Keshav Pratap

Hi, I am Keshav Pratap. I recently completed my Masters in Financial Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. I spend most of my time thinking about random ideas in my head while staring blankly at people. One of such ideas made me the founder of Collegepedia.in and it has been hell of a journey. (Image credits: Manish Reddy)

[keshavpratap]

[keshavpratap]

To my whimsical self

To my whimsical self, 

To the untamed self, 

To the guy who is fearless, 

I often see you out in sun, 

with every ray falling on your beaming forehead, 

and you say words with confidence, 

and you trust yourself. 

And in that moment I admire you. 

I feel proud that you exist,

when the showers of carven intelligence is around, 

and you say out loud what everyone knew, 

but nobody had the balls to say. 

In that moment, you are supreme,

In that moment, you are universe, 

and each moment is filled with you, 

In that moment you are infinite. 

[keshavpratap]

Ganpati Visarjan 101

Maa called me today and the first thing she tells me about is Ganesh Visarjan. Today is the eleventh day and a lot of Ganpati are going to be immersed today. We are from Rajasthan, we do not have the visarjan ceremony, we only do a small puja on Ganesh Chaturthi. 

I got the glimses of Visarjan when I was a kid mostly through bollywood movies. I am in Mumbai now and this year I saw a lot of Visarjan processions going across and as my office is right next to Powai Lake, I do listen to non-stop music while immersing the Ganeshas.  

Image Source: http://booksnmoreindia.blogspot.in/. This image is not being used for commercial purposes.

So Maa called and said, I ought to write something on collegepedia and ask people not to immerse the big Ganesh idols and instead preserve them for next year and do visarjan of a small clay idol instead. I knew this happens already in lot of places and I told her people do it and is it your genuine idea? 

Reluctantly she said that people in her colony have already done it and she was fairly impressed. She said “you should put an advertisement somewhere asking people to do so instead.” I tried explaining that people come to see lectures on Collegepedia and the intersection group of people seeing PCM lectures and taking lectures of Visarjan 101 might be so small that they can be neglected. 

She had her answer ready and said “At least some of them will listen. They are your students and they will listen to you.” 

Small incidents like these make me realize how self centred I am and whereas Maa is always talking about solutions, I am usually highlighting the problems and blaming it on the government ( True Indian Qualities - ain’t it?). I introspected more only to realize I have a pragmatic approach for problems  - i understand that people will do what they really want to do and there is not much I can do about it. The best thing to do is - just follow the set of values you have set for yourself and keep working on them. However practical this approach might sound, it is actually an idealist one, because for this approach to work out - everybody needs to do the same. Ok, I am digressing. So the bottom line is, if possible just try caring a tad bit about environment. You do not really need a degree in science to realize that such acts do harm the environment and every time each of us knows it, and we still go ahead and pollute the environment thinking that if I am only one person, what would my impact going to be? 

We can observe that democracy seems to be most stable for of government and each one’s contribution is helping make the right decision  - “Wisdom of the Crowds”. So I will end this post with a quote from Winston Churchill ( because ending articles with quotes gives them more weight ;) )

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. 

Read this article on HT for more info on Clay and POP Ganeshas - 

Click here. 

Alright Maa, l have left my pragmatism and tried your naive approach- Lets see how that works out for Mother Earth. :)

[keshavpratap]

The new old Typewriter

Of the many things happening in my life, the most interesting news: I bought a typewriter :) 

Why?

Everyone is asking me the same question. In the age of Mac book, I am buying typewriter. My innate response is - “ I have affinity for cheap things! OK, that came out wrong. What I mean to say, things I usually love turn out to be not so costly -  my shauks (for lack of a better word) are limited to typerwriter - coffee- tea - books. 

I have observed that its the idiosyncrasy of things that impresses me rather than the price or the latest fashion - Following fashion trends is not my cup of tea - How can you be different when you follow the trends - Doesn’t mean I show up in a tux in office as well. 

The exact science of typewriter:

Everybody knows typewriter is used for typing things out on paper, but most of the people don’t really know how one works (including myself before I had one). Since getting one, I am amazed by how simple yet beautiful concept it is - I learnt all about it - the capital letters- why you need to press one key at a time. In short - Typewriters are beautiful. 

Showing off - and - my expectations of what you type

I am definitely showing off typewriter to my friends - (I am atleast an honest show off). The inquisitive monkey brain of my friends wants to figure out how this antediluvian machine works and each one of them types something - they are mostly clueless - some type their names - some type what they hear - its actually exciting to see them go nervous and think of things to type - and then go blank and write their names. I type Dylan songs when I am blank. I switch to Vincent by Don Mclean sometimes - And I should have told you Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful. 

Below are my random thoughts which I need to empty into my blog and add to randomness of universe - 

I am reading a lot of books - I myself am surprised to have read so many of them - ( all thanks to Kindle). The not-so-great part is I am not writing Book experiences. I will try catching up soon. 

Bajrangi Bhaijaan is maukish. 

Masaan is best liked by people with affected accent!

The adventures of Sherolock Holmes is much better than Sherlock. Respect for Jeremy Brett - Note to myself - I have to read the stories. 

I loved the book “To kill a mockingbird” - Atticus Finch reminds me of “If by Rudyard Kipling”. 

I bought “Lal Ghoda Chai” finally. I had heard the name of “Lal Ghoda Kala Ghoda” tea I dont know where - Over the time, drinking a cup of this tea earned a place in my bucket list. I went to this shop in Pathanwadi and asked the shop keeper - “Lal Ghoda Chai hai?” . His counter question was “Kaunse gaon se ho?”. I answered with Rajasthan and he said “ Han wahi milti hogi - hamare yahan sirf Tata, Society tea hai”. So when I was in Jodhpur, I got one packet of Lal Ghoda tea - and the it is actually good- Next time I will get Kala Ghoda if it exists - would be a weird conversation with shopkeeper. 

I should write more often on this blog. :)

[keshavpratap]

Book Experience: India After Gandhi

It would not be wrong to say I was not a big fan of historybooks. Having survived the ‘history-subject’ of Indian Education system, wherethe years of events mattered more than the event itself, I had sworn that my curriculum history book of class 10th will be the last history I would ever read. 

The curriculum of our books focus a lot on the events before independence, we all know about the revolt of 1857, Non Co-operation movement, Jaliawalah Bagh and also the architecture of different temples built centuries back. If we talk about post-independence events, I can say that most of the people know that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the first Prime Minister of India, and Dr Rajendra Prasad the first president of India-That’s all. It is quite sad that in our discussions at class, my history teacher never urged us to know the reason behind the events, never discussed the impacts of the event in a non-bullet format (The Non-cooperation event impacted us in 4 ways :a) blah b) blah-blah c) blah-blah blah d) blah-blah-blah-blah. Remember these?) . I recently realized that history is a beautiful subject and there is so much to learn from it. As a member of human race, we should be aware of our existence, we should know that our present-being is not the permanent state we presume it is, that the future could have been different if thing did not happen the way they did.  We should know that our whole race is a biological accident and out existence has depended on so many random factors (they might not look so random to you now- you see humans are gifted with the ability to find reason behind events that might have been outcome of a random event – this is the reason people still believe in ghosts in 21st century). The state we are in today –good-or-bad( although it is all relative) is not the one we were gifted with. We should appreciate that the efforts of our previous generations has impacted us in so many ways and that there were times when things were not so easy (talking to your friend over phone, flying in from one place to another- things we take for granted) and we as a race signify the spirit of man- the one who can be destroyed but never be defeated (in words of Ernest Hemingway). I would say “History makes you humble, so does astronomy”.

Now coming back to the point, for the first time in my life, I read history for knowing things (not for completing the syllabus for annual exams) and I loved it, I loved every bit of it. India after Gandhi answered a lot of questions I had, it explained the reasons behind the events I read about in newspapers. There is a reason that there are naxal areas in North-east, they were not always like that (which I just assumed before/never looked for the reason). It made me appreciate India as a country, I can appreciate the secularism, the states we have, I now know how difficult it was to keep this country united in the face of adversities that came upon us, when there were factions throughout the nation trying to break it up. I can also now appreciate the role of Nehru, how his vision shaped our nation’s future- investing in education when our neighbors were investing in military- - Non alignment as our foreign policy (our present generation needs to understand that this single policy states a lot about our goals as a nation- it was difficult path indeed but we took the road ‘usually not taken’). We take democracy for granted, don’t we? This book will make you realize that there were times democracy was threatened (emergenecy) and there could have been a plot/coup and things would have been a lot different.  When a person is reading history book, one needs to be skeptical, one cannot simply trust the words of the author blindly, (historical accounts tend to be skewed in favor of a particular side usually), but to my mortal brain, I could see that the author has tried his best to be impartial to the subjects/characters –all credits to Ram Chandra Guha. 

In my blog here, I write book-experiences ( not book-review: the difference being, I have no credibility to review books but to express the feeling/experience I had while reading the book), so to sum it all: I would say as an Indian, you should read this book atleast once: Don’t read because you have to prepare for IAS, or because it is coming up in your test next week: read because you want to know what as a nation shaped our policies. You would realize, that country as a whole, behaves like a human being, we have emotions, we are sometimes insecure, we are sometimes ecstatic, and just like human beings, we have failed as well, but we stood up again and we never gave up- This is something we can be really proud of.    

[keshavpratap]

Book Experience: Meeting Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway is one of those names you generally keep hearing when people talk about classics in English literature. I had not read any Hemingway book before these ones. 

For whom the bell tolls

It could not simply connect to me. May be because the book was written for a different era. For me it turned out be just a war memoir. 

I had read the book by taking some time out from my everyday schedule, and did not read it in a continuous flow. (But  I had read  Fountainhead by Ayn Rand in the same way and i totally loved it) 

It is a war memoir, but written in a very detailed manner as it is based on Hemingway's experiences during the Spanish Civil War when he reported  for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA). You need to have lived through a war to write such an elaborate description. I would like to point out that I am not much of a 'literature guy', I read books for living an experience, to get a chance to see the world from somebody else's point of view and to see through the naked soul of the writer. The point I am trying to make is, when you get a chance, do read this book, maybe there is more to it that I could not decipher. 

The Old Man and the Sea

I knew my affair with Hemingway's writing could not end on this bitter note. I had to read atleast one more book before I rule out the writings of a writer of such stature as 'not my taste'.

The next books I laid my hands in was 'The Old Man and the Sea' for which he won Pultizer prize in 1952. It was not the award-winning that lured me into reading this book but a statement by Hemingway himself the letter to his publisher, Wallace Meyer.

"I know that it is the best I can write ever, for all of my life I think. . . . an epilogue to all my writing and what I have learned, or tried to learn, while writing and trying to live."

It is a small book and it will take you may be a day to read it if you are reading at a stretch. It took me two days to finish this book while trying to make time for it among my schedule. If it was the best Hemingway could write, it is most certainly one of the few beautiful stories mankind will ever read. 

If asked for a single word to describe what this book is all about, I would say "perseverance". It is a beautiful book with a beautiful story and 'silently' inspires you while you are reading it. One quote from the book, that I really liked: 

“But man is not made for defeat," he said. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated. ” 

Beautiful, isn't it?

Note: I had read about the world shortest story, a six letter story "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn" in a newspaper when I was 14-15 maybe. I remembered it all these years because these words had impacted me so much at that time. A few days back I googled about it when I came to know it was written by none other than Ernest Hemingway when he had bet the table ten dollars each that he could write an entire story in just six words. He wrote this on a napkin and passed it on. I believe me and Hemingway have just begum and I would be reading more of him, as he was definitely a genius. 

[keshavpratap]

adieu kgp

This is going to be a long one. 

Things you think but never say.

When I was preparing for JEE in class 11th, I asked one of my batch-mates in coaching class "Which IIT would you like to join?". He answered 'IIT Kharagpur' and the first thought that  came into my mind was 'I ain't going there ever.' For me it was always Delhi, my dream destination. 

When I was thinking in my head 'I aint going there ever', God must have been listening really hard and Bam there I am in Kharagpur.

But this post is not about me or kgp, this post is about the people who have been a major part of my last 5 years here. I believe that you should let people know how you feel about them while there is time and this post is all about those people. In future, the mention of the word 'kgp' will flash faces of these people in my mind. 

Kgp as a place was ordinary but Kgp along with these people is the place where I had time of my life. 

Staring with:

B*w*a CFW : People say you grow distant with your college friends, but somehow I am sure, quite sure that we guys wont. One fascinating thing I have learnt is your outlook towards life (better known as fundey) need not match and you could still be the best of friends.

To sum up it up: You guys are awesome- L. Gump

Then the wannna-be selfie this year

BT Department

It was a total 3 years of classes with you guys. As a batch, I would say we guys did well. I am not much of an extrovert, but I observe a lot and there are people in our batch I have gradually developed respect for, I look up to them. learn from them. There are people I can rely on and trust them with my life. We guys were out of touch for last one year, still when we guys had a last few treats. I felt nothing has changed and hopefully nothing will. As Pandey would say, "Yo BT".

Financial Engineering guys

Ours was a roller-coaster ride to which we bought a ticket at the end of our first year. No courses, no senior batch to take funda from but still I guess we fared well. "Ek final treat bhi kar lete aalsi logo".

The Holy Trinity and the Maggu

The selfie says it all yet let me elaborate. The Holy Trinity has somehow avoided the relegation (fakka/ failure to get a degree), while the Maggu was at the top of the table. Faraz and Prithvi have been consistently helping me pass exams whereas Maggu has consistently ignored us by saying "abe karlo be, ho jayega" and "ye to maine bhi abhi tak nahi padha hai" and all this time Maggu ko maza aa 'rahi' thi (RIP Hindi). Jokes apart, the final year bonded us very well, the CCD treats, shergill treats and the most important the Sher-e-Punjab 2.2 K treat. 

Now the photo of only The Holy trinity (Sorry be Maggu :P)

 My MTP Guide, Prof. Prabina Rajib

Thankyou for being patient with me in my MTP. You have scolded me a lot of times (well most of the times it was my fault). I have not been a perfect student, was absent a lot of times, missing deadlines on assignments and sometimes not even submitting them. I know I tested your patience a lot. 

Generally a lot of people say they are scared of you. But I was not, I constantly asked you question in your classes. Also you set really interesting question papers (although a bit lengthy), I liked taking them a a lot because I was learning new things even while taking the exam. But most importantly, I respect the quality that you always keep learning. People generally stop to be knowledge hungry when they grow up. This is a habit I will try to instill in myself as well. 'Never stop learning'. 

Patel Football Team, D-ground footer games and Fifa buddies

I love football, a bit too much. More importantly, I love the beautiful aspects of the game. I love playing it in rain with friends, trying to do a beautiful move and failing, and then suddenly successfully doing it. 

I enjoyed each and every moment of football we played in kgp especially in D footer ground. We all shared a special connection/joy when we played together on that ground. We experienced the purest form of joy possible. 

Also playing multiplayer Fifa is something I always found time for. All the bantering with you guys was quite fun. Also Thanks Tapan and Hansda (Ice Tea :))  for letting us use PS and projector rather than kicking us out of your rooms (which you should have done). I am not sure how many times I have had this feeling 'This is life' while playing on that setup. 

and not to forget Team Collegepdia. So many meetings, so many ideas. 

[keshavpratap]

Book Experience: The Last Lecture

I do get inspired a lot. I try to learn from people, their small habits which make them unique, and somewhere I copy those to make myself the perfect individual. Also I love reading biographies, because you can learn from their mistakes without doing them. Randy Pausch is one the guys I have learnt from a lot about living a quality life. 

I came across 'The last lecture' video on youtube an year back. If you have not seen it here is the video.

I loved the lecture and when I came to know about the book, the bibliophile inside me started itching. Now about the book: 

Overall the book was not really different from the lectures, sometimes it felt as if you were just reading the transcript of the lecture. If you are expecting this book to cover the aspects other than covered in the lecture, it doesn't do that. But I would still suggest you to read this book. Why?

When you read the book, you understand more, you can pause for a while and absorb , you read between the lines and the lesson learnt stay with you forever. Also it will make a really nice gift for somebody, or a definitely a must have in your book collection.It is a nice book with a lot of lessons and guidelines to be followed just like the lecture. 

[keshavpratap]

Football, the Office and Magic

After coming back from Jagriti Yatra, I focussed on football for the whole of January. We have an inter-hostel tournament of football and being the Captain of my hostel's football team, I am sort of on a mission to win a medal. My mission has not yielded any great results yet and we are on the verge of first round exit. Its funny how things turn out to be! 

Right now we are kind of dependent on result of the other matches in our pool and we will also need to win the last match with a nice goal difference. The happy news is that Arsenal is on top of the table again. It had been my wish to have an Arsenal jersey for my hostel team and by captain's privilege we are playing in red. I took the legendary no. 14 and unfortunately has not done any justice to it yet.

Also I have spent quite a lot time watching Tv series primarily "The Office" and Rome only to realize that books are a better way to waste your time.

If you ask me what has been the most interesting thing recently, I would say 'Magic'. I have learnt some card, coins, and notes tricks as well. Nothing very much fancy but yes it is awesome. I need to still work a lot on the coin ones but I am doing well with the cards ones I guess.

It had been a long time since I posted on blog so it feels good to let it all out. I have spent last one and a half month doing 'random' things so I should better start  working on some projects soon. (My time is limited :) ) 

Yes putting on a last show in the last footer match is still on top of my priority list. 

[keshavpratap]

Why India is still not a great nation?

Note: I wrote this article a long time back only to decide not to publish it. But the recent actions (section 377)  of our liberal nation instigated me to do publish it on my blog. 

I often wonder what is wrong with India, What is it that has gone amiss, as a society, as a community, as a nation. Then I start doubting if I am a good citizen, a patriot if I question the integrity of my motherland so much. 

Me and my friend Hitesh have had lots of discussions on what is wrong with us and in betwixt those never ending debates Hitesh had an answer to my question. " We are questioning the greatness of our country because we love it. We know something is wrong somewhere and we have this dream of 'having this perfect nation'. We have this desire of being able to say "Mera Bharat sabse Mahaan" unequivocally."

A few years back, I had this belief that India was the greatest country and if someone had argued with me and provided me with facts contrary to my statement, I would resort to the evergreen excuse of every jingoist Indian "Hamare paas sanskriti aur sanskar hai". 

You have to understand that patriotism is good, but at the same time jingoism harms your own nation. There are people who hold nation above truth. No truth or gospel can shake his beliefs. For example, those people in Germany believed that their's was the greatest nation despite the genocide acts. I have had my moment of realization and I am no 'blind-patriot' now. 

While writing this post I tried to point out some things which are wrong with us, you many agree or disagree, or you may call me names at top of your voice, but  before you do that let me tell me you one thing, it was difficult for me to write this post. Its never easy for a person to mistakes in his own self. 

1) Our Corruption tolerance: Being corrupt is cool with us. Everybody does it ji, chalta hai. We don't even blink when we read of a 100 Crore scam, we are amused by a 1000 crore scam but we are never angry. While voting we choose the less corrupt as there is is no option of honest government (At last Kejriwal is to the rescue). Over the years we have degraded on moral grounds. Honesty is the rarest virtue. We judge people not on moral grounds and ethics but their sexual preferences. "Being corrupt is ok ji, thik hi hai but gay rights! , hey bhagwaan, ye duniya ko ho kya gaya hai?"

2) A sexually repressed nation: We might be good at giving lectures on morality, but the harsh truth remains that we are a sexually repressed nation. Our society is gender biased to its very core. Our police is definitely not the best in controlling crime but they are quite good at lashing at couples holding hand. I was shocked to read in newspapers that a guy was arrested in Mumbai for kissing her friend goodbye on her cheek. Seriously!, you must be kidding. Where am I in? Taliban.

3) We poke our noses too much: We care too much about what others are doing. Isn't that a good quality?  Lets see. We are too much interested in uncle's brother in laws' sister's son, we want to know if he is jobless or working, married or not and then on finding a fault (fault is a relative term), we try our best to kill his spirit, smother him to an extent of making sure his life is hell. The bottom line is, please let the man/woman make his own choices, you can only advise him. Remember it is always easier to forgive ones own mistakes, but if you make choices on your kin's behalf and they go wrong, they wont be able to forgive you in their hearts. 

4) Forever gender biased: Yes we have come up a long way but still we need to improve a lot. Yes a lot! When you find yourself saying, "How can I do this? I am a boy for Pete's's sake". You sir are seriously messed up in your head. Ladka Ladki ek samaan! Don't you remember?

5) Materialistic: We are materialistic. Have you realised that asking one's salary is a totally legitimate question which is considered insulting in other country's. Yes it is a legitimate question because this is how we would compare ourselves with each other. Isn't it?  I wish for this country where respect is not a commodity limited to riches. 

Yes we are wrong at all these stances of ours, but there are instances when we had shown integrity as a nation and we have the potential to do so again. The surprising thing is that even with all these problems, I have this feeling called 'hope' that things will get better. I am trying to work on individual level to make things better for us. I hope you guys are doing the same.  

(I had lost faith in the government a long time back. With recent decision, my faith in judiciary is shaking as well) 

[keshavpratap]

Finally...

I could not write much during the last few months. I was trying to get placed in 'campus placements' and yes, finally... finally.. finally I got placed in OFSS.  The placement season brought with it some valuable lessons. I am not going to discuss them here but yes I have learnt these lessons. Right now, I am looking forward to read some books. I recently bought "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. From December 24th, I will be leaving for Jagriti Yatra, this is an experience I am really looking forward to. I have planned to write daily for those 14 days of yatra. I have started packing yet. I guess I will resort to last minute impulses again. Apart from that, I have to set a few targets for myself for next few months. I hope before I graduate from IIT Kharagpur, I can create some thing beautiful again. Also we have made some 200 lectures for collegepedia so a lot of work is there on the editing front. 

[keshavpratap]

At Collegepedia, we had organized some free of cost counselling session for high school kids. :)

@ MGD Jaipur, DAV Kharagpur, and Balasore. Hope we helped. 

[keshavpratap]

Peace of mind and ways of the world

Placement season has begun!  Making a resume is really a frustrating job. The idea of putting everything about yourself on a piece of paper, in not so harsh words is bullshit, but at the same time a logical exercise for the companies recruiting. The quality I feel a resume lacks is spirit ~passion. 

How do you tell somebody how much passionate you are about the work you love doing, or how badly you want that job and would give your best in it without sounding dishonest? 

resume - a piece of paper where indentation matters more than the content some many times

I have spent last month watching documentaries, jumping from  one wiki to another and Quora getting to know hell lot of new things. Although it has led me to nothing productive in terms of exact output, my perception about things has been hugely affected. My love for creating things has increased, so is the appreciation for the crazy ones. 

Also some the things which has kept me from being a response to the external stimuli (the depressing placement talks across the campus) are Randy Pausch, my brother Raja, Collegepedia and Football. 

If you have not yet seen 'The Last Lecture' by Randy Pausch, do see it. In his words, "The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something."

I called my brother Raja asking for 'Placement funda' (a silent cry for help) and that talk was really helpful. The bottomline of our conversation was "You too have a choice and that matters the most" and the sudden realization "I too have a choice" gave me so much confidence. Thanks Bhai :) 

Collegepedia ->In this hectic schedule, we had interview selections for hiring interns for Collegepedia last sunday. I got some time to review the lecture and youtube channel of ours and when I read the comments on our lecture, I had a sudden awakening, "We have created something so beautiful !". Collegepedia is something I created from bottom of my heart and it was never, never ever a object for me to solely stick on my resume. Sourav Shaw's ( Lousy present CEO of Collegepedia :P ) tempo has been an inspiration for me all along and I wish this 'Junoon- fitoor-keeda-madness' of changing the world single-handedly stays in my mind forever.

Lastly football, when the pressure is too much to handle, playing football has always been a refuge for me. In words of Swami Vivekananda "You will be nearer to heaven playing football than studying the Bhagavad-Gita.” So true. 

I had been procrastinating since a long time to write this post but now that I have let it all out, I feel so much better. I will soon write a post about books I have read lately although they are not many. 

Cheers! See you guys soon. 

[keshavpratap]

Data mining: Diving into something really interesting

I recently came across a case study of insurance claim modelling using data mining techniques. In the case study, one was required to come out with a model that could predict the probability of accident of a car based on its characteristics using a large previous set of data. Before this I had not read much about data mining, but when I started reading about it, I found it so much enthralling. Insurance modeling is something I had always wanted to learn about.

The first methodology I came across was CART(Classification and Regression Trees) methodology. I found its concepts so much interesting, especially the cross validation part. Some nice thinking!

Introduction to this field again made me realize somethings: 1) There is sooooooo much to learn from in this world. So many books to read, so much to know. Recently these fields have engrossed me totally: Statistics, Finance, Economics and Philosophy. 

2) There had been so many great thinkers on face of this earth who had a totally different approach to doing things and not following the conventional wisdom. I feel so much inspired because of them. 

Yes, I have just started in this field, I think  I would love to learn a lot more in this. See you then!! 

[keshavpratap]

Dabbling with R: Function to download Yahoo stock prices data

I am a newbie in R programming and one of the projects I planned to start with was developing a function to download stock prices from yahoo finance. 

Here is the function definition:

Note: When I tried pasting the following code in here, Tumblr messed it up so posted the snapshots. 

Calling the above function:

Here is the example of the function called:

Put the dates in dd/mm/yyyy format and the "d" at the last is for daily data, for weekly put "w", for monthly put "m". 

In love with R

I recently started working on R and am totally in love with this language. A very user friendly language and open-source. What else can you ask for!

Cheers!

[keshavpratap]

Exam FM experience: Clearing it with study material available free of cost online

This summers I had kept a target for myself: Clearing Exam P and Exam FM of Society of Actuaries along with my internship. Yes, I agree the target was a bit ambitious but definitely achievable. This was my greatest multitasking experiment till now and things went quite smoothly. I gave my Exam FM on 19th August and cleared it. :) I am trying to develop a habit of writing about my preparation strategy for clearing these exams. You can read about my Exam P experience among my previous posts. 

P.S.- If you have noticed that I have over-emphasized on "free of cost" thing, the reason is that standard books like that of Marcel Finan are available online and an aspirant who can not afford costly manuals can still get through easily by reading these. These posts are my contribution to the open education pool of knowledge testifying "Yes, you can make it through with these free books, go ahead and be confident."

Cheers!

[keshavpratap]

Why I could not fly?

I never asked again, just believed him, and now years after, I desire to fly again. We have created a world, so bound, within borders, divided by borders further, following a system, a definite path, a never ending defined cycle, I want to break free of it, run, spread my arms, and fly, far far away, to a world I cherish for. Create it if it does not exist.  My dad says I can't fly, but this time let me try, what if he is wrong,  or he doesn't know, so I spread my wings,  and I could fly fly, the very first time,  and a thought occurred to me,  All these days why I could not fly? May be because I never tried, I conceived something blindly, For what I had learnt, you can fly, anybody can,  but the belief has to be your own.  I found this poem in one of my old diaries. Breaking free has been my favorite topic I guess. :) Cheers!