Ideas that change lives: 2016

Thursday, December 29, 2016

How to bring uneducated customers to use ATMs

Before going into the next generation banking and the techniques and technologies that is going to change the future of banking, I would like to propose a solution to a rather simple problem, which i personally faced when i was working as Assistant in a rural bank. Rural banks have a lot of uneducated customers, who do not want to use Debit cards. Though it is inconvenient for them to come to banks and stand in large queues every month, they do it because they cant withdraw money in ATMs without others' help and it is not secure to do so. We will try to make ATMs usable for an uneducated person. All the options I am going to propose is specially for uneducated who will be having a different mode of use, working in parallel with other accounts, which will work normally as usual. Government may support this for financial inclusion and to help uneducated and rural customers to embrace technology and are not left behind in the future, when everything will depend on technology. First, uneducated customers believe that if they gave their debit cards to some other person, they may misuse it. To overcome that every ATM should be equipped with finger print detector. So instead of using PIN, the account holder must come to ATM and put his/her finger print otherwise, these special accounts cant be operated. Second, uneducated customers can't operate ATMs because they can't read whatever is written in options. These options should be read aloud in their vernacular language and the options should be differentiated with different colours. Example, After I insert my card, automatically it will detect that I am a uneducated customer. After detecting would say, " Vanakkam Deepak kumar, ungal kai viralai andha kairegai etrukollum karuviyil [ or whatever which can be easily understood] vaiyungal. Neengal panam selutha virumbinal screenill therium velllai nira bothanai azhuthavum. Neengal panam edukka virumbinal screenil irukum neela nira bothanai azuthavum. Neengal ungaludaya kadaisi aindhu parivarthanaiayai therindhukolla virumbinaal screenil irukum manjal nira bothanai azhuthavum. [ Option colours should be different when compared to hard buttons to avoid confusion. No more options is necessary as these are the 3 important transactions an uneducated person want to do ] . If the customer wants to withdraw, it will open a withdrawal screen and tell the following. "Neengal Panam edukka virumbugereergal athanal neengal eduka virumbum thogaiyai azuhthivitu screenil irukum vellai nira bothanai azhuthavum" This is the only time ever an uneducated customer may need another person. But basically uneducated customers know numbers because they deal with household expenditure daily with currencies. After the customer presses the white button, the ATM will take you to another screen and read the amount. "Neengal airathu ainoor roobai eduka virumbugireergal. sari endral meendum vellai bothanai azhuthavum". So that no miscreant can change the amount in case if the customer got any help. Next there is an option Mini- Statement. This will enable customers to check last 5 transactions. These last 5 transactions will be shown in the screen. When u press these options, it will read out your transaction in the your language one at a time. Like " Neengal pannirendu - december - rendayirathu pathinaaril, Kalai onbathu muppathku gandhinagar tiruvannamalai ATM lirundhu roobai 500 eduthulleergal". Since technology is growing at a fast pace, uneducated customer can have a family member who will have smart phone. We can introduce a new app exclusively for uneducated persons just to view Passbook no other operations. Voice - Pass book. It will read out in their language as the Mini statement. These things will largely reduce crowd in rural branches and help rural customers to embrace technology.

Monday, October 31, 2016

Gadgets to protect women

The electronic gadgets or apps currently proposed does not seem to have tooth to protect women from impending dangers. I propose a gadget, which can be developed by whoever wants to do it. My gadget consists of two items. 3 Rings, cellphone and a pair of shoes. Two of the rings will contain chemicals which will make the molester faint and become unconscious, may be for half an hour. Third ring will contain a camera, which will record the identity of the molester. The gadget works like this. There will an app in the cellphone, which will be connected to 3 rings and shoes, the person will be wearing. If a woman confronts a potential molester, She has utter the two words, which will be used to activate the system. The two words can be anything u want, but must be programmed beforehand in the app. The app itself can be activated while travelling in bus or train or somewhere, where you feel vulnerable, and can be switched off, while in office or home, where you feel secure. Once you utter the words, your ring and shoe tips will open a needle with chemicals, which is enough to make 5 to 6 persons faint, for like half an hour. You can attach a device on tip of your shoes the with the same chemicals. Once activated, you just have to kick the molester with your shoes or scratch your ring in the molesters body. That will make the molesters faint. Also at the same time, the camera in your ring will start recording the identity of the molester. On uttering the two words again, the camera will switch off. The important part is that, there should be a separate women's protection wing of the police, which will be connected to the app. Even without internet connection, Police will be able to track the location of the cellphone and in turn find the victim's location. If connected to the internet, immediate transfer of streaming video will be done to the police wing. This system is so effective that it will record, every instant of rape in the city( As i propose that this system should be implemented in New Delhi first). Once you activate the system, the information that you are being attacked will reach the police, no matter you wish to inform police about the incident or not. As there should be separate wing of Police department to be newly created to handle women's harassment. Same way, new courts should be created, just to handle women's harassment cases. The identity of the women victims should be kept secret. Another important thing that should be done here is that, if a person tries to molest a woman, his misadventure should be made public. That is, If a person working in HCL, tries to, even tries to molest a woman, his deeds should be sent be informed to the whole company through a mail to everybody in the office. The molester, no matter where he works, all his colleagues should be informed about his misadventure.Also, relatives and the neighbors of the molester should also be informed about this misdeeds. Also, these devices should be made available only through police department after thorough investigation about the woman, so that it does not go to wrong person. The Rings can be however fancy as one wishes, so that it is nice to wear and also molesters can be deceived into thinking that it is just an ordinary ring. Same applies with the shoes too.

Monday, October 17, 2016

Discussions

Discussions in learning device will happen like this. First of all there should be an initiator for a discussion. There is 4 type of discussions. Intra-school ( For discussions among the students and faculty within a school. This type of discussion does not require internet. Wi-Fi enabled devices will do the connectivity among students within that school), Inter-school ( This is restricted to schools upto higher secondary or whatever you call it in your country. Like before college. There can be discussion between any school between any countries.). Third is for colleges ( Between colleges of any country ). Fourth is research. Except first, all the other 3 requires internet connectivity. Before going to the discussion rooms, the content got from a school should be stored in an external hard disk ( Memory in TB) ( to be kept by student and updated daily ). When a particular year is over, all the contents will be transferred to that disk and kept for future reference. One external hard disk for every year.

Discussion rooms will be initiated by an administrator and can be moderated by few. The moderators and administrators will have the full content of discussion in their disk. When they come online, the discussions can be further expanded. Anybody who wants to participate in the discussion should be accepted by the administrator or moderators after going through their profile. The Profile will have their name, picture and school or college details. The device can only be bought by an academic institutions and distributed to their students with authentic information about them. In the discussion room there will be no name or number pointing to any person. There will only be queries and answers. After the discussion, the person who answered well and got most star rating by peers will get more credit points. Calculation of credits will be a background operation. Participants will not know who answered what. It is only the content that speaks. More points for intra-school than inter- school. More points for Colleges than inter-school. More points for research than Colleges. And also if a person having more credits for himself and he gives 4 stars to your answer, you get more points. Anybody can participate in any Discussion room provided they have got invites. There is one more advantage, anybody who is using this device can look at any discussion and download it to their device, provided the discussion is not private. If private, only the participants can view.

The discussion starts like this. When somebody asks a question “What is 1*2”. The invitees to the discussion press follow-up. First participants says “It is Multiplication. The method of adding first number times the second number”. Second participant says “This symbol is seen in multiplication table”.

Any participant can click on the box. The Box opens and you get to view its contents. Upon viewing this box, every participant must rate it. From 1 to 4 stars. If he has doubt in that content, he must click on the query button to view all the queries in that particular box. If his query is not already present he opens a new query. In this case “what is addition?”. If participant feels to add more to the answer, he can do a follow-up, like “Basics of Maths”. This is very simple representation of discussion rooms. The boxes can be filled with Text, Video, Audio, Animation whatever to add clarity to the topic of discussion.

The advantage of this discussion setup is that nobody's follow-up and answer is lost. This is more effective than people sitting in a room and having discussion. No shouting. No losing anybody's precious views or great ideas. And also anybody who views these discussions will be greatly benefited.

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Microsoft in the field of education

I have a suggestion to Microsoft in the field of education. We can develop a class room learning kit, which can be used not only inside the classroom, but also outside to the world of academicians and learners around the world. Microsoft can acquire or collaborate with learning companies to give contents to the school as well as students in its own class room learning kit. All the things which is taught through black board or through the learning digital contents will be recorded and available to students. They can access this in home or in school hours. Let's take a typical scenario in which a student can not understand a particular topic or wants more clarity in a topic. If the teacher fails to give a satisfactory reply( which happens in underdeveloped and developing countries more often), he can clarify his doubts through the following procedure. He can take the video content and stop the video where he has doubt( Either black board taught lessons or through digital content) and ask his classmates or other teachers or the content providers or anybody in the world who has bought this class room learning kit. He can draw and scribble his doubts in the video and add audio to it with an enhanced MS Office ready for next generation. Then post his doubt in the platform developed by Microsoft. You can also interact and learn with your classmates through this classroom learning kit, by sharing your own ideas in that content( black board or digital) and maybe your own way of solving a problem. School students can also do their homework with this device and submit it to their teachers through internet from anywhere anytime.

This product is not restricted to school students, but can be used by all students, no matter whether they are pursuing under graduation, post graduation or research in a reputed university( of course a different version with advanced features). The advantage of this device is that it can help any student in even a very small underdeveloped country to get guidance from other fellow researchers or professors in any country. We can develop a chat program, with rooms created for every major topic. So some student from Africa can chat with a Stanford scholar and get an invite to discuss on a topic through the class room learning kit. Any researcher can have a video discussion with any other researcher with device, not just through cameras but also sharing their ideas through our advanced MS Office which runs parallel along with camera, so that you can express your thoughts and ideas through sketches and animations.

And also if someone wants to teach on a subject for money or for the love of teaching to under privileged students he or she can do through this device. If u have a habit of helping others with your knowledge, you can earn credits from the beneficiary of your teaching skills. More credits if you get a thumbs up from somebody who himself has more credits or from an established professor from IIT or IIM or Harvard. With those credits you can buy things in our device like subscription fee or some digital content. If you are a darling in this platform and have got more credits, we will give you a certificate on your score or link it with job search portals like linkedin to help you get a great job. But this product is only for students and researchers who are in academic institution approved by their management.

All this for a minimum subscription fee along with the cost of the device. This will make Microsoft the pioneer in the field of education. I would like Microsoft to share its profit and technology with under privileged students in Africa, so that they come out with flying colors and make their country a developed one.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

AI : Can Machines be creative?

I don't think anytime in the future machines will become creative. Trying to make machines think and provide a solution which never existed before is a huge task. Instead with all the computing power coming in small processors ( In the future it will be more ), we should teach machines to find solutions through already written algorithms. Machines should be taught to analyse algorithms. That is machines should be able to break algorithms into pieces and combine the pieces of algorithms to find a new solution. Those pieces can come from any of the huge number of algorithms from anywhere. This new solution did not come out of creative thinking, which I don't think machines can ever do. But through the human being's wisdom. In my view this science of making machines understand algorithms is gonna be the next step in Artificial Intelligence.Thank you. God save human beings from terminators. Ha ha ha.

Thursday, June 2, 2016

National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET)

It is totally unfair to bring NEET exams to states where CBSE syllabus is not taught widely. But if Medical council of India wants to make students who pursue medicine to be qualified, It can make NEET as qualifying test instead of making it the single most eligibility criteria to enter medical courses. The qualification marks required to clear NEET should be set by the Medical council. Admissions will be given to 3000 students who pass NEET but admissions will be given based on their cutoff got by 12th standard state board marks. So it serves both the purpose, Medical council is satisfied by their qualification in NEET and students in Tamilnadu( and some other states) will find it reasonably acceptable since their cutoff marks(got by 12th exams) is the important criteria to secure MBBS and BDS admissions.

Monday, January 18, 2016

Nice device to put CSR money

This idea i am going to give is neither revolutionary nor profound, not even going to make money. But it will help persons with vision disability. Though, these kind of devices are available, we will throw light to its existence, so that it is widely available at a low cost, instead of spending money in braille books. If a person who is visually impaired wants to read a document or book or any kind of letter, he can use this hand scanner and text to speech converter to read aloud (or use ear phones) any book, any letter or any kind of printed documents. The device may also be designed particularly to read books. Turn pages automatically and read. The user will have buttons to Play/ Pause/ Rewind/ GoToPage/ GoToChapter. They can use voice commands also. The technology required to make this device is very much available. We just need some will from Governments and Corporates to make these devices( may be as part of CSR activity) and provide it free of cost to visually impaired persons.

Saturday, January 2, 2016

Algorithm behind Division - Kid's Time

Long Division

What is Division? It is the process of splitting a number ( dividend ) into chunks of another number ( divisor ) and calculating how many pieces (quotient ) have been obtained as the result of division.

Example 6/2 = 3

Now , we will discuss about the long division. We will divide 1334/2 and the result is 667.

The idea behind long division is to find the most significant digit of the quotient which will fit in its place in every iteration. In this example, we first check first digit of dividend( 1 in this case). It is less than 2 and with that we will not be able to find the most significant digit of the quotient. So we move on to next digit. Now, we take 13. We divide 13 by 2. Now the most significant digit will not exceed 6 and will not be less than 6. Why? Because no matter what digits or how many digits follow 13, when we divide it by 2, it has to 6xxx for any 13xxx ( or 6xx for 13xx, for any number of x, the same result holds). In the next step, we are passing the remainder of 13/2 to next significant digit.

For Example. if we divide 92/4, the most significant digit will be 2 (got by calculating 9/4 and next significant digit will be 10 + 2 ( 10 carried from remainder of first digit calculation) = 12/4 = 3. First digit 2, second digit 3 Answer is 23. The idea is like multiplication, where we pass on 1 of 12(result of least significant digit multiplication) as 1 to next digit multiplication. In Division, we pass 1 (remainder of most significant digit division) as 10+2 to next digit division.

So, coming back to previous example, when we divide 13/2, it gives the next digit 6, then 1 goes to next significant digit as 10+4. When we divide 14/2, We get the next digit 7. The result is 667.

We can understand this through another example - 1445/5

First, We take the number 14 ( the left most digits of dividend which is greater than 5). We divide it with 5 to get the left most digit ( Most significant digit ) of quotient and pass on the remainder to next digit. When passing we multiply the remainder with 10, because when shifting right to the adjacent digit, the value increases 10 times no matter the place of the digit. Then we add the remainder multiplied by 10 of the previous digit with next digit right of it ( Next significant digit). We get 40 + 4. Then again we divide 44 with 5 and so on. The process continues and in every step we get one digit of quotient ( In the order from left most to right most digit). We need not worry whether the first digit of the quotient( Left most ) is in 1000th place or 100th place or whatever, because at last the quotient is going to be filled with exact number of digits ( produced at every step ), which divides the dividend.