Saturday, October 05, 2013

Thanks to Karmakar

A student asked for a personal, academic story blog:

Long time ago, I had to travel from Mumbai, India to NY, US for my graduate study. It was 80's in India, pre-IT boom, pre-web, and the country was yet to go through a payment crisis and economic liberalization. I didnt have the money to buy a flight ticket.   I found a foundation that gave travel grants and applied. I had to appear for an interview. During the interview, they asked me, what do you want to work on? I said, Algorithms. They asked me to name an algorithm.  I said, Karmakar's algorithm for LP. I didnt know Karmakar or LP or that algorithm (it took a while for that to filter into undergrad conscious in India those days), but it was in my gestalt, and at that moment, I didnt think of dynamic programming or bin packing or quick sort. The gestalt paid off, I got the grant, flew from BOM to JFK, and entered a world of three caps letters. 

Life is gestalt or nothing.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was expecting the punchline to be that your interviewer was Karmarkar. --AC

12:23 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...


Wow very entertaining post. Ive notice that there are many 1300 Number in Australia that giving to a business to give them many clients. Most busineses are using smart numbers to easily remember by their clients most especially in pizza delivery.

6:40 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am aware posts like these are meant to be like poems, but would you care to expand on the gestalt idea? What do you mean?

10:16 PM  

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