Tenth

A week goes by post mid-sems. And this time around, along with the usual activities of chilling out, I also had an added responsibility of dropping a course. I had enrolled for the Applied Stochastic Processes course this semester expecting an exciting course in applied mathematics. Obviously I had discounted the notoriety associated with the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, fully prepared for a rigorous and challenging curriculum. But the manner in which course proceeded right from the initial weeks disappointed me. Severely. Though I persisted with the course for some more weeks with a faint hope of eventual frequency matching of board-work with my personal objectives from the course. But the moment I had quiz 1 question paper in my hand, I had absolutely made up my mind on dropping this course (Well, it also provided with an additional benefit of extended sleep on Mondays and Fridays but their contribution was inconsequential.)

With all due respect, the instructor-in-charge, Prof S.S.Dhar had completely skipped over the 'Applied' part mentioned in the course title. Being a field having super-normal applications in finance, medicine, telecommunications and weather studies, it would be naturally expected to study how stochastic theories would be used to develop models in these domains. But half semester had gone by and hardly 15 minutes were allocated to rainfall problem. Proofs and theorems accounted for almost 70% of assignments and 100% of evaluations. Now, I am not trying to demean the importance of theories and proofs in any manner. They are very much required for scientific and technical progress and I personally enjoy studying and understanding them. But that does not imply I am competent to derive them given the time constraints of examination system (I had realized very early in my undergraduate life that my aptitude dwelled in applying knowledge to real-life/life-like scenarios and not in deriving theorems.) Additionally, if the only purpose of the course was to teach stochastic theory, why use the word 'Applied' in the course title!

I believe professors at this place fail to understand that not all students who voluntarily take up a course intend to do research in the particular subject (Or they do understand and choose to not give a fuck about it. In that case, this paragraph is immaterial.) There is just a tiny class population interested in research and hardly a couple of students wanting to actually research in the particular specialized field. All of us secured admission to this institute on basis of our ability to solve problems and a vast majority would love to continue doing that. Not everyone has caliber towards research, though almost everyone wouldn't mind to apply the results of any research to solve problems (irrespective of problem leading to value-addition or not.) Plus, from what I have gathered from my peers in the Mathematics and Scientific Computing department, it is general norm to rote the theorems and proofs from class notes and assignments to easily secure a good grade. I feel this approach kills intellectual curiosity and turns us students into CPI-sucking rats. I think the department should do a reality check and start offering genuine applied mathematics courses(the only one I know of is Mathematical Modelling), at least for the undergraduates.

On a side-note, I gave 50m and 100m Butterfly timings on a single day last week. Now, I would need to set some more targets to achieve before the farewell. 

PS: I have observed some strong under-currents with inclination towards research in the campus these days. But the real litmus test would be if it still exists after job offers. I sincerely hope it does though.