Not registered

This was Delhi, the winter of 1998-99. I had recently been introduced to the world of sweatshirts and sweatpants: having acquired several Rs 75/- sweatshirts from Sarojini Nagar footpath sellers, I decided to move on two sweatpants, being priced at Rs 120/-.

Given my physique, getting one to fit me was not a simple ask. It was different in Delhi. The people were huge, as a rule, so that left me with choice.

I rummaged through the assortment of sweatpants in search of something unique. And then, amidst all the sober colours, this caught my eye:

NOT REGISTERED is the name that guarantees the highest quality level to people who are tired of spending their money on expensive rubbish with ridiculous brand names

Despite it being hideously green, I knew I had to buy this one.

I still have it, and am not shy to wear it (albeit at home). I had to buy it, right? Did I really have an option?

Kurtosis

This was about a decade back. I was, rather reluctantly, loitering, somewhat aimlessly, in the Camac Street Westside (and this sentence has just made it to the Guinness Book of World Records for the commas/words ratio). Unknowingly, possibly eyeing of the girl at the counter or something as attractive. I came across a sign, dangling from the ceiling. I wasn't concentrating too hard, and the first blurry image that got registered inside my brain was this:

My mind raced back. Cut scenes from the meandering bylanes of time, the ones they call flashbacks in Hindi films, followed:
FLASH! The Presidency College lecture theatre!
FLASH! μ4!
FLASH! The word kurtosis written on board!
FLASH! The definition - kurtosis is the peakedness of a probability distribution: the more the kurtosis, a higher μ4 indicating a peak, while a lower one representing a rounded curve!
FLASH! Skewness and kurtosis are the Sunil Valsons of CU BSc statistics: they're there to fill up the syllabus, they bask in the glory of the glamorous ones like Probability, Sample Survey and Design of Experiments, but they never appear in exam papers, and are hence always omitted.
FLASH! The cover of Fundamentals of Statistics, Vol. 1, by AM Goon, M K Gupta and B Dasgupta.

Most importantly, if we ever played an inter-department game involving words ending in -tosis, kurtosis would have been the statisticians' response to the biologists' mitosis.

I was really excited - of course kurtosis is a relevant parameter as far as women's garments are considered. I was really impressed by the way they used statistics to measure it.

Then, a closer look suggested that the word was actually this:

So much for statistically enlightened retail outlets.

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PS: I had forgotten to tag this post as Moments. Now I've done the same. :)