Tag: random questions

My Random Question to My First Year Students

Ashish2 Comments

I just wrapped up a semester of teaching at the Gokhale Institute. It is my favorite course (Principles of Economics) to teach, at my favorite place, so a bittersweet moment of sorts.

And the last class was an extended five random questions session, with lots of fun questions coming my way. One of which, it turns out, was a request for me to ask them a random question. Fun request, and here is what I have asked them:

“You get to redesign higher education from the ground up. All higher ed institutions are scrapped, and society, industry and academia will go along with the institutions, culture and regulations that you choose to construct/create to make higher education as good as it can possibly be – good itself being defined howsoever you like.
What will you do, and why?”

They have all the time in the world to answer, and of course it is not mandatory to do so. But should you choose to answer, I would love to hear it! So please, do let me know the how, the what and they why of your proposal to change higher education in India for the better.

Happy Diwali, everyone!

(I hope to post everyday next week, but am very much on leave. We’ll see!)

A Tale of Two Sports

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Sport 1:

The Associate nations won four out of 11 matches against the Test-playing sides in this tournament. These are the most they have won in any edition of the men’s T20 World Cup. There were also a few close games in the seven they lost; two matches were decided within a margin of less than 20 runs, and the other two with less than ten balls to spare. This was clearly an improvement on the previous editions.
The 2021 T20 World Cup had 15 matches where the Associate nations were matched-up against Full Members, and they ended up winning just two games – both during the first round. Among the 13 games won by the Full Members, six were by a margin of 45-plus runs and another five games by seven or more wickets or 25-plus balls to spare.

https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/t20-world-cup-2022-stats-struggle-for-boundaries-a-tournament-of-upsets-and-englands-pace-highs-1344880

Sport 2:

Perhaps one of the most striking aspects of the World Cup has been the willingness of the so-called weaker teams to advance further up the pitch to win the ball in opposition territory.
A defining part of Saudi Arabia’s shock 2-1 win over Argentina was the remarkably high defensive line, which not only rattled the opposition but also caught them offside a total of 10 times – leading to three disallowed goals. Japan’s second-half turnaround against Germany was built around a similar high press. In one of the more under-the-radar results, Tunisia’s well-earned draw against Denmark came from the same risky approach.
Teams that chose to sit back and wait for counter-attacking opportunities alone – like Iran, Costa Rica, and Serbia – all faced big defeats.

https://indianexpress.com/article/sports/football/fifa-world-cup-learnings-from-the-first-round-of-matches-8288832/
  1. Small sample size, I know. But leave aside statistical rigor for the moment. Would it be right to assume that weaker teams are gradually getting better over time? Is this a hypothesis worth examining? Why has men’s tennis been telling us a very different story for the past two decades?
  2. The IE article talks about the specific tactics and strategies that have benefited the weaker teams in the football World Cup. What (if any) common strategies and tactics, have there been to the weaker teams that did well in the T20 World Cup?
  3. How might (and how should) the stronger teams adapt to these new strategies by the weaker teams when it comes to football? What about the stronger cricket teams?
  4. Playing the riskier strategy seems to be, counter-intuitively, the better (not necessarily safer!) thing to do, and you could argue that this is true for weaker nations in both sports. What does this say about the nature of both sports today? How much of this can be explained using game theory (what should be your rational strategy as the coach of a weaker team in a tournament such as this? What should be your rational strategy, given your best guess re: the previous question, as the coach of a stronger team in a tournament such as this?)
  5. Whatever our answers to these questions, how do they help us understand the world around us better today? Do they help us understand, say, geopolitical conflicts better? Corporate takeovers? If yes, how? If not, why not?

One of the random questions I recieved in class yesterday was about me asking five random questions to the students for a change instead. I had fun being on the other side for a change, and I’m going to enjoy pondering over these questions over the weekend.

What Would Your “The Question” Be?

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I ask my students to ask me five random questions at the end of each class. And I was asked a fascinating question today: “If you could ask god a question to which you would get an answer, what would it be?”

My answer was that I would ask god if there is a point to all this. That is, is there meaning and purpose to the universe, or does the universe just go completely cold and dead at some point in the future?

But on reflection, I am not so sure that I would want the answer to that question. If there is no point to the universe, will I have the motivation to do anything? And if there is a point, well, carry on!

That is, a point to the universe implies I should do what I was doing anyways. Because if there is a point to the universe and I’m not contributing meaningfully, then what is the point of my existence? I should do more!

And if I think that I am contributing meaningfully (in my opinion), then the answer doesn’t change anything in my life. So on balance, I would rather not find out the answer, which means I shouldn’t ask this question. Would you agree?

But then what question should I ask? Asking god if she exists is a fun candidate, but surely I can do better. Resolve a conjecture in mathematics? Ask if traveling back in time is possible? What was there before the Big Bang?

What about this: “What is the one question you are hoping I ask?”. Or its converse, for that matter. But if god has a Puneri sense of humor, she might well say “the one you just asked!” Back to square one, then.

“Do the ends justify the means?” is a question that I would like an answer to, but I worry that I will no longer want to read another version of the Mahabharata, and why deny myself that pleasure? The search goes on!

I honestly don’t know of a really “good” question, so I’ll go with a question that is meta, fun and one I would genuinely enjoy having answered. “Would you classify Douglas Adams as a fiction writer? Yup, I think this is it!

Or as a tribute to an author whose work I have always enjoyed reading, here’s another: “Is good a noun?” Either of these two, then, and not being able to decide is a privilege, I suppose. Finally: what would your question be?