Since August 16, all news channels are in overdrive-mode. Even after almost 18 hours/day of live coverage with as much repetition of news-clips and many regurgitated debate-hours, they do not seem to be satiated enough. Poor TV-viewers have choices of switching between channels but since content and debates are all similar and on the same topic, the choices are only for namesake. What amuses me is that even though these channels publicly compete with each other, when it comes to taking stand, all speak same language and almost in same tone. It feels like in last 48 hours, nothing has happened to this country except Mr. Hazare's detention and jail. Almost all anchors with may be one or two exceptions, persecuted, lampooned and assaulted the Union Govt in tandem and hailed the protesting crowd who came in thousands to support Mr. Hazare. Media adjudged the present Govt to be both guilty and incapable and therefore unfit to run the Govt. just because they fumbled in handling Mr. Hazare's protest. One who just landed here today would think that all the problems that India has today are there simply because India does not have a strong anti-corruption bill. You get a strong Lokpal Bill that satisfies Mr. Hazare's team and voila! all problems of India will be solved! Utopian or simply childish dream?
I think it is neither of them. I think it is desperation of adolescent Indian middle class for whom the protest of Mr. Hazare is an avenue of asserting its existence to the country. Like a school kid demanding for a motorcycle to his parents when he becomes aware that all his peers ride bikes, educated middle class Indians from metros, otherwise busy in their lifestyle squabbles decided to demand participation in Govt. functions, when they realized that political power has gone out of their reach because of their snooty attitude to political business in this country whereas their peers in developed countries actually enjoyed more participation all along. The snooty attitude of educated class was perfectly alright till India became a brand name that started hogging limelight with foreign media. Suddenly brand India is adorable, Indian identity is 'cool' and participating in political activism is 'sexy'! Now they want a share of this brand value which they ignored for many decades after the Independence of India. Sadly politics has gone out of their hand to a new political class who came from much diverse, rural background and filled the vacuum that middle-class elites left in 70's. Poor Anna Hazare! He probably is thinking that he is leading the second freedom movement of India! Present political elites, those who have been enjoying political power almost as inheritance are puzzled; they do not recognize this new enthusiasm, viral energy of protests. They do not understand the reason. I mean why now? Since they do not understand they are unsure about right way to handle this agitation. They have memory of 70s and the effectiveness of handling the political revolt of 70's with iron-fists. But they recognize that this is 21st century and they are not sure if the methods of 70's will be effective today. So they are tentative. This tentativeness is reflected in their fumbling, in arresting Mr. Hazare and then conceding to his demands. But will they be successful to quell this new aspiration of urban middle-class? And bigger question is what will the real India, the India that comprises of poor farmers, poor tribesmen, poor unclassifiable and uneducated Indians who got pushed out of the power equation, for many decades before and after Independence, those who were never connected to 'shining story' of India, those who shining India never cared for, do? Will they continue to live in that other India which only figures in Govt statistics or will they seize the opportunity of another socio-economical correction?
I can't answer and neither the all-knowing, self-righteous, spectacularly shallow (almost to the point of perversion) media channels can answer. That India in fact never existed for them [the India that never contributed to TRP rating]. I however do hope with all earnestness that this politically adolescent educated middleclass of India actually use this opportunity to know their country for real, grow to become true Indian in its real spirit, the spirit that transformed Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to Mahatma Gandhi [just for the record, Gandhiji before taking up the rein of Indian Congress travelled the length and breadth of this country. He believed that a real leader must have first hand, direct knowledge about his/her country]. Otherwise this aspiration will lead to another kind of corruption, corruption that comes from rootlessness,and that will take away the middle-class dignity of being righteous, intellectually, morally.
Thursday, 18 August 2011
Tuesday, 16 August 2011
Google is now Mobile handset maker
The 64th Independence Day of India also will be considered a red-letter day in the history of Google though for a different reason. Google announced that it bought Motorola's mobile phone unit for $12.5B in cash [Read the report at Techcrunch] With this, Google is making direct foray in mobile handset market which means they will now compete with Apple, Nokia and RIM for supremacy of this market. Mobile Handset particularly smartphone market is a big market as is evident from Gartner's latest news report.
The same report [see the table] also says that Android has moved up to become the top Mobile OS as was predicted in an earlier post. Incidentally Larry Page said two things : 1. This will help Google to protect and advance Android and 2. Android will continue to remain "Open". It probably will remain open for some more time, since openness actually benefits Google in the long run and secondly Google is not going to make the same mistake that Sun did with Java.
Forbes' blog argues that Google bought it because of Motorola's 14600 patents and another 6000 pending patents in the related industry and will help Google to fight lawsuits from Apple and others in future. From that perspective, this looks more like Google's corrective move after they failed to acquire Nortel's patents earlier this year. Their $900M bid failed when NORTEL board decided to sell the full company to Google's competition [consortium Microsoft, Apple, RIM, Sony, EMC] at $4.5B. How this will change the future of mobile handset market in north america, though is a very interesting question, is more an area of speculative expet opinions and better to be left for the experts. Significance of this announcement, however is both in future and in the past.
1. It marks the end of an era, an era of domination of North American telecom players. Nortel and Motorola are both history now.
2. Since this will deplete Google's cash reserve significantly, this also means that Google will direct all its salvos to get the full ROI of this acquisition. In other words Mobile Handset ecosystem is going to become Google's one of the primary business focus in a very near future. In fact if one considers another less advertised purchase, the announcement of Google buying Admob for $750M, it becomes quite apparent that Google is very serious about winning the last frontier of internet advertising i.e. mobile internet. Having the depth of handset technology from Motorola, reach of Android OS and Google's supreme leadership in internet-search and advertising, Google hass got all its cards laid out. To be seen is how Google deals with the sticky privacy issue that keeps coming up in the context of Android and consumer location tracking. However, given the huge potential the mobile internet market has, it is only predicatble that this market will continue to shape Google's future strategy in a big way. It would be interesting to watch how Apple and Microsoft answer to this challenge.
The same report [see the table] also says that Android has moved up to become the top Mobile OS as was predicted in an earlier post. Forbes' blog argues that Google bought it because of Motorola's 14600 patents and another 6000 pending patents in the related industry and will help Google to fight lawsuits from Apple and others in future. From that perspective, this looks more like Google's corrective move after they failed to acquire Nortel's patents earlier this year. Their $900M bid failed when NORTEL board decided to sell the full company to Google's competition [consortium Microsoft, Apple, RIM, Sony, EMC] at $4.5B. How this will change the future of mobile handset market in north america, though is a very interesting question, is more an area of speculative expet opinions and better to be left for the experts. Significance of this announcement, however is both in future and in the past.
1. It marks the end of an era, an era of domination of North American telecom players. Nortel and Motorola are both history now.
2. Since this will deplete Google's cash reserve significantly, this also means that Google will direct all its salvos to get the full ROI of this acquisition. In other words Mobile Handset ecosystem is going to become Google's one of the primary business focus in a very near future. In fact if one considers another less advertised purchase, the announcement of Google buying Admob for $750M, it becomes quite apparent that Google is very serious about winning the last frontier of internet advertising i.e. mobile internet. Having the depth of handset technology from Motorola, reach of Android OS and Google's supreme leadership in internet-search and advertising, Google hass got all its cards laid out. To be seen is how Google deals with the sticky privacy issue that keeps coming up in the context of Android and consumer location tracking. However, given the huge potential the mobile internet market has, it is only predicatble that this market will continue to shape Google's future strategy in a big way. It would be interesting to watch how Apple and Microsoft answer to this challenge.
Monday, 1 August 2011
Rises and Falls of 'I'
Of late all the national dailies and news channels are abuzz about alleged corruption and demand for ouster of Mr. B. S. Yeddyurappa from Karnataka CM's post. With his resignation yesterday, the media spotlight will now move out of Mr. Yeddyurappa but it would be interesting to take a look at the series of events that finally led to this day. Trust me I wouldn't thrust the banal political stories on you unless I have something to highlight that all of us can relate to.
Mr. Yeddyurappa started his political career at the age of 33 as an elected member of a town municipality. At that time, BJP was a party unheard of in the south Indian states. More than three decades of his work has gone to make himself visible in BJP, make BJP visible in the state and finally to catapult BJP to the position of the ruling party in Karnataka for the first time in the history of South India and BJP. None of these are a small feat by any measure considering that at each step in his career he had to fight with other politicians who are equally (perhaps more) shrewd and ambitious. He also had to fight other established parties like Congress and Janata (S) to gain support from both the rural and urban electorate. Though money is a very important ingredient to political success, grassroot popularity cannot be maintained with sheer power of money. Politics in India is a lot more complex and multihued for that. Mr. Yeddyurappa for the right reasons is considered the architect of BJP's rise to power in Karnataka. Unfortunately like his unparalleled success, his fall also is equally spectacular. But if one carefully looks at the events that preceded his departure, one can see a pattern. There was an open revolt against him after just one year of him assuming the power. The dissidents complained that he was operating in autocratic style, making all the decisions by himself without involving others particularly for those who belong to his dissident group. BJP worked out a compromise formula but after another year the problem erupted again when there was a cabinet reshuffle. Complaints were almost same except the people complaining, were different.
The pattern is unmistakable: He is popular at grassroot and that popularity gives him immense confidence so much so that he operates like benevolent despot; benevolent for his loyalists, despot for his opponents. For the party his popularity is an asset but his despotism is a liability. Corruption allegation provided for a tacit excuse for the party to take step.
Interestingly this pattern can be seen with almost every successful leader. Success leads to power, power leads to further strengthening of confidence which inflates the ego absolutely and ego brings unilateralism in thinking process finally leading to one's fall.
But can we avoid it? Can You avoid being trapped by your Ego? Here the answer becomes difficult since in effect we are asking the Ego to avoid being trapped by itself! Psychologists agree today that there is no I without Ego. It is this I that grows as we move from childhood to adolescence, adolescence to adulthood and so on. The I that begins Identification is the same I that also is the first letter for Imagination, Intention and Inhibition. In many ways the I that drives one to successes also creates its own trap for failure in its inhibitions. Human mind is quick to find easy patterns; the old patterns that led one to successes or wins [that one identifies with] also create beliefs and repeatable behavioural patterns that create blind-spots. We try to cling on to old winning habits with blind faith that they will create successes again. The blind faith creates a filter for everything that falls out of the known pattern, a huge wall against everything that does not conform to what the mind believes. It creates a set of strong likes and dislikes and makes the decision making a belief-driven action and reaction.
Unfortunately all of these constitute the I, the I that is superlative, the I that is always primary, the I that is first-among-equals; contrary to what reality dictates, this I is oblivious to its relativistic existence. It is therefore as much realistic as much Illusionary.
Reality, however, is fluid, continuous, ever-changing and pervades everything, within and beyond all patterns discernible to human senses. It cannot be reduced to a set of stable patterns that transcend time. The prism of I, therefore needs to be tested all the time against the white-spectrum of reality and adjusted so that I remain congruent to Reality. Since that is difficult for I, the breakdown of its successful patterns is the only way of reality to realign it. In that whole process of finding success patterns and breaking it and again finding next success, gradually mind's sampling universe widens, thereby bringing more nuances to experience-based knowledge, refining to what we know as one's 'wisdom'.
Mr. Yeddyurappa started his political career at the age of 33 as an elected member of a town municipality. At that time, BJP was a party unheard of in the south Indian states. More than three decades of his work has gone to make himself visible in BJP, make BJP visible in the state and finally to catapult BJP to the position of the ruling party in Karnataka for the first time in the history of South India and BJP. None of these are a small feat by any measure considering that at each step in his career he had to fight with other politicians who are equally (perhaps more) shrewd and ambitious. He also had to fight other established parties like Congress and Janata (S) to gain support from both the rural and urban electorate. Though money is a very important ingredient to political success, grassroot popularity cannot be maintained with sheer power of money. Politics in India is a lot more complex and multihued for that. Mr. Yeddyurappa for the right reasons is considered the architect of BJP's rise to power in Karnataka. Unfortunately like his unparalleled success, his fall also is equally spectacular. But if one carefully looks at the events that preceded his departure, one can see a pattern. There was an open revolt against him after just one year of him assuming the power. The dissidents complained that he was operating in autocratic style, making all the decisions by himself without involving others particularly for those who belong to his dissident group. BJP worked out a compromise formula but after another year the problem erupted again when there was a cabinet reshuffle. Complaints were almost same except the people complaining, were different.
The pattern is unmistakable: He is popular at grassroot and that popularity gives him immense confidence so much so that he operates like benevolent despot; benevolent for his loyalists, despot for his opponents. For the party his popularity is an asset but his despotism is a liability. Corruption allegation provided for a tacit excuse for the party to take step.
Interestingly this pattern can be seen with almost every successful leader. Success leads to power, power leads to further strengthening of confidence which inflates the ego absolutely and ego brings unilateralism in thinking process finally leading to one's fall.
But can we avoid it? Can You avoid being trapped by your Ego? Here the answer becomes difficult since in effect we are asking the Ego to avoid being trapped by itself! Psychologists agree today that there is no I without Ego. It is this I that grows as we move from childhood to adolescence, adolescence to adulthood and so on. The I that begins Identification is the same I that also is the first letter for Imagination, Intention and Inhibition. In many ways the I that drives one to successes also creates its own trap for failure in its inhibitions. Human mind is quick to find easy patterns; the old patterns that led one to successes or wins [that one identifies with] also create beliefs and repeatable behavioural patterns that create blind-spots. We try to cling on to old winning habits with blind faith that they will create successes again. The blind faith creates a filter for everything that falls out of the known pattern, a huge wall against everything that does not conform to what the mind believes. It creates a set of strong likes and dislikes and makes the decision making a belief-driven action and reaction.
Unfortunately all of these constitute the I, the I that is superlative, the I that is always primary, the I that is first-among-equals; contrary to what reality dictates, this I is oblivious to its relativistic existence. It is therefore as much realistic as much Illusionary.
Reality, however, is fluid, continuous, ever-changing and pervades everything, within and beyond all patterns discernible to human senses. It cannot be reduced to a set of stable patterns that transcend time. The prism of I, therefore needs to be tested all the time against the white-spectrum of reality and adjusted so that I remain congruent to Reality. Since that is difficult for I, the breakdown of its successful patterns is the only way of reality to realign it. In that whole process of finding success patterns and breaking it and again finding next success, gradually mind's sampling universe widens, thereby bringing more nuances to experience-based knowledge, refining to what we know as one's 'wisdom'.
Friday, 24 June 2011
Could Turing imagine?
Alan Turing, the Turing in the famed 'Turing machine', considered the father of modern computer science, would have become 99 this 23rd June, had the British Government not treated him the way it did. On 8th June, 1954, when he committed suicide, did he or could he imagine that his work created a whole new technology that would propel a multi-billion dollar industry in just fifty years? Had he not decided to curtail his life at 41, he could have been the first billionaire of the software industry.
But that is one sad truth of human journey of civilization. Many of the history makers were persecuted in their lifetime by the society du jour and it surely did not start with Socrates.
So how big is the software industry today, really? To find an answer I looked at Gartner's latest news flashes. What I found is mind-boggling.
This year worldwide enterprise software revenue would be around $267 billion [US]. The software services revenue in 2010 was whooping $739 billion! I have provided a chart here that shows what Gartner has projected for next couple of years. As the chart shows, after negative growth of 2.5% in 2009, industry is growing at around 8-9% Y-to-Y.
But that is one sad truth of human journey of civilization. Many of the history makers were persecuted in their lifetime by the society du jour and it surely did not start with Socrates.
So how big is the software industry today, really? To find an answer I looked at Gartner's latest news flashes. What I found is mind-boggling.
This year worldwide enterprise software revenue would be around $267 billion [US]. The software services revenue in 2010 was whooping $739 billion! I have provided a chart here that shows what Gartner has projected for next couple of years. As the chart shows, after negative growth of 2.5% in 2009, industry is growing at around 8-9% Y-to-Y. "The market for enterprise software continues to recover well following the 2009 downturn, with signs of ongoing growth on the horizon," said Joanne Correia, managing vice president at Gartner. "Economic recovery is evident across all regions.”
Gartner says that Enterprise infrastructure software spending is on pace to a $153.3 billion total in 2011, a 9 percent increase from 2010 revenue of $140.6 billion. The market is led by the operating systems (OS) segment in which revenue is projected to reach $32.6 billion in 2011, followed by database management systems (DBMSs) revenue at $25.5 billion.
In fact Microsoft riding on the success of Windows 7 is leading the OS segment [please note that Apple did not figure in this list because they sell combined hardware-software product]. Here is a table from Gartner that provides relative position of worldwide top 5 enterprise software vendors (in Millions of US dollars):
2010 Revenue | 2010 Market Share (%) | 2009 Revenue | 2009 Market Share (%) | 2009-2010 Growth (%) | |
Microsoft | 54,711 | 22.4 | 48,650 | 21.6 | 12.5 |
IBM | 25,436 | 10.4 | 24,073 | 10.7 | 5.7 |
Oracle | 23,918 | 9.8 | 20,037 | 8.9 | 19.4 |
SAP | 12,979 | 5.3 | 11,390 | 5.1 | 13.9 |
Symantec | 5,655 | 2.3 | 5,513 | 2.4 | 2.6 |
Other Vendors | 121,945 | 49.8 | 115,842 | 51.3 | 5.3 |
Total | 244,644 | 100.0 | 225,505 | 100.0 | 8.5 |
Source: Gartner (May 2011)
Now if you consider top 25 vendors instead, VMware leads the group with more than 41% growth in 2010, followed by Adobe with more than 29 percent and salesforce.com with more than 28 percent growth. The top 25 vendors, ranked by total 2010 software revenue, grew more than 11.5 percent overall. These vendors accounted for nearly 68 percent share, or more than $165 billion, of the overall software market.
Worldwide enterprise application software spending is forecast to total $114.4 billion in 2011, a 10.2 percent increase from 2010 spending of $103.8 billion. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is the largest segment within the enterprise application software market. ERP revenue is expected to reach $23.3 billion, followed by office suites with $15.7 billion.
Ms. Correia said. "We have identified a strong correlation between GDP growth and enterprise software spending growth, where software tends to grow 4 to 6 percent above GDP in normal market conditions. However, we do have concerns about the rising cost of commodities, including oil, and its impact on certain regional and country economies."
In contrast , IT services spending grew 3.1 percent to $793 billion in 2010, with IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Fujitsu taking the top three market share berths. 3.1 percen is definitely alarmingly low, however that is lot better compared to the 5.1 percent drop seen during 2009, according to Gartner.
Wouldn't you be curious about how the Indian software services companies fare in this list? India’s top 10 software services companies, including the biggest Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and second biggest Infosys Technologies Ltd, grew nearly 20% last year, outpacing the 5.8% revenue growth of the world’s top 10 companies, according to Gartner. Still, the global market share of the nation’s top 10 software companies, which account for about half the local information industry’s revenue, stood at just 3.6%, highlighting the technology (IT) potential for continued growth, Gartner said.
Agreed that the share of wallet that Indian companies muster is not something that would cheer you up a lot. There could be some upside though. Given that almost all US players from world top 10 list have sizeable presence in India, India's overall share to global software services industry would definitely be more than double the figure quoted by Gartner, although it is quite likely to remain within single digit. That in fact supports Gartner's optimism about Indian software industry: the potential for continued growth. Fact that they show better growth rate, compared to Top 10, is definitely heartening but smaller size of their operation and almost non-existent product-based services portfolio are significant hurdles for them to scale in big way.
However we must not forget that absolutely none can predict the future absolutely, as sad end of Alan Turing exemplifies. Let us, therefore, just raise our glass and say, "Cheers!" to Gartner's optimism.
However we must not forget that absolutely none can predict the future absolutely, as sad end of Alan Turing exemplifies. Let us, therefore, just raise our glass and say, "Cheers!" to Gartner's optimism.
Thursday, 9 June 2011
What's your type?
What is your type?
I suspect that randomly asked, in eighty percent of cases, the answer to this question would be one of the twelve zodiac signs, with exception of few asking back, "in what sense?". Most of us are so used to typify people based on one's zodiac that one hardly ever recognizes that in effect one is hard-fitting a complete personality into a box using a speculative typification which is based on just one data: the day of a month, the person was born. I can bet there are many who would swear by Linda Goodman's book! Few months back a news portal flashed a news that present zodiac chart is inaccurate and as per star positions, we have a new zodiac sign called Ophiuchus. Since the number of months and days in a year did not change, mapping between zodiac signs and days of the year needed to be remapped. As a fallout, this would make many scorpios, libras and so forth. As soon as the news was out, it drew angry reactions from many quarters. I remember one lady from US tweeted that she did not care what people say, she and her daughter were capricorn and will remain capricorn no matter what changes are brought in the chart! Evidently she saw it as a personal attack to her identity even if that identity is shared with million others.
Fact is the need to belong is almost instinctive. Standing on one's own without the psychological support of clannish or type identity is scary for most of us. Most of the ancient religious texts said something in the effect that every creature is created uniquely by GOD. Even for those who are not GOD-fearing, science has enough proof that each individual is unique. Before geneticists came, we learned that each individual has unique fingerprint and retina-print. After geneticists came, they proved beyond doubt that DNA fingerprint can uniquely identify every human being that ever lived on this planet. That, however does not change our inclination to look for 'types'!
Medical Scientists have been trying to find types for many decades. There is no denying that we all fall into only few blood groups. But blood-groups do not describe your persona. So there was a need to psychologically classify people. We want to know what is inside a person! The approach that medical scientists took for classifying blood groups, evidently could not be used here given the unbelievable complexity of human brain and shallowness of objective knowledge about human mind.
Birth of psychological classification
Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology though laid the foundation for modern psychoanalysis, it was his mentee (till they fell apart) Carl G. Jung who actually started the process of defining psychological archetypes. Jung believed that people are intrinsically either introvert or extrovert and introvert people behave differently than the extrovert [although Jungians use the word extravert] people. In his model of human psyche, psyche is an apparatus for adaptation [to environment stimulii] and orientation and it expresses through a set of psychological functions that underlie one's behavioural disposition. He identified following functions:
Rational functions: Thinking as opposed to Feeling
Irrational functions: Sensing [conscious perceiving] as opposed to Intuiting [unconscious perceiving]
Behaviour is essentially an expression of these functions operated through one's intrinsic disposition of extroversion/introversion.
This model first published in 1921 in his seminal book, Psychological Types, is still the basic conceptual framework for many of the psychometric tests that are in vogue today. Most notable of the lot is Myer-Brigg-Type-Indicator [MBTI] Test which is used in many corporate setup even today.
MBTI Psychometric Types
During the World-war II when women joined industry workforce in mass-scale, Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers set forth to create a personality inventory in order that a candidate could find the job that matches her personal preference. Using Jungian Type model, they came up with their Psychometric Tests which became popular as MBTI test. They defined four independent ranges that could describe one's psychological characteristics. The ranges or to use their word, dichotomies, come in four pair:
I -E [Introversion - Extraversion]
N-S [iNtuition - Sensing]
T-F [Thinking - Feeling]
J-P [Judging - Perceiving]
If you notice, they took the implicit judgement attribute out of Jung's type model and separated them as fourth parameters. J-P defines your style preference between judging and perceiving , T-F assesses your judging function whereas N-S assesses your perceiving function.
Based on the answers to the MBTI questionnaire, one gets a score that pegs them in the four dimensional space and that becomes one's type indicator. For example, ESTJ category of people are predominantly Extrovert with Judgmental predisposition and prefers to use Sensing and Thinking functions. Based on the huge sampling that they got, they went on further describing each type and even today if you take the test, you are likely to match the description to your category. In case you are interested, I have provided few references, at the end of this post, that allow you to take online free test without needing to disclose your personal credentials. In a team setup, it often helps to be aware of your co-worker types and a healthy team should have good mix rather than a predominantly single type. In some organizations, this is also used for career development.
DISC
MBTI is not the only test, in fact there are more than a handful different psychometric tests; each designed with specific goal in mind. Of all the different types of tests that I have undergone [or I was made to undergo!] beside MBTI, one I remember well is DISC. This test unlike the MBTI, tries to rate you in four different dimensions of behaviour: Drive,Influence,Steadiness and Compliance. The 24-question test tries to assess where you stand in these four dimensions. Since your psychological traits manifest in your behvaiour, it is expected that behavioural assessment gives you relatively fixed coordinates about your own psyche, unless you lie to the tests!
None of these tests are without their critical lacunae. However applicability is driven by the sampling that each test has covered. Even though MBTI is criticized for leaving vagueness in actionable aspects of its type indicator, it is most widely adopted test as of today [total sampling has crossed more than 300 millions]
OCEAN or Big-5 personality Test
Since MBTI came up, analytical psychology covered some distances and newly acquired knowledge helped people to understand and define more elaborate tests that expect to identify psychological types with more clarity. The most notable of the lot is OCEAN or big-5 personality model. OCEAN model originated in the 60's but it was not until 90's that psychologists accepted this as a better model. A lot of its success could be attributed to its approval from geneticist who after all genome studies, came in a big way in researching about heritability of human personality. OCEAN unlike other models, used a broad-based research across races and regions and then categorization to come up with five primary traits that is supposed to encompass all personality definitions.
OCEAN stands for Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism.
Each trait define a dimension of human personality.
Openness refers to the dimension ranging from liberal, imaginative, curiousness, interested in new experiences to conservative, traditional, and conforming. Like all of these five traits, people will fall somewhere on a continuum, with most falling somewhere in the middle.
Conscientiousness dimension ranges from organized, careful, and determined to careless, and weak-minded. Those on the high end of this factor may be seen as stoic, cold, and methodical. Those on the low end may be seen as gullible, followers, or may see the needs of others as always superseding their own.
Extraversion refers to the qualities ranging from outgoing, extrovert, energetic, party-loving to reserved, solitary, closed.
Agreeableness ranges from qualities like friendly, compassionate, helpful, kind to unkind, suspicious, cold.
Neuroticism refers to traits that range from anxiety, anger, controlling, nervousness to calm,self-assured, secure, confident disposition.
OCEAN personality test provides a score on each dimension. For example 57-49-54-42-48 means the person falls in 57th percentile in the Openness dimension, 49th percentile in Conscientiousness dimension and so forth. Although this is the one model that seem to gathered blessing from most of the scientific community, it is not without criticism. There are studies that argue that there are personalities that the scale cannot include. Compared to Jung type model, OCEAN is more a bottom-up approach and therefore more objective, like blood-groups. What it tells about the person and how it helps is a domain of psychologists and very specific to the person.
However more often than not you hear less about these types and more about Type-A, Type -B personality or Alpha male/female type. These types were loosely coined by cardiologist [again medical professionals] in the 50s to describe people with high risk for heart diseases. The Type-A or [Alpha type] people are described as aggressive, ambitious, control-freak [kind of bull-dog Boss type] and therefore stress-prone and therefore with higher risk to heart diseases. These, as you can understand, have little merits or rigour and therefore not worthy of your attention.
Online Tests
I compiled few online free tests that are available today, in case you want to try yourself:
1. MBTI free offline test
2. MBTI online test Please note that this test is not free.
3. DISC free online test
4. OCEAN free online test
I suspect that randomly asked, in eighty percent of cases, the answer to this question would be one of the twelve zodiac signs, with exception of few asking back, "in what sense?". Most of us are so used to typify people based on one's zodiac that one hardly ever recognizes that in effect one is hard-fitting a complete personality into a box using a speculative typification which is based on just one data: the day of a month, the person was born. I can bet there are many who would swear by Linda Goodman's book! Few months back a news portal flashed a news that present zodiac chart is inaccurate and as per star positions, we have a new zodiac sign called Ophiuchus. Since the number of months and days in a year did not change, mapping between zodiac signs and days of the year needed to be remapped. As a fallout, this would make many scorpios, libras and so forth. As soon as the news was out, it drew angry reactions from many quarters. I remember one lady from US tweeted that she did not care what people say, she and her daughter were capricorn and will remain capricorn no matter what changes are brought in the chart! Evidently she saw it as a personal attack to her identity even if that identity is shared with million others.
Fact is the need to belong is almost instinctive. Standing on one's own without the psychological support of clannish or type identity is scary for most of us. Most of the ancient religious texts said something in the effect that every creature is created uniquely by GOD. Even for those who are not GOD-fearing, science has enough proof that each individual is unique. Before geneticists came, we learned that each individual has unique fingerprint and retina-print. After geneticists came, they proved beyond doubt that DNA fingerprint can uniquely identify every human being that ever lived on this planet. That, however does not change our inclination to look for 'types'!
Medical Scientists have been trying to find types for many decades. There is no denying that we all fall into only few blood groups. But blood-groups do not describe your persona. So there was a need to psychologically classify people. We want to know what is inside a person! The approach that medical scientists took for classifying blood groups, evidently could not be used here given the unbelievable complexity of human brain and shallowness of objective knowledge about human mind.
Birth of psychological classification
Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology though laid the foundation for modern psychoanalysis, it was his mentee (till they fell apart) Carl G. Jung who actually started the process of defining psychological archetypes. Jung believed that people are intrinsically either introvert or extrovert and introvert people behave differently than the extrovert [although Jungians use the word extravert] people. In his model of human psyche, psyche is an apparatus for adaptation [to environment stimulii] and orientation and it expresses through a set of psychological functions that underlie one's behavioural disposition. He identified following functions:
Rational functions: Thinking as opposed to Feeling
Irrational functions: Sensing [conscious perceiving] as opposed to Intuiting [unconscious perceiving]
Behaviour is essentially an expression of these functions operated through one's intrinsic disposition of extroversion/introversion.
This model first published in 1921 in his seminal book, Psychological Types, is still the basic conceptual framework for many of the psychometric tests that are in vogue today. Most notable of the lot is Myer-Brigg-Type-Indicator [MBTI] Test which is used in many corporate setup even today.
MBTI Psychometric Types
During the World-war II when women joined industry workforce in mass-scale, Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers set forth to create a personality inventory in order that a candidate could find the job that matches her personal preference. Using Jungian Type model, they came up with their Psychometric Tests which became popular as MBTI test. They defined four independent ranges that could describe one's psychological characteristics. The ranges or to use their word, dichotomies, come in four pair:
I -E [Introversion - Extraversion]
N-S [iNtuition - Sensing]
T-F [Thinking - Feeling]
J-P [Judging - Perceiving]
If you notice, they took the implicit judgement attribute out of Jung's type model and separated them as fourth parameters. J-P defines your style preference between judging and perceiving , T-F assesses your judging function whereas N-S assesses your perceiving function.
Based on the answers to the MBTI questionnaire, one gets a score that pegs them in the four dimensional space and that becomes one's type indicator. For example, ESTJ category of people are predominantly Extrovert with Judgmental predisposition and prefers to use Sensing and Thinking functions. Based on the huge sampling that they got, they went on further describing each type and even today if you take the test, you are likely to match the description to your category. In case you are interested, I have provided few references, at the end of this post, that allow you to take online free test without needing to disclose your personal credentials. In a team setup, it often helps to be aware of your co-worker types and a healthy team should have good mix rather than a predominantly single type. In some organizations, this is also used for career development.
DISC
MBTI is not the only test, in fact there are more than a handful different psychometric tests; each designed with specific goal in mind. Of all the different types of tests that I have undergone [or I was made to undergo!] beside MBTI, one I remember well is DISC. This test unlike the MBTI, tries to rate you in four different dimensions of behaviour: Drive,Influence,Steadiness and Compliance. The 24-question test tries to assess where you stand in these four dimensions. Since your psychological traits manifest in your behvaiour, it is expected that behavioural assessment gives you relatively fixed coordinates about your own psyche, unless you lie to the tests!
None of these tests are without their critical lacunae. However applicability is driven by the sampling that each test has covered. Even though MBTI is criticized for leaving vagueness in actionable aspects of its type indicator, it is most widely adopted test as of today [total sampling has crossed more than 300 millions]
OCEAN or Big-5 personality Test
Since MBTI came up, analytical psychology covered some distances and newly acquired knowledge helped people to understand and define more elaborate tests that expect to identify psychological types with more clarity. The most notable of the lot is OCEAN or big-5 personality model. OCEAN model originated in the 60's but it was not until 90's that psychologists accepted this as a better model. A lot of its success could be attributed to its approval from geneticist who after all genome studies, came in a big way in researching about heritability of human personality. OCEAN unlike other models, used a broad-based research across races and regions and then categorization to come up with five primary traits that is supposed to encompass all personality definitions.
OCEAN stands for Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism.
Each trait define a dimension of human personality.
Openness refers to the dimension ranging from liberal, imaginative, curiousness, interested in new experiences to conservative, traditional, and conforming. Like all of these five traits, people will fall somewhere on a continuum, with most falling somewhere in the middle.
Conscientiousness dimension ranges from organized, careful, and determined to careless, and weak-minded. Those on the high end of this factor may be seen as stoic, cold, and methodical. Those on the low end may be seen as gullible, followers, or may see the needs of others as always superseding their own.
Extraversion refers to the qualities ranging from outgoing, extrovert, energetic, party-loving to reserved, solitary, closed.
Agreeableness ranges from qualities like friendly, compassionate, helpful, kind to unkind, suspicious, cold.
Neuroticism refers to traits that range from anxiety, anger, controlling, nervousness to calm,self-assured, secure, confident disposition.
OCEAN personality test provides a score on each dimension. For example 57-49-54-42-48 means the person falls in 57th percentile in the Openness dimension, 49th percentile in Conscientiousness dimension and so forth. Although this is the one model that seem to gathered blessing from most of the scientific community, it is not without criticism. There are studies that argue that there are personalities that the scale cannot include. Compared to Jung type model, OCEAN is more a bottom-up approach and therefore more objective, like blood-groups. What it tells about the person and how it helps is a domain of psychologists and very specific to the person.
However more often than not you hear less about these types and more about Type-A, Type -B personality or Alpha male/female type. These types were loosely coined by cardiologist [again medical professionals] in the 50s to describe people with high risk for heart diseases. The Type-A or [Alpha type] people are described as aggressive, ambitious, control-freak [kind of bull-dog Boss type] and therefore stress-prone and therefore with higher risk to heart diseases. These, as you can understand, have little merits or rigour and therefore not worthy of your attention.
Online Tests
I compiled few online free tests that are available today, in case you want to try yourself:
1. MBTI free offline test
2. MBTI online test Please note that this test is not free.
3. DISC free online test
4. OCEAN free online test
Wednesday, 18 May 2011
India vs China : where do we stand?
Comparison between India and China is the most hotly debated topic (at least) among Indians after Pakistan-India debate lost the steam few years back. I did a comparison almost a year back in this blog [2010 July posts] and quite coincidentally Amartya Sen wrote in many papers in about a week or two after that, as a clarification of his standpoint on this issue. Obviously he was being asked the same question in many forums around the globe.
After almost a year, we still have reasons for revisiting this topic. In my mind the reasons are 1. both China and India published their provisional census data, 2. we have latest business data coming out of China and 3. Amartya Sen wrote again on the topic in NY times! [look at the bottom of this post for the link.]
Comparisons are always made on certain parameters and choice of those parameters are crucial; the parameters have to be relevant, objective and useful. There is no point in comparing culture or happiness quotient here for they do not provide any objective basis of comparison. However, population and its growth, literacy [for it gives an indication of skilled labour strenght], revenue, GDP make good parameters for comparison [Let's skip the defense now]. So let's look at our recent data.
Population:
China: 1,339,724,852 India: 1,210,193,422. India is still around 130 million short
Decade growth rate:
China: 73.9 million (5.84%) India: 181 million (17.64%). China is in much better stage.
Literacy (%)
China: 95.92 India: 74.04
Higher literacy almost always indicates better preparedness for skilled jobs and therefore higher productivity.
Economy
GDP Ranking
As per 2010 data, China ranks 2nd [with around US $5.8 trillion]
and India ranks 10th [with US $1.5 trillion] if you use market currency conversion rate.
A better approach is to use Purchasing Parity Power. However the PPP calculation pulls India a lot closer to China. As per the 2010 PPP-based list, China continues to rank 2nd (with US $10 trillion) but India moves up to 4th rank with US $4 trillion GDP!
Growth
Asian Development Bank's 2011 outlook report projects
China's GDP for 2011 : 9.6% [down from 10.3% in 2010]
Inflation Rate for 2011: 4.6% [up from 3% from 2010]
Compare that with the following projection
India's GDP for 2011: 8.2% [down from 8.6% in 2010]
Inflation rate for 2011: 7.8% [down from estimated average of 9.2% in 2010].
Evidently inflation is eating away many benefits of growth. ADB report suggests that inflation, by impacting the poor section of the country more harshly, in effect is increasing the rich-poor divide in the country. China on the other hand has fared much better in distributing equity [we have covered this in my earlier post]. We all know that China's economy has surplus in almost every aspects with a huge cash reserve and export surplus with almost every other country. Worth noting that India's export deficit to China increased to US $11.4 billion this April although India's export to China increased by 11.7% since last April. China's unequalled growth in manufacturing sector has been one of the strongest drivers for strong export oriented growth. However Chain's domestic market is not too bad either. One of the very recent feats that China achieved is that it became the world's largest market for automobiles this year pushing US aside.
ADB warns that India's largest challenge for the next few years would be containing the inflation. The warning looks very real for many of the banks in developed countries have started questioning the prospect of mid-term growth for investments in many developing countries with rising inflation.
Look at the following chart from Reuters:
http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/11/05/GLB_EMVAL0511_SB.jpg
http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/11/05/GLB_MRGDVVL0511_VF.jpg
If the inflation pressure does not ease, there is a high probability that with the recovery of developed economies, funds will fly back to the developed nations even if the return continues to remain low.
The silver line is that growing intolerance to corruption and increased development focus in India are of late, showing some positive result in India's governance story. As many stalwarts have mentioned, only better governance, increased transparency are the key to better financial efficiency. India is a country with diverse interests and diverse equity, only public participation and transparent governance can fill myriads of lacunae in the equity distribution and thereby emergence of India as a powerful nation. Without economic development of socially weak sections, no nation can realistically aspire to become powerful.
If you are looking for more profound analysis, follow this link to read the article from Dr. Amartya Sen.
After almost a year, we still have reasons for revisiting this topic. In my mind the reasons are 1. both China and India published their provisional census data, 2. we have latest business data coming out of China and 3. Amartya Sen wrote again on the topic in NY times! [look at the bottom of this post for the link.]
Comparisons are always made on certain parameters and choice of those parameters are crucial; the parameters have to be relevant, objective and useful. There is no point in comparing culture or happiness quotient here for they do not provide any objective basis of comparison. However, population and its growth, literacy [for it gives an indication of skilled labour strenght], revenue, GDP make good parameters for comparison [Let's skip the defense now]. So let's look at our recent data.
Population:
China: 1,339,724,852 India: 1,210,193,422. India is still around 130 million short
Decade growth rate:
China: 73.9 million (5.84%) India: 181 million (17.64%). China is in much better stage.
Literacy (%)
China: 95.92 India: 74.04
Higher literacy almost always indicates better preparedness for skilled jobs and therefore higher productivity.
Economy
GDP Ranking
As per 2010 data, China ranks 2nd [with around US $5.8 trillion]
and India ranks 10th [with US $1.5 trillion] if you use market currency conversion rate.
A better approach is to use Purchasing Parity Power. However the PPP calculation pulls India a lot closer to China. As per the 2010 PPP-based list, China continues to rank 2nd (with US $10 trillion) but India moves up to 4th rank with US $4 trillion GDP!
Growth
Asian Development Bank's 2011 outlook report projects
China's GDP for 2011 : 9.6% [down from 10.3% in 2010]
Inflation Rate for 2011: 4.6% [up from 3% from 2010]
Compare that with the following projection
India's GDP for 2011: 8.2% [down from 8.6% in 2010]
Inflation rate for 2011: 7.8% [down from estimated average of 9.2% in 2010].
Evidently inflation is eating away many benefits of growth. ADB report suggests that inflation, by impacting the poor section of the country more harshly, in effect is increasing the rich-poor divide in the country. China on the other hand has fared much better in distributing equity [we have covered this in my earlier post]. We all know that China's economy has surplus in almost every aspects with a huge cash reserve and export surplus with almost every other country. Worth noting that India's export deficit to China increased to US $11.4 billion this April although India's export to China increased by 11.7% since last April. China's unequalled growth in manufacturing sector has been one of the strongest drivers for strong export oriented growth. However Chain's domestic market is not too bad either. One of the very recent feats that China achieved is that it became the world's largest market for automobiles this year pushing US aside.
ADB warns that India's largest challenge for the next few years would be containing the inflation. The warning looks very real for many of the banks in developed countries have started questioning the prospect of mid-term growth for investments in many developing countries with rising inflation.
Look at the following chart from Reuters:
http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/11/05/GLB_EMVAL0511_SB.jpg
http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/11/05/GLB_MRGDVVL0511_VF.jpg
If the inflation pressure does not ease, there is a high probability that with the recovery of developed economies, funds will fly back to the developed nations even if the return continues to remain low.
The silver line is that growing intolerance to corruption and increased development focus in India are of late, showing some positive result in India's governance story. As many stalwarts have mentioned, only better governance, increased transparency are the key to better financial efficiency. India is a country with diverse interests and diverse equity, only public participation and transparent governance can fill myriads of lacunae in the equity distribution and thereby emergence of India as a powerful nation. Without economic development of socially weak sections, no nation can realistically aspire to become powerful.
If you are looking for more profound analysis, follow this link to read the article from Dr. Amartya Sen.
Wednesday, 20 April 2011
Wonders of brain
Few years back I chanced upon a computer generated image of three-dimensional synaptic map of brain. The subtext commented that the image looked uncannily similar to the universe that we know of with galaxies, super galaxies, nebula spread across light years. While the image looked impressive the comparison did not. With visible matter [that forms galaxies, super galaxies and so on] only constituting 1% of the total mass in Universe, we hardly have a clear picture of Universe. That said, one cannot miss one ironic commonality that brain and the universe both fall in the lowest-precision-human-knowledge category. It is hardly surprising that lion's share of present popular science literature are on either cosmology or neuroscience.
I, being an expert in neither of these fields, find it lot easier to talk about the mysteries with an excitement of a wide-eyed boy who feels no burden to theorize or explain with rigour, the 'why' and 'how' part of intricately complex pieces of creation.
So it amazes me that human brain in average has about 100 billion (1011) neurons and 100 trillion(1014) synapses. It also is exciting to know that from the perspective of evolution, neocortex is the latest addition in the brain structure and only mammals have that. Neocortex is the most complex part of brain and is made up of 6 layers that actually is responsible for processing all sensory information, breaking down into canonical patterns that form the 'actionable memory'. In human, 90% of cortex is essentially neocortex. Science also educated us that there is a 'slow path' and corresponding 'fast path' for decision making in brain. Slow path goes through cortex and typically is more precise compared to fast path. We also know now that amygdala plays central role in all our emotions and it is tightly connected to cortex. With so massive and intricate structures in place, initial few years of our development are mostly spent in developing the networks between the neurons. Now what happens if for some reason connections are not established properly, what happens if some structural error happens during the connection development?
Well, possibilities are immense, but our knowledge is very limited. While most are in the realm of speculation, there are few exceptions, like Autism which scientists believe is a clear case where unusual change happens during initial wiring of neurons.
Thanks to the beautifully made movies like, 'Tare Zameen par' and 'Rainman' many are aware of the problem of Autism. For others, Autism is a neurological development disorder that sets off before the age of 3 years. It is characterized by impaired social and/or communication skill, sometimes inability to differentiate left/right or order, repetitive body movement and/or unusual attachment to objects and routines. They typically have problems associated with numbers and language.
While there are no clear winning theories on how and how this disorder happens, a general understanding is it is an effect of lower connectivity in different regions of cortex. Lately fMRI and PET scanning based studies are undertaken but results are far from conclusive. "Oculomotor studies have provided evidence of neocortical dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex and connections to the parietal lobe... Perception is accomplished in the brain by means of a parietal pathway for spatial and motor function and a temporal pathway for identification of objects, faces, and gestures. Anomalies in the amygdala and other structures of the medial temporal lobe have been demonstrated repeatedly in autism spectrum disorders, suggesting involvement of the temporal pathway for visuoperceptual processing."
An interesting observation is that the male-to-female ratio of patients with autistic disorder is approximately 3-4:1 i.e. autism is manifested more in male children. This observation leads to a hypothesis that certain genetic pattern, particularly X chromosome play a role in the development of autistic syndrome, however there is no defining proof for that.
Dr. Baron-Cohen, a leading expert in autism related disorders has a theory. "In the general population, you find that, on average, males have a stronger drive to systemize and females have a stronger drive to empathize. Those are the 2 cognitive processes we've been focusing on to try to understand autism and why it should be more common among boys than girls. We've found that people on the autistic spectrum show an exaggeration of the male profile."
He adds, "when we started working in this area, we set up a model as if these 2 things were independent of each other. But as we've tested more individuals, we've found there's some kind of trade-off, so that people who are good at one tend to be worse at the other. Systemizing is the drive to analyze or construct a system. The key thing is that when you systemize, you identify the rules or the laws that govern that system in order to predict how it will behave." He argues that this is more a male trait and in many cases the parents' brains actually show enhanced systemizing skill.
While there are common patterns demonstrated by autistic child, there are cases where an autistic person develops exceptional number and memory skill. Most well-known is the case of Daniel Tammet. Daniel is born on 31st Jan, 1979 in Britain and is diagnosed as autistic child. While he has autistic traits in terms of his social skill and his obsession with routine, he already has many exceptional feats under his belt.
He calculates faster than a calculator. He speaks many languages. To be precise he speaks almost all European languages including the most difficult Icelandic too. It is said that Icelandic is one of the difficult languages to learn and he amazed the observers by mastering the language in 7 days flat.
In 2004 he set a new record by recalling the value of pi till 22,514 decimal places. He took 5 hours to do that. He says that he does not see numbers, he actually sees them as shapes, colors, textures. He wrote couple of books and the first one, Born on a Blue day, which is his autobiography, has become a bestseller in UK. The Guardian wrote an excellent article on him in case you want to find more. The same article talks about another autistic person who played a complex classical piece on piano after hearing it for the first time though he did not have much piano experience earlier.
The cases of Daniel and many other autistic savants, show us how amazing this fatty stuff inside our skull is. A disability in turn bring out another exceptional mental faculty. Some say that these faculties are available in normal brain too but inaccessible to conscious part of the brain. It is evident that evolution has already gifted lot more to us than we are aware of. It is no wonder that we only use 10% of our brain capacity since most of our so called 'mental exercise' is nothing but reactive and repetitive thought process.
I, being an expert in neither of these fields, find it lot easier to talk about the mysteries with an excitement of a wide-eyed boy who feels no burden to theorize or explain with rigour, the 'why' and 'how' part of intricately complex pieces of creation.
So it amazes me that human brain in average has about 100 billion (1011) neurons and 100 trillion(1014) synapses. It also is exciting to know that from the perspective of evolution, neocortex is the latest addition in the brain structure and only mammals have that. Neocortex is the most complex part of brain and is made up of 6 layers that actually is responsible for processing all sensory information, breaking down into canonical patterns that form the 'actionable memory'. In human, 90% of cortex is essentially neocortex. Science also educated us that there is a 'slow path' and corresponding 'fast path' for decision making in brain. Slow path goes through cortex and typically is more precise compared to fast path. We also know now that amygdala plays central role in all our emotions and it is tightly connected to cortex. With so massive and intricate structures in place, initial few years of our development are mostly spent in developing the networks between the neurons. Now what happens if for some reason connections are not established properly, what happens if some structural error happens during the connection development?
Well, possibilities are immense, but our knowledge is very limited. While most are in the realm of speculation, there are few exceptions, like Autism which scientists believe is a clear case where unusual change happens during initial wiring of neurons.
Thanks to the beautifully made movies like, 'Tare Zameen par' and 'Rainman' many are aware of the problem of Autism. For others, Autism is a neurological development disorder that sets off before the age of 3 years. It is characterized by impaired social and/or communication skill, sometimes inability to differentiate left/right or order, repetitive body movement and/or unusual attachment to objects and routines. They typically have problems associated with numbers and language.
While there are no clear winning theories on how and how this disorder happens, a general understanding is it is an effect of lower connectivity in different regions of cortex. Lately fMRI and PET scanning based studies are undertaken but results are far from conclusive. "Oculomotor studies have provided evidence of neocortical dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex and connections to the parietal lobe... Perception is accomplished in the brain by means of a parietal pathway for spatial and motor function and a temporal pathway for identification of objects, faces, and gestures. Anomalies in the amygdala and other structures of the medial temporal lobe have been demonstrated repeatedly in autism spectrum disorders, suggesting involvement of the temporal pathway for visuoperceptual processing."
An interesting observation is that the male-to-female ratio of patients with autistic disorder is approximately 3-4:1 i.e. autism is manifested more in male children. This observation leads to a hypothesis that certain genetic pattern, particularly X chromosome play a role in the development of autistic syndrome, however there is no defining proof for that.
Dr. Baron-Cohen, a leading expert in autism related disorders has a theory. "In the general population, you find that, on average, males have a stronger drive to systemize and females have a stronger drive to empathize. Those are the 2 cognitive processes we've been focusing on to try to understand autism and why it should be more common among boys than girls. We've found that people on the autistic spectrum show an exaggeration of the male profile."
He adds, "when we started working in this area, we set up a model as if these 2 things were independent of each other. But as we've tested more individuals, we've found there's some kind of trade-off, so that people who are good at one tend to be worse at the other. Systemizing is the drive to analyze or construct a system. The key thing is that when you systemize, you identify the rules or the laws that govern that system in order to predict how it will behave." He argues that this is more a male trait and in many cases the parents' brains actually show enhanced systemizing skill.
While there are common patterns demonstrated by autistic child, there are cases where an autistic person develops exceptional number and memory skill. Most well-known is the case of Daniel Tammet. Daniel is born on 31st Jan, 1979 in Britain and is diagnosed as autistic child. While he has autistic traits in terms of his social skill and his obsession with routine, he already has many exceptional feats under his belt.
He calculates faster than a calculator. He speaks many languages. To be precise he speaks almost all European languages including the most difficult Icelandic too. It is said that Icelandic is one of the difficult languages to learn and he amazed the observers by mastering the language in 7 days flat.
In 2004 he set a new record by recalling the value of pi till 22,514 decimal places. He took 5 hours to do that. He says that he does not see numbers, he actually sees them as shapes, colors, textures. He wrote couple of books and the first one, Born on a Blue day, which is his autobiography, has become a bestseller in UK. The Guardian wrote an excellent article on him in case you want to find more. The same article talks about another autistic person who played a complex classical piece on piano after hearing it for the first time though he did not have much piano experience earlier.
The cases of Daniel and many other autistic savants, show us how amazing this fatty stuff inside our skull is. A disability in turn bring out another exceptional mental faculty. Some say that these faculties are available in normal brain too but inaccessible to conscious part of the brain. It is evident that evolution has already gifted lot more to us than we are aware of. It is no wonder that we only use 10% of our brain capacity since most of our so called 'mental exercise' is nothing but reactive and repetitive thought process.
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