In US, it is widely believed that math education at school level needs a BIG reform. The comparison is with respect to Asian kids who supposedly do well in math. My strong belief is that math education is broken in some of the Asian countries too, including India. One might mistake the immense problem solving exercises that most of the Indian kids go through to get to engineering colleges as a strong foundation for mathematical thinking.

Roubini discusses his new book “Crisis Economics” in which he emphasizes that mess witnessed in the last few years is just the beginning! http://fora.tv/embedded_player

A few weeks ago , I realized that my GLM knowledge was pretty rusty as I was struggling to get meaningful estimates from a poisson regression. Decided to immerse myself over the weekend on what I gather to be one of the best books on GLM , written by Annette J Dobson. Well , there is always the classic monograph by Nelder & McCullagh , “Generalized Linear Models”, that one can refer to , which to me was a little too dry to go over.

Written by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk, this book is a classic volume on the importance of mindfulness in our lives. The author introduces mindfulness with a Zen story - “Washing Dishes to Wash Dishes “. The central message from this book is to be completely mindful of whatever activity one is doing. Be it , preparing tea / exercising / gardening / telling a story / talking to a friend / doing office work / whatever be the kind of activity one is in to, by being completely present in the moment , one develops a deeper understanding of oneself and can remain in peace , irrespective of the outcome.

Not knowing how to feed the spirit, we try to muffle its demands in distractions. Instead of stilling the center, the axis of the wheel, we add more centrifugal activities to our lives—which tend to throw us off balance. - Anne Morrow Lindbergh ( Gift from the Sea )