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Signs of Progress

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Photo Credit: The Hindu, 26-Oct-2020   This Dussehra brought me a surprise. Every year Hindus worship the tools that give them a livelihood. Carpenters, Tailors, Plumbers and Electricians are some of those who decorate their tools with flowers. Car owners and drivers put garlands on their cars. However, many followed an avoidable practice. They used to smash Ash Gourds, also called white pumpkins, in front of their cars. I believe that did this to avoid the effect of “the evil eye”! Some of us consider that a waste of food. We prefer people to donate Ash Gourds to the needy and avoid creating a mess in parking areas inside buildings and streets. Even though dozens of cars are parked here, I did not see even one Ash Gourd smashed on the ground in our housing complex this year.  Another step forward I saw was the goodies we got for the festive season: dry fruit laddus with low sugar, baked nippats (traditionally crispy deep-fried rice crackers), and roasted peanuts without salt. Some of
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Don’t Believe Everything you read or see!

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I see a big difference between well-educated people and others. Nowadays, much valuable information and knowledge comes through the Internet. However, anyone can write anything and send it to thousands of people at no cost. So much rubbish also comes along. Many of the stories that come to us over channels like WhatsApp, X, and email are untrue.  Read the following paragraphs and find the ones that do not appear true.  1) At just 10 years old, Tilly recognized the signs of an impending tsunami from a geography lesson she had two weeks earlier. She alerted her parents and other  beachgoers, leading to a beach evacuation just before the tsunami hit [1]. This saved a hundred lives. Newspapers carried the story and made her famous for her quick thinking.  [1]: en.wikipedia.org  2) A school in Boston, MA, held a unique competition for high ju mpers on Sunday, 9/29. Cars were parked side by side on a playground. Competitors had to choose how many cars they would jump over in one giant leap.
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Young babies learn by imitation

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  Photo: Srinivasan Ramani  Young babies only understand what you are doing in front of them by imitating you. They are born with this ability, so even very young babies can do it. So, next time you play with a young baby, try this: Sit where the baby can see you. The effort may take several ten-minute sessions, so the baby should be comfortable and not distracted by movements nearby and sounds. Lifting your hands and the baby's hands once or twice in the beginning will show her where to look. You need patience. Sometimes, I spend an hour getting the baby to imitate me the first time. It is easier later; the baby treats this as a game. Sticking your tongue out and having the baby imitate that is another challenge to try another day. I once taught a baby girl to stick out her tongue. When her grandfather came home from work in the evening, the baby stuck out her tongue at him. She repeated this three or four times in fifteen minutes. The grandfather was worried, as he though
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You cannot win every time

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If you see the marks students get in a subject in your class, you will find that the largest number of people get average marks, while the number of those getting higher than the average gradually reduces. Similarly, the number of those getting less than average also reduces as you move away from the average. When teachers make a graph of the marks earned by the class, they get something that looks like this:                                                                     Image Credit: Monika Wahi,  CC-BY-SA-4.0 ,                                      Image from Wikimedia Commons In this example, we assume that D is the average score 50%. Other points are: A             20% B             30% C             40% E             60% F             70% G            80% The height above each letter shows how many people got that many marks: 2 students got 20%, 5 students got 30%, 7 students got 40%, 8 students got 50% 7 students got 60%, 5 students got 70%, and 2 students got
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The trick Julius Caesar used to play

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Julius Caesar adopted a tricky method of sending messages to his generals through messengers. What if his enemies caught hold of the messenger and read the message? They will then know Caesar’s plans. Caesar’s trick was to change the letters in the message. For instance, he could write “D” instead of “A”, “E” instead of “B” and so on. Every letter would be replaced by another three places further down in the alphabetical order. What do you do with “Y”? What is three places beyond “Y”? The trick is to think of the letters being arranged in a ring so that “A” follows “Z” and “B” follows “A”. In this ring you can go three places from “Y” and find “B”. The letter three places ahead of “Z” will be “C”. To encipher a message, that is to make it secret, we first choose a key. I recommend that you choose a whole number between 1 and 6 as the key. Suppose you choose 3 as the key. Now replace every letter in “TEXT” by one which is 3 steps away along the ring. Do you get “WHAW”? You can send
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Numbers that sit at a higher level

Have you seen 2 3 , 3 5 and so on? Why are 3 and 5 sitting at a different level? It is just mathematicians’ shorthand: 2 3 is nothing but 2 x 2 x 2 =   8 3 5 means 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 = 243 We read 2 3 as 2 to the power 3, and 3 5 as 3 to the power five. What is 2 5 ?   Write it down. What is 2 3 x 2 5 ?   One surprising thing is that 2 3 x 2 5 = 2 8 = 256 Numbers sitting one level higher are called exponents. The exponent notation makes it very easy to write some big numbers. Try writing a million, billion and trillion! But with exponent notation, it is much easier to write them and remember them. Number In decimal notation In exponent notation Million 1,000,000 10 6 Billion 1,000,000,000 10 9 Trillion 1,000,000,000,000 10 12 Did you notice it? Million has six zero’s and is 10 6; billion has nine zero’s and is 10 9 ; trillion has twelve zer
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A Courageous Woman Journalist

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  Nellie Bly. Photo Credit: Wikipedia Girls are as smart as boys. They may be smarter in some ways, like understanding people and in helping them. They may not be as good in fighting. In the old days, men controlled the world through hand-to-hand fighting and fighting with sticks and swords. However, times have changed. Women can now do most of the work men can. However, many countries do not allow girls to go to college or even high school. They do not allow women to work in offices. Such prejudice against women was there even in countries which are advanced countries now. Take the United States for example. A hundred and thirty-five years ago, a newspaper named the Pittsburgh Despatch carried an article with the title “What are girls good for?” It said that girls are good mainly for giving birth to children and for keeping house. A girl named Elizabeth, who was 21 years old at that time, did not agree with the article. She wrote a letter to the Editor of the paper arguing that girl
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