Bengal

Giving due respect

• The Statesman
• 30 Oct 2014

Vidyasagar University mulling plans to open statistics department

Biswabrata Goswami
biswabrata@thestatesman.net
Midnapore, 29 October
The authorities of Vidyasagar University are mulling plans to open statistics department to pay due honour to the man behind the creation of the university.
While remembering the glorious activities of Professor Anil Kumar Gayen, who had made significant contributions in Mathematics and Statistics and dedicated the later years of his life towards the establishment of Vidyasagar University as a non-traditional institution of higher education in a programme held yesterday, the varsity authorities disclosed their future plans about the opening of statistics department before the academics.
It was an irony that the contributions of Mr Gayen towards the establishment of Vidyasagar University was not given due recognition by the former Left Front Government during its 34 years of rule. It was only under the active leadership of the present Vice-Chancellor Professor Ranjan Chakrabarti, based on a proposal submitted by Dr Abhijit Guha a teacher of the Anthropology department, that the executive council of Vidyasagar University in its meeting held on 4 May 2012, decided to form a committee to commemorate the contributions of the founder of the varsity in a befitting manner. Accordingly, Gayen’s short biography was placed in the VU website, (http://vidyasagar.ac.in/About/AKGayen.aspx), and the Central Library building was named as Anil Gayen Bhavan.
The first Anil Kumar Gayen memorial lecture was held yesterday at the Birendranath Sasmal Hall at Vidyasagar University in presence of more than hundred members of the varsity community including many students and teachers of the various departments. The lecture was delivered by Professor Syed Samsul Alam the first Vice-Chancellor of Aliah University and a student of Professor Gayen.
Professor Gayen first mooted a proposal for the establishment of Vidyasagar University as a non-traditional rural university to cater to the developmental needs of the local tribal and underprivileged communities with the aid of interdisciplinary teaching and research to the Central Government in the early 1970s and was finally accepted through the recommendations of the Ghani Committee by the University Grants Commission.
Anil Kumar Gayen (1919-1978) hailed from a poor family of a remote village named Lakkhi, in the Khejuri block of present East Midnapore district and became a renowned scholar in the fields of Mathematics and Statistics. He was awarded Ph.D degree in 1950 in Statistics from the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Professor Henry Ellis Daniels, F R S, then President of the Royal Statistical Society, UK.
Gayen held the chair of the Head of Mathematics Department at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, during 1954-1978. Professor Anil Gayen was a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, England and Cambridge Philosophical Society and was President, Statistics Section of the Indian Science Congress in 1971 and also a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy.

Bengal

App for visually impaired

• The Statesman
• 29 Oct 2014

App identifies denomination of currency notes from photograph

Biswabrata Goswami
biswabrata@thestatesman.net
Midnapore, 28 October
Students from IIT, Kharagpur and International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad have developed a smartphone
application that can recognise the denomination of a currency note from its picture.
The app will be helpful for visually impaired persons, who often have difficulty identifying denomination of currency notes. After taking a photograph of a bank note, the app will inform the holder via voice intimation. A visually impaired person could have significant trouble differentiating the value of one piece of currency from the next.
Though the RBI has added embossing of different shapes unique to each denomination on the left side of the note, it is quite hard to make out.
Particularly, when the note is worn out with time, it appears more difficult to recognise a currency note for a visually impaired person.
The size of notes of different denominations, are also very similar, which makes it harder. Other than the images printed upon them, there may be no way to tell the difference between a hundred rupees note and a thousand rupees note. That is where this application comes into play.
The app has been developed by Suriya Singh, Kumar Vishal and C.V. Jawahar from IIIT Hyderabad and Shushman Choudhury from IIT Kharagpur. The application can detect the denominations with an accuracy of 96.7 per cent, claim one of the researchers.
While demonstrating the application in Kharagpur recently, Shushman said the smart phone needs a 1.3 MP camera with auto focus. He said, “Several similar systems have been developed around the world, but most need an internet connection on the smart phone. This app, however, doesn’t require internet.”
This application is not only the sole one that has created ways to help people who are blind and low vision deal with money. In the USA, LookTel Money Reader, iPhone users with vision disabilities can simply point the device’s camera at any bill, and wait for the app to recognise it. Once it does, the Money Reader will speak the value of the bill out loud.
But, in our country, most visually impaired persons are still facing the difficulty in recognising the denomination of currency notes. But, from now, it will be easier for them to deal with the currency notes, said an IIT, KGP student.