King of Torts; Random and TNEA random no. generation

The King of Torts (2003) written by  John Grisham remained in the top 15 for over 20 weeks of its debut.   In the thriller, Clay Carter,  a poorly paid public defender reluctantly takes on the case of Tequila Watson, a man accused of a random street killing. Watson insists that he somehow wasn't in control of his body when he pulled the trigger, a story which Clay tries to dismiss, but can't get out of his mind.  It leads to a drug named Tarvan;  drug addicts  experimented on illegally by an unnamed pharmaceutical company, and mass law suits that follow!

Heard of Random Numbers ?  -  Random number is a unique randomly computed number and the context here is what  every TNEA applicant gets allotted  to sort same cutoff holders in the ranking process.

Random number generation is the generation of a sequence of numbers or symbols that cannot be reasonably predicted better than by a random chance, usually through a random-number generator (RNG). Various applications of randomness have led to the development of several different methods for generating random data.   Several computational methods for random-number generation exist. Many fall short of the goal of true randomness, although they may meet, with varying success, some of the statistical tests for randomness intended to measure how unpredictable their results are. 

Back home, in Chennai, Higher education minister K P Anbazhagan, who released the rank list for Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (TNEA) on Thursday, said the counselling dates will be announced only after the NEET results are declared. This is because several engineering candidates in the rank list are also eligible for medical seats. Addressing presspersons at the Anna University campus, the minister said that the date of commencement of counselling for the single window admissions into engineering courses had earlier been tentatively slated for June 27 but will now be dependent on the NEET results.

Among the 6733 top scorers in the TNEA list whose cut-off scores are in the range of 197 to 200, 5,376 candidates are also eligible for medical seats. For instance, among 59 candidates who have scored 200/200, 36 are also eligible for medical seats. Similarly, 645 out of 811 candidates who scored 199 are eligible for medical seats, the minister said. "There is a chance that many of them will opt for a medical seat and drop the engineering one. This would only cause difficulties later, leading to vacancies in the top slots. So, we will commence counselling once the medical results are out," said Anbazhagan.

A Supreme Court ruling mandates that all engineering admissions must be completed by August 15 which means the university will have to ideally begin its single-window counselling process by mid-June. However, the minister said that in case they need more time, they would seek an exemption to carry out the counselling. The minister said there are 584 engineering colleges in the state with a total of 2,85,844 seats (including management quota) available for filling. A total of 580 engineering colleges are participating in the counselling process. While 11 colleges are not taking part in the counselling this year leading to a loss of almost 10,000 seats, Amrita School of Engineering with 300 seats is the only addition to the seat matrix. Also, 267 courses across colleges have been closed, the minister added.  [news source Times of India]

The Single Window Admissions System is a process through which students completing 12^th  Std apply and gain admission to Engineering Colleges that are located within Tamil Nadu.  Few years back, there was - Tamil Nadu Professional Courses Entrance Examination (TNPCEE), joint entrance for Engineering and Medical. Anna University with its main campus in Guindy,  is a technical university in Tamil Nadu, India.  The Government of Tamil Nadu entrusted Anna University to conduct Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions in a transparent way. Anna University designed, developed, and adopted TNEA Single Window Counselling process to ensure that engineering aspirants get admission into engineering colleges of Tamil Nadu transparently.

TNEA process starts with the issuing of the applications forms. The date of issue of application forms is widely  publicized in all leading dailies and other media (www.annauniv.edu) is the  authentic source of information. All the engineering aspirants who wish for an engineering seat need to obtain this application form from their nearest application issuing venue and submit it duly filled. They can do it online also.

After submission of forms [those who apply Online too have to submit physical forms through Registered post], they are scrutinised.  The coding sheets filled by the candidate are scanned by special machines and the data fed to the computer for further processing.  One of the main eligibility criteria is the minimum eligibility mark and it is the sum of marks obtained in Physics, Chemistry and Maths divided by sum of maximum marks in Physics, Chemistry and Maths. Aggregate mark or cut-off mark is the sum of Physics mark obtained scaled to 50, Chemistry mark obtained scaled to 50 and Maths mark obtained scaled to 100.Thus the maximum aggregate or cut-off mark is 200.

All the marks obtained from different board of studies will be normalized as described in the TNEA instruction booklet.The candidates are ranked based on the aggregate mark or cut-off mark. The ranked candidates will be grouped into counselling sessions ordered by rank and in turn each counselling session will be ordered rank wise. Eventually many candidates will have same aggregate mark leading to tie, which should be broken to ensure unique ranking. 

The following rules mentioned below is used to break the tie:

1.         If two candidates have the same aggregate marks, the candidate with higher Maths mark will be ranked above

2.         If the Maths Mark is same, then a higher Physics mark would break the tie

3.         If the Maths and Physics mark are same, then the Chemistry mark would be eventually same. The fourth optional subject mark would break the tie.

4.         If the fourth optional subject marks are also same then the candidate’s date of birth will be considered. Elder candidate gets the benefit of being ranked above.

Now that is not all – there could still be hundreds or even thousands of candidates with the same date of birth - then a 10-digit random number assigned to each candidate decides the ranking. A candidate with the highest random number will be ranked above the other. In order to make this random number assignment transparent, it is assigned in public amidst the media and subsequently  published in the TNEA website. Along with the random number, the raw data captured from the coding sheet and verified during scrutiny also gets published.

After random number assignment, the rank list will be prepared and published in the website.   The candidates will be ranked and called for counselling based on the rank as described above.  The candidates may also find their counselling dates published in the leading dailies and in TNEA website.

If you are in the race ~ ‘all the best’ – if not, this may make an interesting read

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

24^th June 2017.