Author Archives: Anand Sarwate

2007 SFIAAFF

Posted on by

The The San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival is going on right now. I’ve seen two films, which is likely my quota given my workload, but there are a bunch that I want to see.

In Between Days is the story of an alienated Korean-Canadian girl, Aimee, who lives with her single mother in a desolate and snowy Toronto. The film follows her trying to deal with her feelings for her friend Tran, her absent father, and the trials of being in a foreign country. Although it seems to be causing a lot of waves, I felt like the pacing was a bit slow for my taste. Perhaps that was because I was hungry though. This film is a must-see if you are interested in the psychology of assimilation and alienation in Asian youth (Yeti, I am looking at you).

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, an anime, is an adaptation of a young-adult novel about a high school senior who discovers she has the power to jump back in time. Hilarity ensues as she avoids awkward and embarassing situations by haveing do-overs, but she soon discovers that changing some events for the better can have undesired consequences (a typical trope in time-travel stories). This was a touching film, but I felt it sort of left the rails near the ending by introducing a rather improbable plot twist. Anime has a tendency to do this, however, so I lumped it in with the other oddities of Japanese narrative.

SFIAAFF Trailer is very addictive for some reason. The lyrics make no sense at all:

Come with me and we will paint the town together
With our brand new brush made out of patent leather.
We’ll go dancing after we have sandwiches.
Then we’ll fly away…
Through the air with a grizzly bear,
We can make a cake out of snow
But first we need to get on with our show!

Part of it must the calliope circus music, but really, it’s just pure silliness.

yet another crunch

Posted on by

As if having the deadlines for ISIT and CISS 2007 so close to each other wasn’t bad enough, the deadlines for the Statistical Signal Processing Workshop and the Information Theory Workshop in Tahoe are both on April 1. In the former case I didn’t mind, since I didn’t have anything I wanted to send to CISS and besides, it’s bad to distract oneself with conference papers. But in the latter case, I have results to send and reasons to go to both. Perhaps going out of town for spring break wasn’t such a good plan after all…

I(c,g) and the inner life of a cell

Posted on by

I went to a talk yesterday by Chris Wiggins on gene networks, signal processing, and information. I found it a bit unfortunate that he used the phrase “the mutual information between chemistry and genetics” and wrote up I(c,g) on the board. I eventually figured out what he meant, but it immediately brought to mind the famous “Information Theory, Photosynthesis, and Religion” editorial by Elias in the IT Transactions.

Although I had to duck out of the talk early, at the beginning we got to see the Inner Life Of A Cell video, which is amazing. There are versions with narration from the Harvard multimedia website. I know this has been around a while, but I hadn’t seen it yet. It’s definitely worth a look.

Good survey articles for communications theorists

Posted on by

One thing that I could have used when I started graduate school was a good list of survey articles and introductions to different modeling paradigms and mathematical ideas used in communications and signal processing. It would have done wonders to help me get up to speed on these widely-used ideas. As a grad student, you can’t take classes in everything, and a lot of these ideas are important in research but haven’t really made it into course curricula either. Hopefully people reading this will comment and suggest more titles — I’ll expand the list as more material is suggested.

Topics that it would nice to have (preferably at a level for early graduate school) : convex analysis, Fourier analysis, percolation (there’s a book but it’s a bit advanced for many I think), generating functions… anything else, really.

High dimensional convex geometry

Keith M. Ball, An Elementary Introduction to Convex Geometry, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute Publications Vol. 31 : Flavors of Geometry, 1998.
This is a survey article that requires a bit of mathematical maturity, but covers a lot interesting material on high dimensional balls, convex polytopes, volume ratios, and ends up in Dvoretsky’s Theorem. This is less of a “techniques” paper but is good for getting some intuition and facts straight about high dimensional convex things.

Isoperimetric inequalities

A. Dembo, T. Cover, and J.A. Thomas, Information theoretic inequalities, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 37(6), 1991.
This is the information-theoretic take on some isoperimetric inequalities.

Markov Chains and Mixing

V. Guruswami. Rapidly Mixing Markov Chains: A Comparison of Techniques, May 2000.
A nice readable survey that gets the main results across.

Game Theory

Robert Gibbons, Game Theory for Applied Economists, Princeton University Press, 1992.
This is a quick read that will get the basic terminology and ideas of game theory. It’s not as useful for learning the deeper stuff, but it’s definitely accessible and well-written.

Auctions and auction theory — used for network congestion and resource allocation

Paul Klemperer, A Survey of Auction Theory, in Auctions: Theory and Practice, Princeton University Press, 2004.
A non-technical introduction to the study of auctions and how they are modeled. Good for getting an idea of what all the fuss is about.
Vijay Krishna, Auction Theory, Academic Press, 2002.
This book covers the basics and reading the first few chapters should let you get a handle on the terminology so that you can read some of the network congestion and pricing papers.

Ryowa

Posted on by

Ryowa
2068 University Avenue
(at Milvia St & Shattuck Ave)
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 883-0667

This is a no-frills ramen house, a-la-Tampopo, but minus the comedy. I’ve been here three times now, and will probably keep going back whenever I have a noodle soup craving in downtown Berkeley. Although Cha-Ya is a short walk away, sometimes you want some chashu (pork) ramen, and Ryowa will deliver. This is probably my new standby for a quick pre-Berkeley Rep meal.

I still haven’t tried the butter corn ramen, but the original, shoyu, and butabara bowls are pretty tasty. The sesame broth is light, as is the shoyu, but still flavorful. Unlike some places I’ve tried, I actually find myself trying to drink the broth down, especially after adding in some red pepper powder. I’ve also heard that the kara-age (fried chicken) is really goos, but I’ll have to wait to go there with a bigger group. The menu is pretty much just ramen, gyoza, fried rice, and kara-age, so don’t go here if you want to have a variety of eating options…

Red Box Sushi

Posted on by

Red Box Sushi
581 Eddy Street
San Francisco, CA 94102

This place is so small that it’s easy to almost walk past without noticing it, but it serves up some great sushi in the Tenderloin. The fish is fresh and almost buttery, and it’s the perfect place to go before seeing a show or movie. I went there before seeing the Preservation Hall Jazz Band at the Great American Music Hall with Erin.

We started with some miso soup, which was really flavorful compared to the stuff you get elsewhere. Maybe they put in too much miso paste, but I liked it. We ended up getting a few maki and the sashimi combo (although i thought we ordered the sushi combo…). The sashimi was melt-in-your-mouth good, especially the salmon. The unagi maki was also good, but somehow less memorable to me. There were a number of crazy American-style rolls if that’s your thing (it’s not mine). The standout thing for me was an innovation of the chef that he called “firecracker balls.” These are spicy tuna maki, batter-dipped and deep fried, with what tasted like sriracha, mayonnaise, and tobiko on top. If you like spicy food, definitely get these. All in all, a worthwhile trip. Next time I’ll go with more people so we can try more things.

Conditional growth charts

Posted on by

The Annals of Statistics published a “discussion paper” on Conditional growth charts by Y. Wei and and X. He, with 4 comment papers and a rejoinder from the authors. It’s reminiscent of the Crooked Timber book events (Iron Council was a particular favorite), only significantly more formal. It’s a new format to me for mathematical publication, and almost feels like “peer review in public,” with the mean comments taken out. Perhaps if I get some time I’ll read the paper for real and see what the fuss is about…

a little puzzle

Posted on by

Prasad brought work to a halt earlier this week by issuing the following little conundrum. One indepdenent fair 6-sided die is rolled for each of n people. Each person’s number is written on a card and stuck on their head so that they can see everyone else’s number but their own. The people are not allowed to communicate after the numbers are assigned, and from just viewing the others’ numbers they must guess their own. They can come up with any rule that they like for doing this.

What rule should you choose to that is the probability that all of them guess correctly is maximized, and what is that probability?

This is a variation on the “colored hats game,” but the criterion you want to maximize is slightly different than in some instances of the game.

A first rehearsal with Adams and Sellars

Posted on by

On Monday the SF Symphony Chorus had their first rehearsal with John Adams and Peter Sellars for A Flowering Tree. The opera, which received its premiere at the New Crowned Hope festival, is adapted from a Kannda folktale. The libretto is an amalgamation of the folktale text, Tamil love poems, and Virasaiva religious poems. Our rehearsals to this point have been somewhat routine — learning the notes, getting a handle on the tricky rhythms and meter changes, and using little tricks to help ourselves be heard over the orchestra.

Monday’s rehearsals catapulted us into the world of characterization and theater. Our performance will be “semi-staged,” from what I understand, and I saw bits of scenery backstage before the rehearsal. Turning a massive chorus into a dramatic agent is no small task, and Sellars was as clear and effective as any director I have seen. He knew at what level he had to talk to the chorus to get the effect he wanted, and we the change in effect from the first readthrough to the second (after some direction) was huge. Adams will be conducting us, and he is likewise clear and direct in his requests and his conducting. It’s a real treat working on a piece like this, and after Monday’s rehearsal I am certain that the audience will be wowed. Although I do have to say that next week will put my voice through the wringer, so I better stock up this weekend on lemon juice, honey, and ginger…

Concert Announcement : A Flowering Tree

Posted on by

Sometime if I have time I’ll write about our first rehearsal with Adams and Sellars. I have also written a small note on some of the religious poetry used in the libretto.

A Flowering Tree


by John Adams
libretto by John Adams and Peter Sellars

John Adams, conductor
Peter Sellars, director
Jessica Rivera, soprano
Russell Thomas, tenor
Eric Owens, bass
SFS Chorus, chorus

America’s foremost living composer, John Adams, imagines rich and beautiful worlds. This SFS co-commission, inspired by The Magic Flute, is an escape into dream and myth and comes on the heels of Adams’s opera Doctor Atomic. Peter Sellars returns to direct this semi-staged production. The premiere of any new Adams work is an event not to be missed.

Thursday 3/1 — Saturday 3/3, 7:30 PM