Laughter guffaws in Mumbai

The All Mumbai Laughter Competition was recently held at Mumbai's Priyadar-shini Park. This was aimed at demonstrating the beneficial effects of laughter.

Around 25 laughter clubs across the city participated in the competition to see who could do the elephant laughter, atom bomb laughter or lassi laughter, better than the others. The frog, disco and cricket laughter winners were picked by 37 students of the Lady Rantanbai and Sir Ma-thurdas Vissanji Academy. Though it was a competition, every club received a trophy at the end of the day! Five-month-old Aryaman Taparia was the youngest competitor at the event.

Laughter clubs of the Priyadarshini Academy that organised the event have helped to bring about fellowship among senior citizens.

Atiyah says maths is fun!

Sir Michael Atiyah, one of the greatest living mathematicians, was recently in Mum-bai. He says that learning maths can be fun, not scary. However, it can't be learnt by rote but has to be practised.

Atiyah holds a Fields me-dal, the Nobel for maths. He says that mathematicians are better than computers. Ma-chines can't help in the fundamental thinking process, they have to be programmed, unlike mathematicians.

In India, students, good at maths, go on to become engineers, etc. However, UK and US students have better chances to hone their maths skills, as they can move within inter-disciplinary sciences.