashed on a couple of ladies ..Sweta included.

Well what more could go wrong .. no .. we salvaged a few things..two songs went off okay.

And then we did the skit .. i was already a couple down .. so the words flowed and the script was being modified and everyone went on their own grid and yet it held on together.. Ashu showed some brilliant improvisation skills.

And the n the phone call came.. a house is on fire .. Great ..just great ..!! what more now ..???

No damage to life or property ..but what a scare.

One things for certain..noones going to forget the evening in a hurry

My second Publication

http://medind.nic.in/iab/t09/i2/iabt09i2c.shtml

This is the link to my second publication in the Indian Journal of Aerospace medicine. Not bad as a trainee if i must say so myself ..:). And this article also won the Best Paper award at the Conference in Delhi.

The first article had been about the Mathematical model that i had developed for the DISO simulator at IAM for measuring head movements if subjects. That was a completely original work and had been a solo publication.

This article on the other hand was actually an institutional work wherein an indigenous effort at making a helmet for the aircrew had been made by a design and development agency and the prototype had come for evaluation to IAM.

Now it was tested on around 40 pilots and a problem was found.

So where do I come in ..??

Well the problem was there but couldnot be pinpointed...so i took it from the stage of "there is a problem" to "this is the problem". The clue lay in the statistical difference between the parameters that had been considered. My next contribution was to design an alternative way of designing the sizing schedule so that the problem could be solved.

Three years at IAM and time to go .. for the only time in my life when I really did what i really really wanted to do and enjoyed every moment of wrestling with a problem at 3:00 AM in the night..!!

Types of Data

There are four types of data that may be gathered in research, each one adding more to the next. Thus ordinal data is also nominal, and so on.

Ratio
Interval
Ordinal
Nominal

Nominal
The name 'Nominal' comes from the Latin nomen, meaning 'name' and nominal data are items which are differentiated by a simple naming system. The only thing a nominal scale does is
to say that items being measured have something in common, although this may not be described. Nominal items may have numbers assigned to them. This may appear ordinal but is not -- these are used to simplify capture and referencing. Nominal items are usually categorical,
in that they belong to a definable category, such as 'employees'.
Example
The number pinned on a Sachin Tendulkar's shirt.
A set of countries.

Ordinal
Items on an ordinal scale are set into some kind of order by their position on the scale. This may indicate such as temporal position, superiority, etc. The order of items is often defined by
assigning numbers to them to show their relative position. Letters or other sequential symbols may also be used as appropriate. Ordinal items are usually categorical, in that they belong to a definable category, such as 'Help Bangalore marathon runners'. You cannot do arithmetic with ordinal numbers -- they show sequence only.
Example
The first, third and fifth person in a race.
Pay bands in an organization, as denoted by A, B, C and D.

Interval
Interval data (also sometimes called integer) is measured along a scale in which each position is equidistant from one another. This allows for the distance between two pairs to be equivalent in some way. This is often used in psychological experiments that measure attributes along an arbitrary scale between two extremes. This is the most confusing of all....like the Samn perelli fatigue scale or the NASA TLX or the famous Glasgow Coma Score. Interval data cannot be multiplied or divided. Try taking the average GCS of 10 patients in the ICU ..!!!

Example
My level of happiness, rated from 1 to 10.

Temperature, in degrees
Fahrenheit.

Ratio
In a ratio scale, numbers can be compared as multiples of one another. Thus one person can be twice as tall as another person. Important also, the number zero has meaning. Thus the difference between a person of 35 and a person 38 is the same as the difference between people who are 12 and 15. A person can also have an age of zero. Ratio data can be multiplied and divided because not only is the difference between 1 and 2 the same as between 3 and 4, but also that 4 is twice as much as 2. Interval and ratio data measure quantities and hence are quantitative. Because they can be measured on a scale, they are also called scale data.
Example
A person's weight
The number of pizzas I can eat before fainting

Parametric vs. Non-parametric
Interval and ratio data are parametric, and are used with parametric tools in which distributions are predictable (and often Normal). Nominal and ordinal data are non-parametric, and do not assume any particular distribution. They are used with non-parametric tools such as the
Histogram.

Continuous and Discrete
Continuous measures are measured along a continuous scale which can be divided into fractions, such as temperature. Continuous variables allow for infinitely fine sub-division, which
means if you can measure sufficiently accurately, you can compare two items and determine the difference. Discrete variables are measured across a set of fixed values, such as age in years (not microseconds). These are commonly used on arbitrary scales, such as scoring your level of happiness, although such scales can also be continuous.

The starting point of a study is the data ..and knowing the data you are dealing with helps decide the way it is to be collected or treated. whether your own study or going through someone elses study for a journal club, the first thing to do is to look at the data when talking of statistics.