Who am I?

The more blurred the picture the better I look!

This question may not be terribly important to you, I know that. Nevertheless, I may be excused for considering it as a somewhat important point, and after some musings this is the best answer that I have been able to produce so far.

Biologically ...

I belong to the species called homo sapiens. (Recently a friend has pointed out that I belong to the subspecies called sapiens) I happen to be a male of that subspecies. To avoid boring a non-biologically-oriented reader I skip some details like the numbers of hands, and legs and head etc that I possess. (They are, by the way, the usual numbers for my species.)

Demographically ...

I am an Indian, born in Calcutta in 1974. I speak Bengali (mostly to myself). My name is Arnab Chakraborty. I love Bengali poetry ... oops, that has nothing to do with demography!

Academically ...

I was a Visiting Scientist at the Stat-Math unit of the Indian Statistical Institute , Calcutta from August 2003 to March 2006.
I received my PhD from the Statistics Department at Stanford University. I joined Stanford in the Fall quarter of 1999. My advisor was Prof. Persi Diaconis.
Before I came here I was a Junior Research Fellow in the Stat-Math Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute , Calcutta, for one year.
I got my Masters' degree in Statistics from the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta, in 1998.
It was from the same institute that I received my Bachelors' degree in 1996.
I joined Indian Statistical Institute , Calcutta, in 1993.
My higher-secondary education took place in Saint Xavier's College, Calcutta.
The first ten years of my formal education I spent in a Bengali medium school called Sir Nripendra Nath Institution. And here I must add that I almost never went to school except to appear in the examinations, somewhat to the annoyance of my teachers there.

Spiritually ...

I am nothing but a soul ... the soul, to be precise. However, I am yet to understand what the last sentence really means.

Culturally ...

I am man of taciturn type, who likes to keep to himself. I have great many interests, but have the somewhat bad (and not too extra-ordinary) habit of not persevering in all of them. I like poetry and literature. The best novel that I have ever read is a Bengali one called "Pather P(n)achali" by BibhutiBhusan. My secondmost favorite novel is Pickwick Papers by Dickens. I enjoy puzzles, indeed I enjoy making puzzles more than solving them. I like to read Shakespeare very much. There is a wonderful collection of Shakespeare films in the Stanford Library that I like SO MUCH!! I am very fond of writing computer programs mainly in C and Java, and occasionally in Lisp. I find that writing compilers is a fascinating hobby. I have some interest in mathematical logic, especially in things related to resolution principles and automated theorem proving. But I know rather little along that line. Recently I have developed interest in computer hardware.