What recession?

Rather than writing too much in this post, I am just going to post a picture taken in Lafayette, IN.

The moment

With my PhD, I have also declared myself as an MS Office (Master of Science in Microsoft Office). This omnipresent software is the bane of many a report due to the fact that it has a mind of its own. I decided to confer the degree on myself for the relative ease with which I compiled my whole dissertation. However, the moment of truth arrived when I realized that some of my tables had some extra space when compared to all the rest. A million different techniques (changing the paragraph settings and 999,999 other trials) later I found it neatly tucked in the table layout tab under the section for cell size after pressing the radio button labelled positioning where there were two ways to format the space. The moment I found it, the realization struck me - I was ready to graduate.

PS: It still beats me why Microsoft need to place 4 different ways to format the space before a table and then auto format extra space in some tables using the least used of the 4 tools.

Kung Fu PhD

Overall Conclusions:
As I conclude my "The PhD dissertation I never wrote series" also known as my "PhD hypotheses series", I would like to put forth the true meaning of a PhD as explained very well by the movie Kung Fu Panda.

Just as in the movie, we all fall into gradschool from the sky and are picked by a seemingly random process (like the tortoise Master Oogway pointing at the giant panda (you) who fell right where he was pointing just by chance). We enter grad school with dreams of being a dragon warrior (or at the very least getting a Nobel prize out of it). In grad school, we feel like a nobody and feel that those around us like the Tigress, Viper, Mantis, Monkey and Crane are much smarter and more accomplished than us.

As we progress through the tough travails of grad school, we keep feeling that we are not learning anything and our research is going nowhere. We then progress to the later stages of our PhD and as we get close to graduation, we realize that the secret to limitless power/knowledge that we thought a PhD held (the dragon scroll), is actually a blank scroll. We then confront the supposedly demonic Tai Lung (our committee) prior to graduation.

However, this does not mean that a PhD is worthless and does not teach you anything. What a PhD teaches you is intangible, it is the ability to be able to self learn, to understand life and solve its tough problems, like figuring out the wuxi fingerhold by yourself which the master's students (Tigress et al.) are unable to do.

Cleaning up your desk is beneficial (Corrolary - When you lose something, clean up)

Editor's note: This is a series entitled "Shriram Paranjpe's Ph.D. hypotheses series". The experiments documented through this series have reportedly been referred to as "lacking scientific merit". However, in a bold move, this blog has decided to print them. We believe ourselves to be visionaries who will be feted by future generations. Unfortunately, we will not get the pleasure of being acknowledged by our own. Your comments on this specific article or the whole series will be greatly appreciated.

Introduction:
Previous studies have indicated that junk accumulates (Paranjpe 2009 - have to self reference at least once right). This research was therefore carried out to identify the reasons for the differences between this great research paper and suggestions made otherwise in popular sitcoms (Geller 1994-2003) that junk does not accumulate (that is 2 degrees of separation between me and a character in FRIENDS). A thorough literature review indicated that the root cause of this difference is that junk is not allowed to accumulate in most places. The motivation behind this cleanup has not been studied (in other words, I want my theory to be correct and therefore, I am not referencing the others). Therefore, we dreamed up this study. The objective of this research was to understand the motivation behind cleaning up.

Materials and methods:
The piled up junk was cleaned up at the three places where it was reportedly allowed to pile up (Paranjpe 2009) and the benefits of the actions were studied.

Results and Discussion:
The cleanup at the office resulted in retrieval of a long lost 2 GB flash drive as well as a movie rewards card that will give me two free cokes and a popcorn with the purchase of just 2 more movie tickets. This is a great result which indicates the true motivation behind cleaning up. However, the clean up in the other two locations resulted in nothing of value being found. The results of the study are therefore not totally clear.

Conclusions:
A part of the study indicated that there is some motivation behind cleaning up. However, the result was not statistically significant and needs further research.

Future work:
It is possible that motivation might not be the actual driving force behind this tendency to clean up. Some researchers have suggested that the root cause of the clean up motion is psychological with childhood trauma (being forced by parents/being punished) and sociological limitations (How can you live here?) possibly playing a part in the clean up process. Since psychological analysis was not a part of our grant, this angle was not studied further.

Junk accumulates

Editor's note: This is a series entitled "Shriram Paranjpe's Ph.D. hypotheses series". The experiments documented through this series have reportedly been referred to as "lacking scientific merit". However, in a bold move, this blog has decided to print them. We believe ourselves to be visionaries who will be feted by future generations. Unfortunately, we will not get the pleasure of being acknowledged by our own. Your comments on this specific article or the whole series will be greatly appreciated.

Introduction:
This experiment was carried out to verify earlier rumors that, well, junk accumulates.

Materials and methods:
This experiment was carried out in triplicates in the office, lab and room of the then non Dr. Shriram Paranjpe. Stuff was left undisturbed for four years and the results are shown below.

Results and Discussion:
Figures 1 and 2 below shows the amount of junk that was recovered when the office and lab were cleaned. Data from the room could not be published due to copyright issues. However, figure 3 shows a shot of the kitchen being reorganized

Figure 1: Office cleanup



Figure 2: Stuff recovered from lab



Figure 3: Kitchen reorganization

Conclusion:
Junk accumulates