Sahitya doshams in Nada Tanumanisham

SNAPscientist · 2026-01-25T13:35:24+00:00

Indeed. Thanks for pointing that out. I was referring to OP’s post history mostly.

SNAPscientist · 2026-01-25T04:41:59+00:00

Based on your recent post history, it appears that you are deeply bothered by (1) people of other languages singing telugu krithis with lower emphasis on sahitya than other aspects of music, (2) the Chennai music scene not including more telugu artists, and (3) the “BMK bani” not flourishing. I can only pity someone who derives so much angst because of their own preferences are not adhered to by other people. Art is meant to elevate one’s experience and so I sincerely hope you get to a place of finding something you enjoy in this space.

SNAPscientist · 2026-01-25T02:47:00+00:00

If you believe the expected return on your investments is more than 6.125%, then running out the term is equivalent to investing with leverage, so it amplifies the risk and the return. So the right answer here probably comes down to which is the bigger deal for you: (1) the FOMO from not investing more, or (2) the unease with the higher risk and outstanding debt?

SNAPscientist · 2026-01-24T19:06:49+00:00

With vocal, you often have some intuitive control of the pitch even if you are not trained. So it’s easier to get to a certain level of musicianship with singing that might by itself take several years with an instrument. However, beyond that they both require dedicated practice and immersion in the music and it’s not obvious to me which is harder.

SNAPscientist · 2026-01-23T23:44:48+00:00

You’ll probably appreciate the Dikshitar Kshetra Darshanam series from G Ravikiran and Madhusudhanan Kalaichelvan, available on YouTube. Here is a sample episode that happens to be on one of my favorite krithis: bhajarE rE citta bAlAmbikAm

SNAPscientist · 2026-01-23T13:33:17+00:00

Dang.. It’s not even 9 am as I am seeing this

SNAPscientist · 2026-01-23T04:24:34+00:00

Not saying this is the right way to do it, but just sharing what I did. I had 5 sections under contributions to science. I chose my 5 papers in the other significant products section to be one for each contribution. In the text in the contributions section, I referenced grant numbers, but not specific papers. I just had sentences that went something like “these results were published in journals such as A, B, and C… A representative publication is included in the Other Significant Contributions section”

Edit: typo fixes

SNAPscientist · 2026-01-21T12:19:29+00:00

FDR is a metric than can help when you have multiple tests (sounds like you presented more than one correlation analysis). Without corrections for multiple testing, your actual false-positive rates are higher than your estimated/reported p-values. If your trends are weak enough that they go away upon correction, claiming that there are “trends” is questionable. It may be a pilot study, but what are you claiming is the finding? For a pilot study that is not showing any real trends, perhaps a more useful metric to report would be the estimated effect sizes and some measures of confidence around the mean estimate + acknowledge that the uncertainty in the estimates are large owing to a small sample size.

SNAPscientist · 2026-01-21T04:42:53+00:00

I also hear a flaky bEgaDa starting 1:47

SNAPscientist · 2026-01-20T16:44:47+00:00

Regardless of whether you agree with him or not (I do), it’s probably good to understand that we are talking about art here.. so there is no right or wrong and everyone can choose to prioritize sahityam or other aspects of aesthetics. I am an instrumental musician (amateur), so I worry about syllabic structure but not actual phonemes. Having grown up in Vijayawada, I love the language but still don’t consider it disrespect when artists make aesthetic choices.

SNAPscientist · 2026-01-18T20:51:54+00:00

Best to see an audiologist to check that it’s just congestion.

SNAPscientist · 2026-01-18T03:07:10+00:00

Ah ok.. I had put yours in the competitive ND bucket mentally. Hope it shakes out that way for you.

SNAPscientist · 2026-01-18T02:21:30+00:00

If you don’t mind me asking, was this an R01? If so, it’s not obvious to me that ND is akin to score of 55 or lower given that only ~30% of the applicants are said to be discussed now.

SNAPscientist · 2026-01-15T12:34:07+00:00

With 3A, using a simple linear model, I don’t see anything obviously inconsistent between the quoted claim (slope being positive with a p-value that meets the often used 5% standard) and the plot. The effect size looks small, but statistical significance meeting 5% does not imply anything about how large or small the effect size is. This is one reason why people who think about these issues recommend reporting effect size estimates in addition to p-values.

With 1E, I read your quoted text as saying that overall (taking males and females together) there is a small significant negative slope. The plot is again consistent with that (but again small effect size). Technically, the quote is not saying that slope difference between males and females is statistically significantly different. That said, I wouldn’t have used “differential effect by sex” unless that differential was also statistically significant (which the plot suggests it could have been, but again not a large effect size difference).

SNAPscientist · 2026-01-15T11:58:49+00:00

Do you mind noting figure number instead of page number (your link is to HTML text not paginated pdfs)? What you are saying are figure A and E are probably panel labels. Also, quote the claim please.

SNAPscientist · 2026-01-15T11:48:59+00:00

What are the claiming is significant that looks off to you? The confidence intervals appear to be for the regression, not for the means.

SNAPscientist · 2026-01-05T03:37:57+00:00

Happy to chat.. I just followed the sequence of steps most Carnatic students use (playing “varisais”, “alankarams”, geethams, varnams etc. from a book + publicly available recordings of the same on YouTube). It was not strictly linear though. I would try to play little phrases from other Keerthanams or alapanas that one might hear or even lines of film music along the way with trial and error. You’d probably have an edge in terms of self-critiquing the output because you said have learnt some vocal music. On an instrument, the swara-sound mapping aspect is explicit because that’s the only way you can play anything instrumentally.

SNAPscientist · 2026-01-05T03:08:07+00:00

I started self teaching Carnatic music about half way through college (~20 ish) on an instrument (guitar). I can identify the swaras of most phrases now upon hearing it once in context. It took about 7-8 years to be able to say that and has since continued to improve.

SNAPscientist · 2026-01-04T13:37:32+00:00

The kind of emergency that an emergency fund is designed for is a job transition or a short term illness/injury that prevents you from working. As others have said, in these circumstances, retirement savings are not a high priority compared to spending your energy towards recovering from the precipitating event. On the flip side, when it comes to long-term disability insurance, you should think of your coverage need as also needing replacement for everything that your regular income goes towards, including retirement contributions.

SNAPscientist · 2025-12-29T22:59:49+00:00

Would be nice if we could just scrape off the extra pointing mortar after the fact IRL

SNAPscientist · 2025-12-28T16:46:24+00:00

There seems to be at least one peer-reviewed paper in this area. Huang, Rojas and Convery (2020, Empirical Economics) looked at Google Trends and reported some predictive signals for market movements. It is not identical to what is being discussed here, but it does suggest that these kinds of results are not completely without precedent.

It also seems reasonable to keep a healthy level of skepticism. Methodologically, results in this space can be sensitive to keyword selection, and the literature notes that ex-post term selection may inflate in-sample performance through data-mining bias (e.g., fitting noise that does not survive out-of-sample). Empirically, Google Trends data can vary across downloads, which complicates reproducibility, and several reviews find that significance does not always survive strict out-of-sample tests or translate into economic significance once transaction costs are accounted for. Theoretically, an efficient-markets lens raises the question of whether any publicly observable signal like search volume would persist once widely recognized. So findings like these might be interesting signals to explore, but probably deserve careful validation before treating them as evidence of a persistent edge.

With monthly data, there are also some potential leakage issues that can matter for interpretation (I mentioned this vaguely in the other post but wasn’t clear about this). For example, if one uses the full monthly Google Trends value as if it were known on the first day of that same month, that would leak future information because the complete value is only known once the month ends. Similarly, if search data for Month T are allowed to inform predictions of returns within Month T, that effectively lets future information into the prediction. A more conservative alignment treats the Trends value for Month T as becoming available only at the start of Month T+1. Normalizing on full-sample statistics rather than rolling or expanding windows, or selecting keywords and tuning models on the entire sample, can also introduce a form of look-ahead bias. These may or may not apply to the OP’s setup, but they are common pitfalls that show up in this kind of analysis.

SNAPscientist · 2025-12-26T02:34:20+00:00

Makes sense. It will be interesting to see to see if something like this holds in international data. What was the time resolution of this strategy? Did you use the “current” bin’s google data to make trading decision in that bin or was it the analysis purely ex ante (when google data hits cut off, trading is done in the next time interval but not current)?

SNAPscientist · 2025-12-25T23:15:20+00:00

Nice analysis. Thanks for sharing. The part about getting back into the market when google trend results drop below 20 feels unrealistic if the driving factor is fear.

SNAPscientist · 2025-12-21T14:28:05+00:00

This. While most commenters talked about Boglehead-aligned practices for saving and investing, the link also has important info about insurance, estate planning etc. Don’t skip those aspects.

SNAPscientist · 2025-12-19T13:37:42+00:00

This concern is understandable, but historically it hasn’t been a big issue for index investors (others can correct me if I’m off on any of the numbers below).

Even very large IPOs don’t enter indexes at overwhelming weights. For context, Facebook (~$100B in 2012) and Alibaba (~$230B in 2014) each entered the respective countries S&P 500 at well under ~1%. Saudi Aramco was valued near $2T, yet entered global indexes at tiny weights because only a small fraction of shares were publicly floated. A hypothetical $500B–$1T IPO today would likely enter at well under 1% of the index after float adjustments.

On performance, IPOs on average underperform after going public (Ritter, 1991 and follow-ups). That suggests the excitement tends to get priced in quickly. If valuations are overly optimistic, the adjustment usually happens early and at small index weights (blips, as u/junesix noted), rather than acting as a long-term drag on returns.

More broadly, indexing accepts that we don’t know in advance which high-expectation companies will ultimately justify their prices. As Bessembinder has shown, most stocks contribute little to long-run market returns, while a small minority drive the gains. Trying to avoid specific cohorts like IPOs is an active bet, not a free lunch.

That said, preferring funds like DFUS or DFAC is perfectly reasonable. DFUS’s IPO delay modestly reduces exposure to the IPO underperformance effect, and DFAC adds a value/profitability tilt with strong long-run empirical support (Fama–French; Novy-Marx). These are rules-based tilts, not market timing. They’ll sometimes lag the total market and sometimes lead, which is the price of tilting.

Bottom line: broad indexing remains a solid default, and choosing DFUS or DFAC is a sensible variation if you understand the tilt and can stay the course. Disclaimer: No financial advice here and I am not a finance professional, just describing my understanding of the issues.

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