The Science of Everyday Thinking on EdX

I had the pleasure of completing 'The Science of Everyday Thinking' on EdX recently. The course deals with a lot of stuff i've been thinking about for the past few years, so I noted a lot of my thoughts.

Illusions

The course begins by stressing that it is really difficult to put yourself in the shoes of others. We over estimate the abilities of others to know what we know. An example of this is when we tap out a song on a table. We expect 25% of people to guess the song correctly but in reality only 2.5% do.

We're great at pattern recognition, maybe even too good at it. Things float to the top of our minds that match our expectations, so we see real effects in noisy data, for example -  a face on toast. We sharpen things to what we expect to see - the 'expectancy effect' - and level those that we don't.

The course also stresses on how faulty memory can be. Memory is not like a video camera. Every time we remember something we reconstruct past events in our mind. I have had personal experience with this when helping one of my classmates at uni with false memory experiments. It was interesting to see how people really believed that they had seen something when they hadn't. I do this to, which is why I now write down certain events immediately after they happen so I don't get sequences of events mixed up.

We exhibit Naive Realism - we think the world is as we perceive it to be. This is wrong.

We exhibit fundamental cognitive error - we tend to underestimate the contribution of our beliefs and theories to observation and judgement, and fail to realise how many other ways that they could have been interpreted. 

Know Yourself

Planning fallacy - we are terrible at planning or judgement-making or self-assessment. Examples are driving, attractiveness & morals. Even though we fall on a bell curve for some of these, and 50% of the population falls below the median, we are incapable of accepting that we could be in the bottom half. Statistically speaking we all have to be under 50% at some point, but we will never admit it.

I've seen this first hand when planning my own goals. Many a time, I've planned out a journey assuming I'd be ready by a certain time only to find I've taken longer to get ready. I overestimate my own ability to be ready in time. It's the same with my learning goals. I keep subscribing to the belief that I am a super-fast learner and can do multiple courses at once, and I always end up struggling with too many things on my plate. I've learned to cut back and take things slower. No one can be great at everything. I've also seen this when proof-reading for foreign students au University. Students would be incredulous at the number of mistakes I found in their writing and the amount of re-writing that was required. They thought their grammar was decent, when it wasn't. Their unrealistic expectations were tied to incorrect evaluations of their own abilities.

The false-consensus effect - we overestimate the extent to which our beliefs are typical of those of others. We believe that other people generally think like us. Important to be reminded that this is not the case.

People don't even know what makes them happy. The true reasons people are happy are usually different from the reasons they provide. I need to do a separate post of happiness as I'm currently researching this. 

Job interviews are usually bad because of confirmation bias - interviewers see what they expect to see. They make up their mind about a candidate soon after they meet them and then only ask questions that confirm their beliefs. Structured interviews, where every candidate is asked the same question, are better. 

People tend to exaggerate the long term emotion effects that events have on us. In reality, emotional trauma can have bad effects on us but for the most part we tend to over-emphasise their effects.

People have a strong 'order effect' when selecting from an identical pool - they mostly pick what's on the right. And then they don't believe the reason why -  which shows that we don't know ourselves well. We don't even know why we make certain choices.

Intuition and Rationality

Kahneman differentiates between System 1 and system 2 thinking i.e intuition and rational thought.

The Anchoring Effect is powerful - but be careful of noise in the data.

The Representativeness Heuristic - the frequency or likelihood of an event by the extent to which it resembles the typical case.

But from a practical point of view, do be careful of thinking too statistically - in the Rudy the farmer  example, where there are far more farmers than lawyers, statistically it would make sense to pick farmer as the option but a bit more context would propbably point towards one of the other options like lawyer.

Learning

I really enjoyed this part of the course as I could take away more from this part than any other. Keys to learning better are to - 

Distribute practice over time - spacing helps. 

Set calendar reminders.

Use Retrieval practice - instead of merely re-reading material, cover and try to recall it.

Learn by doing - practice and discuss the content.

Vary the settings in which learning takes place.

Relate learning to your everyday experiences.

An important thing to remember is to not mistake fluency with learning. If you're finding a new topic too easy, you're probably not learning it well enough. You only think you understand it.

Experiments

Beware the Gamblers Fallacy.

Apple's shuffle feature - people don't understand how randomisation works, Apple had to make their product less random so people would perceive it as being more random even though it wasn't.

Finding Things Out

Many phenomena are simply examples of Regression towards the Mean - things balance out. This is more apparent when there is more noise in measurement.

Also, Post hoc ergo propter hoc - we assume a causes b because b followed a. It's kind of like those other common biases that make us believe in superstitions, like correlation is not causation, or false premise reasoning, or circular reasoning.

Experiments show that for most competencies, there is no diff between large and small class sizes.

Six leads to opinion change -

What do you really believe anyway?

How well based is your belief?

How good is the evidence?

Does the evidence really contradict what you believe?

What would be enough to change your mind?

Is it worth finding out about?

Extraordinary Claims

There are multiple ways you can interpret things.

Question your intuitions and be willing to give them up.

People tend to accept information that is consistent with their pre-existing beliefs at face value, but critically scrutinise information that contradicts their beliefs.

Health Claims

Pseudo-scientists tend to make ambiguous statements that you can contort to your expectations.

The Placebo Effect can be a false positive response, but most are Regression to the Mean. People seek help when they are sickest.

The Availability Heuristic - if a treatment turned out negative, you would never hear about it. 

Like cures like - a diluted part of the disease can cure the disease - is a common false belief. 

Natural is not necessarily better - arsenic is not good for you, indoor plumbing is.

Clustered disease is possibly the availability heuristic. You're confusing normal randomness and noise for an actual effect. You need to create and test a hypothesis to determine if a true effect like cancer clusters exist in a population.

Always ask - what about the other 3 cells? Given that you can have true positives, true negatives, false positives and false negatives, always look at the costs and benefits of the two ways that you can be wrong.

Applied Claims

For example - facilitated communication, forensic science, conspiracy theories, gun laws, gay marriage, asylum seekers.

The Expectancy Effect affects interpretation of forensic evidence like DNA. Experts who expect or desire to see something see the evidence in ways that are consistent with what they want to see - this is in part helpful, but can be disastrous.

People tend to focus exclusively on what they consider to be the evidence.

Belief in conspiracy theories is mostly cherry picking information.

False consensus effect - everyone thinks that everyone agrees with them.

Exploiting the Situation

There is not much correlation between personality and cheating, it is more about the situation. Certain situations can encourage honesty. 

Social conformity, the bystander effect, attribution error.

We assume that the way we see the World is the only way to see the world and anyone else that sees it differently is wrong and we attribute it to their  education, personal biases, propaganda, lower intelligence.

Milgram experiment - authority factor, diffusion of responsibility factor, channel factor (increase in shocks in incremental steps), no clear exit.

Nudging changes the channel factors to induce behavioural change.

Putting it all together

Be aware of your intuitions.

Have a healthy skepticism.

Simulate your future desirable performance in the present.

Test hypotheses.

Pick a few areas where you want to change what you're doing w.r.t thinking and personal biases, and focus on those.

Just because something is portrayed confidently doesn't mean it's true.

Read.

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I really enjoyed the course. I initially felt that the instructors spent way too much time on discussing personal biases and our inability to be objective and accurate with our perceptions and beliefs, and that they were repeating these points through the first half of the course, but I see now how useful and essential this was. Indeed, only good can come from these constant reminders.

Throughout the course, I was reminded of the biases people use to justify their superstitions and irrational beliefs, and why they won't change their minds even after being presented with evidence. For some reason or another, people will believe what they want to believe, and then pick and choose evidence to confirm that belief. They will see patterns where there are none because that is what they would expect of that belief. It helps if the belief is vague to begin with. This makes it easier to confuse noise for a true effect. They will assume that everyone should think this way. They will not understand that everything they see and interpret this way can be interpreted in many different ways by different people. They will not accept that their beliefs are a result of critical reasoning flaws or cognitive biases, nor be willing to test and verify their beliefs experimentally.

The Science of Everyday Thinking on EdX

On Education Systems

I've been wondering about education systems, and which ones are best. Different countries have different systems at the university level, in terms of how long the courses are. Is this length an indicator of quality?

In India, they have 3 year Bachelor degrees. The quality of these aren't top notch. The academic content is poorer by 50% compared to foreign universities because they concentrate on theory formation and not application. One reason for this is the lack of funding. And there are cultural differences. Universities abroad don't treat you like they're doing you a favour by letting you enrol. You're paying them to be there. You're a client. They need to treat you like one. Indian educational institutes don't get this. Indian colleges work on the assumption that they can push you around, that your fees enable them to act as your personal moral guardian. In short, Indian colleges treat you like a child, foreign ones treat you like an adult. But they're cheap (which is why I attended an Indian University; my kids won't). In the US, Bachelor or undergrad degrees are 4 years long. The same with Canada. 

A sucky thing about universities is that if you study a science subject like biology, they force you to study other science subjects like physics and chemistry during your first year, even though you aren't interested in these. Duh! You wouldn't have chosen biology at the university level if you wanted to study physics. I can understand an educational system pulling a stunt like this in high school, where they bombard you with as many different subjects as possible to give you a taste of everything so you can decide what you like and hate. Whether they do this to very good effect is another matter, but the philosophy behind the idea is sound (even if some schools screw it up by focussing only on the theoretical aspects of a subject or science and don't expose you to what daily work in that field is going to be like in terms of competencies you will need to develop over time, or the amount of time you will need to spend on different tasks and responsibilities).

To side track a little more, I think the first year of most foreign universities concentrates on the same thing Indian high schools do in their final year - cramming info about as many different subjects into a person's brain. My guess is that this sometimes leads to the false belief that Indian schools and universities are tougher than foreign ones. Which is not entirely true. You need to see this in terms of timelines. Indian high schools have 'streams' at the senior level (the last two years). If you pick the science stream, you go through two years of mental bootcamp. So yeah, the last two years of high school might be tougher than foreign ones (Canadian, American, British, Australian, New Zealand) in terms of amount of information assimilated, assuming you choose the science stream (the commerce and arts streams are relatively easier) but more information doesn't mean better education. I'd rather be taught critical reasoning skills than a bunch of assumptions disguised as facts which I can't recognise are assumptions because I haven't been taught any critical reasoning skills. I think that's where foreign high schools have an edge over Indian ones. 

Now let's move to the University level. True, Indian kids might have a slight advantage from the curriculum point of view given that they've covered more subject matter in high school. But I think that that difference is cancelled out in the first year of university. Because that's all the time that foreign kids need to catch up. And then they spend the next three years doing way more advanced stuff. Which gives them an edge over Indian kids. Indian kids who move to the US or UK for college will have an advantage over the locals kids for the first year at most. After that, it's a level playing field.

Moving back to comparing different university systems, the UK has a three year Bachelor's degree with an option to do a fourth 'honours' year, which is basically fewer modules and a large research project. So comparing all these systems, I'd say the US Bachelors system is the best, apart from the costs. And especially given the profile of a lot of their universities. The UK comes close, but the only British universities that can compare to the top 20 American ones in terms of quality are Cambridge, Oxford and St Andrews. The US simply has more money going into more institutions and more scientists doing a greater amount of good research, which students have a greater opportunity to experience.

Now looking at how Masters programmes are run, most countries have a two-year option. India does. But again, the quality of education in India isn't the best. The US has a two year option. But not all American universities run masters programmes. Most of them just run 5 year Phd programmes. Which is not always the same as a Masters followed by a PhD. Still, this might be the best system given the alternatives. 

It's different in the UK, where Masters degrees are one year long and PhDs are 3 years long. Also, PhDs in the UK are usually self funded, which makes people enrol in them part time (6 years). The only funded PhD programmes in the UK are ones where you're employed to work on someone else's already well defined project. Unless this matches your own research interests, plan on funding your own PhD. A lot of students don't mind working on someone else's project. A lot of them are not sure what they want to do anyway, and don't mind doing research on a subject that's somewhat related to what they're interested in as long as it's fully funded. The large number of universities in the UK mean that there are lots of opportunities for EU residents to choose between. The rest either have deep pockets, or do it part-time. 

But coming back to the UK Masters programme, one year can be pretty intense. And there's a lot of variation between universities. Getting a Masters at Edinburgh University is not the same as getting a Masters at Edinburgh Napier University. In Sweden, Masters programmes contain about the same number of modules, but these are spread over a period of two years, giving students a longer time to rationalise and think about what they've learned, which I think is important. 

Masters education in the UK in contrast seems more like a business. You have so many classes and so little time to think about them. You start in September or October. You have 2.5 months of classes, then exams, including a one-week mid semester break. You have a 1-2 month winter break, then about 2.5 months of classes from February to April, including another one-week mid-semester break. The rest (May to July/August) is spent on a research project. This is quite intense. A better option would be to extend everything. Extend the research project to 4-6 months. Double the number of classes. Include two internships. This would require extending the course to 1.5-2 years. Which I think would be better, personally. 

As it stands, I think a UK Masters equips people to tackle a UK PhD specific to their Masters research interests, but it isn't flexible enough to allow you to attempt somewhat different PhD programmes. Which makes the UK Masters a great well marketed package aimed at getting people where they know they want to go in a short time i.e. equipping them with a short amount of essential skills that the uni thinks they need, over teaching students everything they could over a longer period of time. It's a tradeoff - skills vs. time. 

For those with the time and money, go to the US. As for PhDs, again I'd say the US is best. The UK is great if you've got a specific project in mind, and funding. And it's quick (three years). But if you want more flexibility, more funding, and better opportunities, go to the US.

On Education Systems

13 Trekking Tips You Might Not Have Heard Elsewhere

1. Trek at your own pace. It's not a race. You're not here to compete with the rest of the group.


2. Do not leave the group and wander off alone. If you find you're lagging behind, try to pair up with a buddy.


3. Trek with meat eaters. They carry better food.


4. Trek with pros. They know what they're doing.


5. Never be the first person in a line of trekkers. You will also be the first person to walk into spider webs.


6. Always trek behind girls. In case of backdrafts, they smell better.


7. Never wear flat soled shoes.


8. Always wear a hat.


9. While walking up or down a steep curving bend, it's less effort to walk around the outer edge of the bend, but also longer. It's a trade-off.


10. While walking down a slippery slope, either take long confident strides, or slow measured steps. In the former, you might fall down less, but fall hard. In the latter, you might fall down more often, but lighter. It's a trade-off.


11. While trekking, wear anti-perspirant, not deodorant.


12. It's preferable to trek with girls. Girls talk less while trekking. Guys always have irritating trekking stories. They can't shut up.


13. If you're not a smoker, never trek with smokers.

14. Avoid trekking on Sundays.

15. If you have to trek on a Sunday, trek to a place that doesn't have an approach road for vehicles.

16. If in a group, stay away from overconfident people or know-it-all's.

13 Trekking Tips You Might Not Have Heard Elsewhere

Facilitators vs Teachers

If organising a training programme for your employees, make sure you hire the right type of trainer.


Many teachers (school, college, etc.), pass themselves off as soft skills trainers, presumably because they think they have the skill sets to deliver programmes that involve communication, grammar, culture, reporting, writing, presentations, etc.; and presumably also because they want more money.


Nothing wrong with someone wanting to make more money. But the problem is that teachers simply don't have the requisite skill sets to be successful corporate trainers. They lack the probing, listening and interpersonal skills that make good trainers, and ironically these are some of the very skills they aim to train people on.


Don't get me wrong. I respect teachers and the work they do. It's not their fault that they're largely slaves to curricula and boards that force them to act as dispensers of information rather than facilitators of information. But that's reality. And that's why they don't belong in a corporate training room.


Teachers are used to one-way communication. They're preachers. They talk, you listen. You ask questions, they answer. Their word is law. The textbook is God. You study. Then there's a test. That's what they call a course. Any decent training manager will tell you that this isn't how a corporate training exercise is run, be it 1 day or 1 year long.


Employees aren't children; they can't be preached to. And unlike academia, the corporate world doesn't adhere to a set of textbook lessons to be learned and followed. Every employee who enters a training room comes in with some prior experience and set of assumptions about the course subject matter, either learned on the job, or elsewhere. This is called context. A good trainer recognises this and works with it, not against it. We call these people facilitators.


Facilitation involves understanding that every person in your training room already has some idea about what they're there to learn about, and each person probably sees this subject in a different way, and approaches this subject from a relatively different set of viewpoints and assumptions, and rather than preaching, you're going to use probing and questioning techniques to make members of your group identify their own problems with respect to the course subject, question their own methods, respond constructively to each suggestion you or anyone else makes, and come up with their own ideas and solutions, with an action plan, all within their individual limits.



Teachers suck at this, mainly because they're used to objective, context-free instruction. Facilitators, on the other hand, thrive on it. And who exactly is a good facilitator? A facilitator is anyone with decent interpersonal skills, and adequate subject matter knowledge. That's all. That's all you need to be a good trainer. Don't let the fancy jargon and pictures you come across in the business media, fool you. You don't need any special qualifications to be a good trainer or facilitator. But you do need certain essential skills.


To be a good facilitator, you need to be interesting, not boring. You can't have your group doze off on you while you're trying to help them. A sense of humour helps. So does a confident inspirational personality.


You need to be a good listener. You need to be quick. You need to pick up on suggestions from group members and bounce them around. You can't let discussions get away from you at any point. The group has to see you as their natural leader, has to turn to you to solve impasses.


You need to engage everyone. You have to be able to tell what interventions you should use, when you should stop using them, and when to move on.


You needn't be an expert on the subject mater; this is a soft skills course, not a technical one, and being an expert here is irrelevant, simply because there's no direct transfer of knowledge happening; you're simply enabling your group to come up with their own solutions.

Facilitators vs Teachers

India Travel Forums

Here are some particularly useful sites you can use for advise, to help you plan trips around India:

Ghumakkar - people sharing travel stories.

IndiaMike - extensive travel forums and discussions.

Team BHP - Essentially a car-centric site with a very helpful travel forum.

Got any additions?

India Travel Forums

How to Pick a Job

You need money to get by. And barring a scenario where you win the lottery, etc., you need to work to make money. What type of work should you do?

It makes sense to do something that will pay at least reasonably well, and something you don't suck at, and that you don't hate doing. These are the minimum criteria. In a best case scenario, you'd be paid handsomely, would be fantastic at doing it, and would also love your work.

Working between the parameters of the minimum and best case scenarios above, you need to look at how well you like performing the tasks that your job requires of you. You see, every job simply consists of responsibilities, which can be further broken down into tasks that you need to complete on a daily basis. 

Do not be swayed or influenced by a job title. It is just a term, a name, it means nothing. It induces a feeling in you, of what that job might be like, that isn't necessarily accurate. A job is really the tasks that it comprises.

So get a feel of what tasks the job would require of you, what you would do on a daily basis. If you enjoy these, and are paid well to do these, and have a natural aptitude for these tasks, you're set.

How to Pick a Job

English Lessons - Indianisms: Pass Out, Graduate

When you complete your studies at an educational institution, you 'graduate' from that institution. You do not 'pass out' from that institution. 

To 'pass out' refers to losing consciousness when intoxicated. You cannot equate this to 'graduate', though you may use the word 'pass' when referring to your performance in a test.

Examples:

Wrong: I passed out from XYZ University in 2004.

Correct: I graduated from XYZ University in 2004.

You can view a full article on Indianisms on CNNGo here: http://www.cnngo.com/mumbai/life/10-indianisms-652344

English Lessons - Indianisms: Pass Out, Graduate

English Lessons - Indianisms: Revert, Reply

When you want to get back to someone, you use the word 'reply', not 'revert'. 'Revert' means 'to return to a former state'. It cannot be used in place of 'reply'. 

People commonly and mistakenly use 'revert' in business emails & letters, trying to sound professional, when they're really grammatically incorrect.

Examples:

Wrong: Please revert at the earliest.

Correct: Please reply at the earliest.

You can view my full article on Indianisms on CNNGo here: http://www.cnngo.com/mumbai/life/10-indianisms-652344

English Lessons - Indianisms: Revert, Reply

English Lessons - Indianisms: Reply, Reply back

You reply to someone about something. You do not reply back to someone about something. To 'reply' means to 'get back', so saying 'reply back' is simply repeating yourself.

Examples:

Wrong: I replied back to her query.

Correct: I replied to her query.

You can view my full article on Indianisms, on CNNGo: http://www.cnngo.com/mumbai/life/10-indianisms-652344

English Lessons - Indianisms: Reply, Reply back

English Lessons - Indianisms: Go, Go for

You do not 'go for trekking', you 'go trekking' or you 'go for a trek'. There is no reason to add the word 'for' after 'go' when describing a simple action, though you may use 'for' when describing a noun.

Examples:

Wrong: They went for trekking.

Correct: They went trekking.

Correct: They went for a trek.

Correct: They went on a trek.

You can view my full article on Indianisms, on CNNGo: http://www.cnngo.com/mumbai/life/10-indianisms-652344

English Lessons - Indianisms: Go, Go for

English Lessons - Back, Ago

You don't say that such and such thing happened 'years back'. You say such and such thing happened 'years ago'. It's 'ago', not 'back', for phrases like these involving durations. 


You may use 'back' colloquially when discussing durations (ex: it happened way back then) but the word 'years' is always followed by 'ago', never 'back'.


Examples:


Wrong: I visited that place years back.
Correct: I visited that place years ago.

You can view a complete article on Indianisms on CNNGo here: http://www.cnngo.com/mumbai/life/10-indianisms-652344

English Lessons - Back, Ago

English Lessons - Crave, Crave for

You don't say you 'crave for' something. You say you 'crave' something. The word 'crave' is never followed by the word 'for' except when used as a noun.

Examples:

Wrong: She is craving for ice-cream.

Correct: She is craving ice-cream.

Wrong: She craves for ice-cream.

Correct: She craves ice-cream.

Wrong: I am craving for ice-cream.
Correct: I crave ice-cream.

Also correct: She has a craving for ice-cream.

You can view my full article on Indianisms, on CNNGo: http://www.cnngo.com/mumbai/life/10-indianisms-652344

English Lessons - Crave, Crave for

Needs & Wants

What you want and what you need are 2 different things, though you may confuse them for the same. You might want a lot more than what you really need.

Over 2 years ago my computer kept getting stuck at startup. I called in an expert. He told me it was a problem with my RAM. And replaced my 3 year old 512 MB RAM card with a new one for almost Rs. 2K.

The same thing began happening in July 2010, almost exactly 2 years later. I called the same expert. Same cause, he said. This time, I had him upgrade to 1 GB RAM for almost the same price.

A couple of months later, the computer kept restarting itself at sudden moments, which I assumed was a problem with the motherboard, and a few weeks after, the monitor went black, though it was still receiving power (the monitor light was on, and I could hear the sounds of the computer starting, but nothing was registering on screen. I assumed the motherboard and monitor problem were connected, that my computer was finally dying, and was about to replace it with a new Rs. 12K (at least) desktop, when I had second thoughts, and decided to call a new expert for help, to look at the monitor only.

I did this because a new system would cost me a lot more money than a quick fix, and my ROI with a quick fix would work out better, as opposed to a new system, when you considered that I only use my desktop for basic stuff.

The new guy fixed the monitor for Rs.1K, telling me it was a transformer problem. That done, I did a little research online and then fixed the computer-continuously-restarting problem by buying a new motherboard battery for Rs. 25. Turns out you need to replace these every 5 years anyhow.

But a whole new problem cropped up. My internet/LAN cable stopped being registered on the computer. The internet cable worked on laptops, so I figured it was a problem with my computer onboard modem/LAN card. I went out, bought a new LAN card for Rs. 300, plugged it into a PCI slot in my CPU, switched my computer on, copied the IP settings to the new card, disabled the old one, installed the driver CD for good measure, plugged in the cable, and I had my internet back on again.

Now, I could have just bought a new 12K PC, or a 40K laptop, but I guess that's what I wanted, not what I needed. Don't get me wrong. I still want a fancy laptop, but what I really needed and got was a basic desktop, money saved in the bank, and a little knowledge about basic computer maintenance.

Needs & Wants

English Lessons - Comprise, Comprise of

You don't say that something 'comprises of' something else. You say something 'comprises' something else.

You never use the phrase 'comprise of' or 'comprises of'. It is always either 'comprise' (for plural) or 'comprises' (for singular).

This is because the words 'comprise' or 'comprises' mean 'made up of' or 'consist/s of'. So adding an 'of' after 'comprise' or 'comprises' is like saying 'consist/s of of'.

Examples:

Wrong: This lesson comprises of 11 chapters.

Correct: This lesson comprises 11 chapters.

Correct: This lesson consists of 11 chapters.

Correct: This lesson is made up of 11 chapters.

Also remember to use 'comprise' when the subject in question is plural and 'comprises' when the subject in question is singular. For example:

These lessons comprise 11 chapters.
This lesson comprises 11 chapters.

You can view my full article on Indianisms, on CNNGo: http://www.cnngo.com/mumbai/life/10-indianisms-652344

English Lessons - Comprise, Comprise of

English Lessons - Discuss, Discuss About

You don't 'discuss about' something; you 'discuss' something.

The word 'discuss' means 'talk about'. Therefore, there is no reason to insert the word 'about' after 'discuss'. That would be like saying 'talk about about'.

Examples:

Wrong: Shall we discuss about the budget?
Correct: Shall we discuss the budget?

Correct: Shall we talk about the budget?

You can view my complete article on Indianisms at CNNGo: http://www.cnngo.com/mumbai/life/10-indianisms-652344

English Lessons - Discuss, Discuss About

English Lessons - Continual, Continuous

People tend to use the word 'continuous' to describe all sorts of ongoing processes. Some are not even aware that they need to use the word 'continual', while others are not sure when to use what.

You use continual when referring to a process of duration that is frequently interrupted.

Example - In Mumbai, it rains continually from June to October during the monsoon.

You use continuous when referring to an uninterrupted process of duration.

Example - It rained continuously from morning to lunchtime today.

'Continuous' indicates something happening non-stop, while 'continual' indicates something repetitive but interrupted. Don't confuse the two.

You can view my full article on Indianisms, on CNNGo: http://www.cnngo.com/mumbai/life/10-indianisms-652344

English Lessons - Continual, Continuous

English Lessons - Indianisms: Do the Needful

Try to avoid using the phrase 'do the needful'. It went out of style a 100 years ago. Using it today indicates you are a dinosaur, a dinosaur with bad grammar.


However, you may use the phrase humourously, to poke fun at such archaic speech, or other dinosaurs.

You can view my complete article on Indianisms at CNNGo: http://www.cnngo.com/mumbai/life/10-indianisms-652344

English Lessons - Indianisms: Do the Needful

English Lessons - Indianisms: Do one thing

When someone approaches you with a query, and your reply begins with the phrase 'do one thing', you're doing it wrong.

'Do one thing' is a phrase that does not make sense. It is an Indianism. It is only understood in India. It is not proper English. It is irritating to listen to. And there are better ways to begin a reply.

You can view my complete article on Indianisms at CNNGo: http://www.cnngo.com/mumbai/life/10-indianisms-652344
 

English Lessons - Indianisms: Do one thing

English Lessons - Indianisms: Give, Take

You don't give an exam, you take an exam.

You don't give a driving test, you take a driving test.

Replacing 'take' with 'give' is a common grammatical mistake.

You can view my full article on Indianisms, on CNNGo: http://www.cnngo.com/mumbai/life/10-indianisms-652344

English Lessons - Indianisms: Give, Take

English Lessons - Indianisms: For, Since

One of the most common grammatically incorrect Indianisms is the misuse of 'for' and 'since' when describing timescales. These are the rules for how you should use them, without exception:

You use 'for' when describing a length of time. 

Example - "I have been waiting here for 2 hours".

You use 'since' when referring to a specific point of time in the past. 

Example - "I have been waiting here since 4.00 PM".

Many people confuse the usage of the 2 words, and use 'since' to describe a length of time. This is incorrect under any circumstance. It is a mistake so frequent, even teachers, journalists & editors commit it every day. Let me recap:

Correct - I have owned this car for 5 years.

Correct - I have owned this car since 2005.

Wrong - I have owned this car since 5 years.

You can view my full article on Indianisms, on CNNGo: http://www.cnngo.com/mumbai/life/10-indianisms-652344

English Lessons - Indianisms: For, Since