Better Index Compression
It's late, so I'll keep it short and to the point. An index is something that lets you get at data quickly. I consider a B-Tree as well as a sorted array an index. The time to lookup an element in an...
View ArticleA great day for freedom
Today, I took Abbas, my dear dear dear friend (and a Muslim) to a pool where for the longest time, only Hindus were permitted to congregate and bathe. Only for the last 2 years has this ban on other...
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Parvorder Platyrrhini or: How I learned to stop worrying and love monkeys
As usual, this is going to be short.I was coming back by train from Charni Road to Churchgate after a swim at Mafatlal Bath when an eunuch with a baby monkey (maybe less than 2 years old) walked in and...
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PV=nRT or: How I learned to stop worrying and love cooking under pressure
I'll try to be as brief as possible here. Just going to talk about the physics behind Pressure Coking and why it's so cool (and hipster). Hey, it saves fuel and hence damages the environment to a much...
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Amortized Analysis or: How I learned to stop worrying and love averages
Amortized Analysis is usually seen as a pretty scary term, and I've seen a lot of people confuse it with Average Case Analysis, but let's try and de-mistyfy it, one step at a time.We've performed...
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Weight Balance for fun and profit
According to Dr. Bender, Weight Balance (different from the wikipedia article on weight-balanced tree) is one of the most important topics in Computer Science, and we were lucky enough to learn it from...
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PMA: The Packed Memory Array
Thanks to Deepak& Gaurav for proof-reading this post and providing useful feedback!The Packed Memory Array (pdf) is an interesting structure to say the least, since it keeps its elements almost...
View ArticleHow to give a talk/presentation - Wisdom from Dr. Bender
(The content of this post is mostly stolen inspired by this post by my friend Deepak.)This Spring, I took a course called CSE638 (Advanced Algorithms) under Professor Michael Bender. This was a mostly...
View ArticleInside the guts of Kadane's algorithm OR Understanding the Maximum Sum...
Kadane's algorithm is used to solve the 1 dimensional Maximum Sum Sub-array Problem in computer science. Let's try to understand how it really works. If we are given the problem of finding the maximum...
View ArticleJavascript as a language is really darn good
If you look at computer languages as tools to help you convert thought to code (ignoring other real-world practical considerations such as efficiency, developer availability, platform pervasiveness,...
View ArticleBetter algorithms v/s micro-optimization
As a kid, I participated in a game that involved bouncing a tennis ball on the ground using your hands. The winner was the one who was able to bounce the ball the most number of times in 60 second. All...
View ArticleMerging AVL Trees
Problem Statement: Given two AVL trees T1 and T2, where the largest key in T1 is less than the smallest key in T2, Join(T1, T2) returns an AVL tree containing the union of the elements in T1 and T2....
View ArticleMaking soft chapatis that balloon
I've been making chapatis for a while now, and conventional wisdom says that getting the dough well knead is the key to soft chapatis since it forms the gluten strands in the dough and makes it tough....
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To Muir Woods and back
S, V, and D went decide to bike to Muir Woods from SF Caltrain. I have a sore index finger, so this will be brief. This is the path we took in the going direction, and this is the elevation profile. On...
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Gyro balls and yoga
The Powerball is a relatively new gyro-based exercise device intended for strength building in the wrists and fore-arms. I'm using it to help me in my yoga practice. Aasanas that require wrist and...
View ArticleDeamortizing disk writes during log rotation
According to this page on deamortization, "deamortization refers to the process of converting an algorithm with an amortized bound into one with a worst-case bound."Log Rotation refers to the automated...
View ArticleStatic To Dynamic Transforms or: How I learnt to stop worrying and love...
Gaurav in his blog post describes in great detail what a static to dynamic transform is, when it is applicable, how to dynamize a static data structure, and the costs of inserting and looking up values...
View ArticleMacho-ism in Computer Science
It's common for me to see blog posts by companies talking about the high traffic volume in terms of QPS/RPS they handle and the amount of data they process, and that's super cool. But then there's...
View ArticleHow to make an intense cup of hot chocolate
Experiment: One of the most intense hot chocolates you've ever hadIngredients -- You will need (for 1 cup hot chocolate [240ml]):250 ml whole milk4-6 squares of dark chocolate (I use Ghirardelli)A...
View ArticleSmallest multiple with constraints
Problem statement:Given a number 'n', design an algorithm that will output the smallest integer number 'X' which contains only the digits {0, 1} such that X mod n = 0 and X > 0 (1 ≤ n ≤ 100000)...
View ArticleThe many small steps to Pincha Mayurasana (पिंच मयूरासन ) (Feathered Peacock...
Pincha Mayurasana (or Feathered Peacock Pose) is a yoga pose that roughly translates to a forearm stand. This can be the next step after mastering (or getting decent at) the Headstand...
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Searching faster than Binary Search
We all know that Binary Search is asymptotically the fastest way to search for data within a sorted (ordered) array in the comparison (or simple decision tree) model assuming nothing in particular...
View ArticleModels of engagement
As a person who solves problem for a living, there's a few options one has as far as current models of engagement (or more traditionally employment) are concerned:Engaged full timeEngaged part...
View ArticleTwitter API: Y U No respond fast & why
There is a very interesting post about an application developer running into issues with the Twitter API timeout of 5 sec. I would encourage everyone to read it if you haven't already. Based on what I...
View ArticleManaged or Unmanaged or something in between?
As you build a product, offering, or a team, one of the implicit questions you must answer up-front is "how managed" you wish your offering to be. This question applies equally to you as a consumer who...
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