Hmm..., sorry if the title sounds too geeky, but trust me, that is how things are here around me! This is also an inspiration drawn from my algorithms class and i thank my teacher for his unstoppable thoughts. I was pondering on how algorithms are applied and just thought of applying to our lives, and guess what? It works :)

Lets apply the concepts to a day to day activity like...waiting for a bus (actually, i am missing it a lot). Lets start with a liner programming model. Here your linear goal is to get into a bus that takes you to a desired destination and you are happy. The bounds of this equation become the bus being there on time and no traffic jams on the streets. This is how the problem is viewed in the discrete world. In the continuous world, you also have a range of values on the bus's state like it coming on time, being empty, you getting a window seat, your fellow passenger being sweet etc. etc....And along with this is the traffic constraints being continuous with values that the jam is small, manageable or a deadlock! (Bangaloreans need no intro to all these).

Now this continuous linear programming model can be given to a NP Solver to obtain a feasible solution and you might get something like getting up early and being in the bus stop before its too late, adjusting/sharing a seat with someone/ standing on the bus/ avoiding a crowded road (that depends on the bus driver's intelligence) etc etc.......... I too was expecting any of these but...........Oops! It says "NP Hard! Cannot solve any further!"

Yeah, many many activities are NP Hard. Just realised it and gave up thinking! Non convex optimization is something i need to master :)

Well, food for thought!

Disclaimer: I really dont know if the above concepts are mathematically right, but thats what i could make out in my class :( I also dont know if a NP Solver recognises a NP Hard problem. Need some light on them!

These were random thoughts that crossed my mind when i was analyzing the sorts of people i had come across in my 22 years of experience. (I think thats good enough!) According to my research, there are two kinds of friends one can have, on a broad classification.

1.Static Friends: The characteristics of these “buddies” include sticking onto you every time, may be your thoughts revolve around them, you see them very often, live with them around, etc. Pretty sticky characters, wont leave you alone at any point of time! That does not really imply being gratuitous, but exceptions are there (just taking care of the fallacies!) At times these are the only ones who listen to your SOS. At the end of it, knowingly or unknowingly you get bound to them statically in the given time frame.

2.Dynamic Friends: These “fellows” are really the ones “on the fly”. They come to you, get your space allocated till their job is complete and deallocate themselves when they are done. Reallocation is not impossible, but will be for another chunk of work to be done. But they really are not the opportunistic ones, well, i don't want to misuse the word friends for opportunistic people. But these dynamic ones will be there w.r.t. to the situations around. Your world would go well without them but their presence make it beautiful. They don't share their past and future with you quite well like their static counterparts, but prefer to live with the presence. Good people to meet in life and great to hang out with.


I don't really know of a case where there is a transition from one to another type, but have heard of, and i don't think its impossible. Its the distance that matters is what i hear. Well, considering that, i think if your static friend is going dynamic, you can identify the traits like, when you hear less w.r.t. his/her private life, or stop enjoying doing things together that you did once upon a time (Going out for a movie seems a hell of boredom!). Analyze the patterns that you find and mine it for some interesting trends. And other way round, if your dynamic one is getting static, you can feel his/her presence everywhere. Your thoughts tend to bind together well and you can imagine chatting and babbling (non)sense for hours. All you need to do to observe this is, draw a regression curve for 'x' years down the line and see how you both fit into that and be happy if its the “best fit”.

If you are still wondering what i am talking about, i am sorry, thats what masters can do to you i guess!!!

PS: I think somewhere i can relate to the second transition type. Well, its almost come to a best fit :). Realizing this late, but hoping its not gonna be a reverse transition!!!