Nobody Understands

This is humbleness, greatness and reality check all rolled into one:

What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school - and you think I'm going to explain it to you so you can understand it? No. you're not going to be able to understand it. Why, then am I going to bother you with all this? Why are you going to sit here all this time, when you won't be able to understand what I am going to say? It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see, my physics students don't understand it either. This is because I don't understand it. Nobody does.

This was Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman giving lecture to laypersons in New Zealand on Quantum Electrodynamics, his work for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1965 for physics.

By the way, replace "physics" with "economics" in the above extract and you will not be far off! Only no one as great as Richard Feynman has had the courage to admit it.

Deaths, Cancers, Geniuses, Icons

07-Oct-2011
It is with great sadness I update this post.
Steve Jobs is no more with us.
I have only read about Edison in text books.
Steve Jobs is the Thomas Edison of our times.
I am fortunate to have lived in the same time as Steve Jobs.

--------------------------------------------------------------

12-March-2009
I have till now read only six auto/biographies. For some reason all men:

Alexander (fictionalized history - a triology by Valerio Massimo Manfredi: Child of a Dream, The Sands of Ammon, The Ends of The Earth)
Ramanujam (The Man Who Knew Infinity: The Life of the Genius Ramanujam by Robert Kanigel),
Steve Job (iCon Steve Jobs by Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon),
Richard Feynman (Genius: Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick)
Lance Armstrong (It's not about the bike: My Journey Back to Life), and
Andy Grove (Andy Grove: The Life and Time of an American Business Icon by Richard S Tadlow)

Now, consider this ...

Alexander, died young.
Ramanujam, died young.
Steve Jobs, suffered from Pancreatic Cancer; survived.
Lance Armstrong, suffered from Testicular Cancer; survived.
Andy Grove, suffered from Prostrate Cancer; survived.
Richard Feynman, suffered from Abdominal Cancer; could not survive the relapse.

No, I am not trying to make any statement. That would be too stupid!
Just stating facts. Or am I?

From the First Principles

Staying on with Feynman ...
Most of his biographers, editor, lecture notes compiler agree on two facts:

Feynman was a fantastic teacher
Feynman worked things out for himself, from the first principles.

So, working out concepts from the first principles helped Feynman to come up with unique perspective. On the other hand this amounts to reinventing the wheel.

What surprises me is that none of the 'Feynman authorities' made the logic leap from fact#2 to fact#1. It was because Feynman worked out things for himself that he was a fantastic teacher.

Here's a lesson for all teachers, lecturers, mentors and, most importantly, parents. You can teach best only when every aspect of what you are teaching is absolutely clear to you.

And here's a test for you to figure out if you have understood a topic well or not. If your student / child / subordinate asks you a dumb question - some would say, there are no dumb questions - and you get irritated at that so-called-dumb question, then you do not have mastery on that topic.

Actually the source of irritation is not that dumb question. It is your subconscious mind that is getting irritated at your inability to handle the question.

We can extrapolate this to our everyday situation.

If a situation is irritating you, and you feel inclined to shout out in frustration, then the source of the frustration, perhaps, is your inability to handle the situation; not the situation itself. Working out the solution to the situation from the first principles - it may not be possible to do it at the spur of the moment; could be done later - will let you handle the family of such problems when your encounter them next. (You will be surprised how apparently dissimilar problems, when shred of all externalities, are oh-so-similar.

Think about it.

Note: For a fantastic biography on Feynman read Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick.

The picture used here belongs to Sarah Williams. Please visit her gallery to see more such pictures.

Learning From The Best Teacher In Modern Times

Richard Feynman American Physicist and Nobel Prize Winner
When the introduction to a computer course is like this ...

Computers can do lots of things. They can add millions of numbers in the twinkling of an eye. They can outwit chess grandmasters. They can guide weapons to their targets. They can book you onto a plane between a guitar strumming num and a non-smoking physics professor. Some can even play the bongoes. ...

Physics professor? Bongoes? ... you immediately know that this has to be Richard Feynman's lecture.

And you know that you will enjoy the book - Feynman Lectures on Computation - even if you are not a computer science student.

I chanced upon this book in my neighbourhood library. We have just joined a new library near our house - more of that at the end of this post - and I was just browsing books in the general section, as my kids went hyper with the complete set of Goosebumps (why do they read this stuff when they regularly get up in the middle of the night and disturb me with "bad dreams"?). Now, Feynman is associated with Physics. Checkout any book shop and all you will get is Feynman's Lectures on Physics, Surely You Are Joking Mr. Feynman, Six Easy Pieces, but not this one. It seems Feynman lectured on computation from 1983 to 1986. This is one is a compilation of the same.

So I have borrowed it to my kids' dismay - as they can borrow only 3 books instead of 4.

Ok here is a question for you - how many (popular) books, not papers - including Feynman Lectures on Physics - do you think Feynman wrote in his life time? Go on! Google it! I will tell you the answer. Exactly ZERO. Not one has been written by him though all of them carry his name in big, bold letters. They were all compiled by someone else. This includes QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter.

If there is one book you must read on Physics I would recommend QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. There cannot be a more ideal introduction to Quantum Electrodynamics. You come to know that Feynman was a genius when you read it. He has explained his Nobel Award winning work in 4 lectures without using any equation. Now that is an achievement!

Give QED to your teenager. I guarantee you that your kid will be hooked to Physics for life. Better still, you read it. Even if you hate Physics. You would have learned the art of explaining concepts to lay person without sacrificing the essence.


And why did I join this library (It is called Just Books) when I am already a member of the British Library? Answer: Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID for short. The library card and every book in the library is (passive) RFID tagged. And at the entry is a touch screen computer. You need to place your card and the books on the tray in front of the computer and voila! you can now either borrow or return your books. Just like that! I just could not resist this opportunity to try out RFID.

Call me a sucker for technology!