Earlier, as soon as demonetization was imposed, a 10 rupee note with ‘Sonam Gupta Bewafa Hein’ written on it topped the news.

Numerous trolls and memes surrounded that note involving prominent Indian politicians like Arvind Kejriwal.

It appears like Sonam Gupta reentered the news channels through IIT Guwahati. Yes! a professor in IIT Guwahati in the department of electronics and electrical engineering involved Son Gupta in a probability question this way:

“Determine if a person ‘x’ is bewafa, what is the probability that Sonam Gupta is bewafa given a dependence structure between variables where all variables are binary and their high values mean the following: G means gender of ‘x’ is female (~G means the opposite), S means biological parents of ‘x’ are strict with her, W means x is wealthy, A means x is attractive, L means x has lots of options, B means x is bewafa, C means at least one other person y claims that the person x is bewafa ?”

Now, the students were asked to draw a Bayesian network and convert it into a factor graph.

The question came to limelight after an IIT student shared it on Facebook , it went so viral that the picture garnered 150 shares and 600 likes within no time.

The student quoted the picture as “The response is overwhelming. We all love the professor for making the question so exciting. It has spread to other IITs widely been commented upon.”

Similarly, the subject of demonetization knocked IIT-Delhi, when Prof Ravinder Kaur, head of humanities and social sciences department social sciences professor shot a question stating  Would the suicide go up or down due to

“Would the suicide go up or down due to demonetization?  Explain the context in which Durkheim’s (French philosopher) suicide theory discussed such events and will the demonetization be different in rural or urban areas or for different classes?”

The above question is marked as a compulsory 10-mark question in the question paper.

The professor responded to media saying “In social sciences (and humanities), we often try to illustrate and explicate theoretical concepts and ideas by relating them to contemporary events and happenings. Students engage more with what we are teaching when they realize it has some usefulness for understanding what is happening around them. Also, such questions make students learn how to think logically and creatively and not simply reproduce what has been taught in class or given in a book or a theory.”

She added, “I am sure, the same is done in many science and engineering courses—Narmada dam would be a good example for civil engineers, smog for atmospheric sciences students and others.”

A student from IIT-Delhi said, “It is fascinating to write on an issue the entire nation—in fact, other countries too—are talking about. The question could have been simply put up by asking Durkheim’s suicide theory but linking it with demonetization was a creative way to present. The answers will be worth looking at.”