Talks

I'm available as a public speaker or writer on popular science, especially on the topics you see here.

The Joy of Programming

Download the talk given to a few NYC high school students at cSplash (March 29) 2008, CIMS, NYU.
Thanks for the resources and sites. I actually thought that The Joy of Programming class might have been the most difficult class i had that. It was really confusing but still, pretty cool. Thanks again.

Download the talk given to a few NYC high school students at cSplash (April 4) 2009, CIMS, NYU.
A home-schooled high school student remarked that his father had recommended that he attend my talk and this student concluded that he was happy that he had followed his father's advice.

I botched the explanation of a skewed payoff. My example was from Nassim N. Taleb's Fooled by Randomness, which consisted of the following payoff table. Event 1: probability = 999/1,000, payoff = $1, expected utility is the product of the two, so it is $0.999. Event 2: probability = 1/1,000, payoff = -$10,000, so the expected utility is clearly not -$10,000 but rather -$10. How did I make this rather spectacular error in calculation? When I wrote this entry, I first wrote a mistake, realized it was a mistake and tried recalculating. A student suggested an answer and because I was under pressure of time (an hour), I simply took his answer without checking it and proceeded to explain the payoff table. Luckily, even though the general lesson of the skewed payoff was not sacrificed, I had failed to explain the concept of expected utility and therefore confused some high school students. (This explains why the student suggested a wrong answer to replace my own wrong answer.) If I had taken the time to explain the concept instead of trying to run away from what I knew was my mistake, I would have not only found the right answer but I would have also better explained the crucial idea. Additionally, an undergraduate in mathematics who should have noticed my mistake did not say anything to correct me. This error only strengthens the message of skeptical empiricism.
My memory of a wonderful geometrical explanation of the logic of the solution to the Monty Hall problem failed me.

A talk given at the first CATER workshop organized by Lakshminarayanan Subramanian.

Download the talk on the Erigone model checker given at the CIMS ACSys Seminar on April 15 2009.
I was invited by Christopher L. Conway. It was my honour to have given a talk to such luminaries as Amir Pnueli, Patrick Cousot and Benjamin Goldberg along with their PhD students.

2009-04-11