Octave & gnuplot as alternative for Matlab on Mac OSX

To save some money over Matlab Student Edition, I decided to try out free stuff and bumped upon Octave. You can download it from here Click

Note I have Mac OS X Lion 10.7

This program got installed successfully. You just need to click on install package.

Now, since we need to plot results, Octave uses GNUPLOT as is plotting tool. You can download that from here Click

The installation for GNUPLOT is tricky. So here goes some step by step method.

1. Download gnuplot program.

2. Locate the folder in your Terminal

3. Inside the folder execute following commands

• $./configure --exec-prefix=/usr
• $make
• $sudo make install

If you see following error after "make" command, the follow Step 4 else, you are all set.

ld: symbol(s) not found for architecture x86_64

collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

make[3]: *** [gnuplot] Error 1

make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1

make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1




4. This error I guess is because the program gnuplot has different variable settings which will need to be updated. Use the following set of commands to install. It worked for me after lot of try and hope it works for you too. The reference for this solution is here . Thanks to him.







$export LDFLAGS=-m32
$export CFLAGS=-m32
$./configure -with-readline=bsd --without-tutorial --without-x --exec-prefix=/usr
$make
$sudo make install

Now, You may need to install Aquaterm too. This is used for plotting. The download link is here 

To have user interface like Matlab, please go ahead and install QtOctave here . This should make your life much easier.


I have just tried to compile the steps for some who might be struggling the same as I did and if there's any corrections you would like to make to this article, please drop me a link at mr.amitkc@gmail.com . It will help all.


Thank You
Take Care



Donald Knuth : My advice to young people.

Good explanation on Pointers : Stanford material

http://www.cs.stanford.edu/cslibrary/PointerFunCBig.avi

Why Logarithms

While preparing for Monday test on Mathematics, I reached topic on Logarithms and was quizzed as to what is the whole purpose of this mathematical concept. I found this link useful to understand it with some historical background and hence posting it here.


http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/52469.html

MIT 150 Years

Interesting Read.
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/specials/mit150/mitlist/?page=full

Advice for Students : Got to read in my spare time.

http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/mernst/advice/#grad-students

http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~htk/thesis.htm

Nice Ones.

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.
- Frank Tibolt

It's amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
- Harry S. Truman 

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
- Bertrand Russell

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
-Sir Francis Bacon


The barrier for becoming an 'expert' is set so low that the only real requirement is a talent for self-promotion.
-Damian Thompson. Counterknowledge.


An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions.
-Robert A. Humphrey 

Reference

People in Computational Geometry Area

Jeff Erickson - UIUC
http://cs.illinois.edu/people/faculty/jeff-erickson

UIUC Theory Group
http://cs.illinois.edu/research/areas/theory

Suresh Venkatsubramanian
http://www.cs.utah.edu/~suresh/web/

Important Quote

Unfettered by the responsibilities of being an assistant, graduate life can seem rather uncomplicated. This is largely an illusion, though, since the toughest part of graduate school is study and research! 

Dianne Prost O'Leary 
Professor, UMCP

Reference

Additive Manufacturing

I have been following this new manufacturing technique for close to a year now. It is different in a way that you don't manufacture but you print your products. Its like, adding sand grains to create mountains.

Here's wiki link to talk more about it and GE's venture in this new technique.

In future , I look forward to writing & working in this domain and try my luck.

Wait for more.

Cheers
Amit

How to choose a good PhD advisor

I ran across this article sometime around October 2009 titled "The PhD journey: how to choose a good supervisor" by NewScientist and kept a pdf copy of it in my office computer folder. Today after cleaning my system to get ready for final exit day, I stumbled upon my saved file.

I know it is an imp article for me and I might loose it once again. To avoid it I am publishing it here for the benefit of all :-
Click Here

If you have any trouble getting to this article, please let me know and I will try to help you.

Enjoy,
Amit

What does "#! /usr/bin/ksh" mean?

I had my own share of doubts while dealing with Unix scripting. Every time I forget what should be my beginning line. If it is #! /usr/bin/ksh, isn't '#' suppose to mean comment in unix scripting language? If so, then how does the kernel understands what shell I want this program to be executed?

Crawling through web, I stumbled upon this webpage where the user answer's my doubt THE BEST way.

http://www.unix.com/answers-frequently-asked-questions/7077-what-does-usr-bin-ksh-mean.html

For the convenience of single page reference for myself and all, here's what Perderabo has to say

This will probably be more than you wanted to know, but here goes anyway....

Originally, we only had one shell on unix. When you asked to run a command, the shell would attempt to invoke one of the exec() system calls on it. It the command was an executable, the exec would succeed and the command would run. If the exec() failed, the shell would not give up, instead it would try to interpet the command file as if it were a shell script.

Then unix got more shells and the situation became confused. Most folks would write scripts in one shell and type commands in another. And each shell had differing rules for feeding scripts to an interpreter.

This is when the "#! /" trick was invented. The idea was to let the kernel's exec() system calls succeed with shell scripts. When the kernel tries to exec() a file, it looks at the first 4 bytes which represent an integer called a magic number. This tells the kernel if it should try to run the file or not. So "#! /" was added to magic numbers that the kernel knows and it was extended to actually be able to run shell scripts by itself. But some people could not type "#! /", they kept leaving the space out. So the kernel was exended a bit again to allow "#!/" to work as a special 3 byte magic number.
So
#! /usr/bin/ksh
and
#!/usr/bin/ksh
now mean the same thing. I always use the former since at least some kernels might still exist that don't understand the latter.

And note that the first line is a signal to the kernel, and not to the shell. What happens now is that when shells try to run scripts via exec() they just succeed. And we never stumble on their various fallback schemes.

I am going to explore more on this magic number now and if you would like to add your thoughts to this, please do in comments below.

Happy Reading,

Regards

Amit

What should Statement of Purpose have?

This is the most precise and apt list of "points" for SOP I have found in IIT Chicago website.

• Explain why you chose this field. Answer the question: "What motivated you?" Write about specific experiences that demonstrate your reasons for graduate study.
• Describe what you plan to do after obtaining your master's degree.
• Include any relevant work experience in your academic field.
• Write about other significant activities (i.e., jobs, volunteering, community involvement, leadership at your university, organizations, awards, honors, etc.).
• If you have knowledge of a specific faculty member with whom you would like to work, mention your interest and why.
• Explain (briefly) any discrepancies on your transcripts, such as a lower GPA in a particular semester or year.

Knuth's Letter to Board of Editors of Journal of Algorithms.

Bookmark :-

http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/joalet.pdf

An Open Access Theory of Computing Journal

You might be interested to visit the below mentioned Link of an Open Access Journal for TOC
http://theoryofcomputing.org

Wish you a joyful reading.
-Amit

Some Career Advice from Terrence Tao

I was reading through TT blog and came across another blog with compilation of TT's perspective on having a successful career in Mathematics (applicable for other fields too)
http://www.lifeoptimizer.org/2009/06/05/career-lessons-terence-tao/

Happy Reading.
-Amit

Books based on TCS

Here's a link for list of books in TCS area.
Click Here

Note: I will update the list as an when I come across more details.

TCS intensive Organizations/Committee/Companies

1. British Colloquium for Theoretical Computer Science (BCTCS)
http://www.bctcs.ac.uk/


2. Council of Professors and Heads of Computing
http://www.cphc.ac.uk/


3. Centre for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, NZ.
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/CDMTCS/index.html


4. IEEE SIGACT
http://sigact.acm.org/

Some Universities around the world for Masters in TCS

Here's a small and progressive list of Universities which provides higher studies in the field of Theoretical Computer Science. Please note that the sequence of listing is not based on any merit factors but in Time series with the one in Top found earlier than the one below it.

1.Saarland University, Germany

2.MTA SZTAKI, Hungary

3.TUD, Germany

4.HKUST University, Hong Kong

5.Erasmus Mundus Program in TCS

6.De Paul University, USA
7.Uni of Chicago, USA 

8.Uni of Calgary, Canada 

9.University of Maryland, USA 

10.MIT, USA 

11.ETH, Zurich 

12.University of California, Irvine, USA 

13.University of Waterloo, Canada 

14.Swansea University, UK

15. Institute for Theoretical Computer Science, Tsinghua University, China
16. Uni of Connecticut, USA
17. New York University, USA
 

Postdoc positions Open

Institute of Advance Studies
http://www.math.ias.edu/csdm