I am finally recovered from that slight bronchi infection on my left bronchi that has got me trapped in cycles of fever-cold. Too bad I wasn’t quite in academic mood when I felt sick or I’ll be recording down my temperature every time I measure it (which I did very frequently and I was telling my sister I may have contracted the Compulsive Temperature-Taking Syndrome that struck our schools together with SARS). And then I could try plot a chart or something using Google Chart API and then link the image here or something. Some random announcements and some offers to be made, since the previous entry that happen to fall into any other categories in my blog was really long ago.
I encountered something rather weird today. There’s this J2 who happened to not know how to spell ‘absurd’ and decided he wanted it to be the name of his sub-domain for his blog – at first I even thought it was intentional, now that’s what I call absurd. The worst part is really not that. It’s that erpz.net is going to host his blog, so soon there’s going to be one more blog on erpz.net besides Mib and mine (which really has been around since 2005). People who are interested in wordpress blogs at erpz.net with full setup free, you might comment in this entry to negotiate the monthly price, or leave your contacts so I may contact you. Right now ftp will probably be provided upon request and webspace is very flexible.
Another thing is that I am leaving this place to an island without Internet access for me (maybe they do have it for some other people). The trip would be quite a while and I’ll probably be missing from the blog for that while. The worst part is that I am not allowed to write about the encounters on that island and even doing that in secret might threaten my life. That’s absurd too, at least somehow.
Real sick this 2 days – fever, sore throat and running nose. I originally want to title this entry ‘The Fever’ but it reminds me of ‘Population/436′ and sends chills down my spine. It’s an extremely evil movie, you have been warned. Aw Yong, I don’t think you read my blog but if you see the title as ‘The Fever’, I bet you’d be reminded of it too. I have been virtually sleeping all day and my fever just went alternating; there was on and off periods of high body temperatures and then huge breakout of perspiration after taking a dose of Panadol. I was just wondering a few days ago, “Hey, I haven’t been sick for quite some time – I sure have a rather good immunity system.” Damn it, it’s just 3 or 4 days and the sickness strikes me. The worst part? I am enlisting soon and it’d be rather dangerous to be over at Tekong, sick from day one. I better get well soon.
I have, as mentioned in the previous entry, turned my attention from more social science articles to the mathematical and scientific stuff. Today I spent the little time I have awake proving a couple of very simple algebraic identities (actually it’s theorems, some summation, some sequences). The Fibonacci Sequences are easy because of their properties, you can easy switch one term to the sum of the previous because the sequence is defined such that F(n) = F(n-1) + F(n-2), where F(1)=F(2)=1. I have problems with proving the factor formula for Binomial Number. I still can’t prove it so if any readers are free, you might like to give it a try and if you succeed, I don’t mind being spoiled. It’s fun to do the fundamental stuff sometimes. That’s why someone even manage to publish the book, ‘Trig or Treat’ at some ridiculous prices by just pulling out ‘O’ Levels and ‘A’ Levels notes available everywhere and putting them on the side of tutorials on Trigonometry that students dump each year after they leave school.
Given this rate of publication of trivial books (albeit those that helps popularize what are misunderstood as being too sophisticated for the masses), I’ll soon amass sufficient crap (stuff I wrote) to publish a small book of random babblings. It’ll span topics of Literature, History, Geography, Sociology, Economic Analysis and Evaluations of economies, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry (incorporating Biology) and Computers. It can even be a language guide (albeit one that provides negative examples on language usage).
Back to sleep.
Alright, I must admit I am absolutely influenced by Feynman’s appreciation of Nature and his obsession with Physics. I find myself looking around the shelves for ‘Mathematics’ and ‘Physics’, rather than my typical ‘Economics & Finance’ and ‘Business’. And I was browsing at books that are so boringly titled ‘Fundamental Mathematics for Physics’ when what I normally browse would be some catchy titles like ‘There’s No Free Lunch’ or ‘Bad Samaritans’. The titles of these books doesn’t tell much though. I find myself intrigued by the complex mathematical stuff evoked to study nature and laws of the universe. Take Roger Penrose’s ‘The Road to Reality’ for example. It’s price is really extremely reasonable; at 42 bucks, he introduced the history of scientific inquiry, the mathematical prowess of the ancient Greeks and gave readers lots of mathematical relationships discovered in each of the inquiry he introduced – they span from euclidean geometry, hyperbolic planes and trajectory to wave functions. That is, of course if you have time to read and investigate the issues covered in the book, which is about 1.5 the thickness of my Oxford Dictionary and about the same in terms of area of each page.
I got rather tired after looking at all those symbols that I didn’t understand. I am looking for a technical guide into those mathematical books, I hope I can find it soon. Even better if there’s any hardcore mathematician out there (must be able to speak comprehensible English), who wouldn’t mind being a answer-provider for all my questions on Hamiltonian Mathematics (Quaternion), Vector Analysis, Tensor Calculus, Fractional Calculus and more complex Geometry stuff used in Relativity. You must bear with the ‘elementary’ stuff from me by the way – I am just starting out. Then I am also looking for Feynman Lectures (just like Peng Sing); turned out that those books are so freaking expensive in Singapore. Same for other of those books published by him. Unlike those coffee break books like Johnson Spencer’s (or even Freakonomics), these lecturer series are not the kind you would gladly finish in the bookstore. Perhaps that’s also why I come to like these books; they are worth the money spent because you refer to them and you work on the problems they provide and above that, you refer to them now and then. The books I used to spend my money on are less of this nature.
That doesn’t mean that I have decided to do away with Economics of course! Feynman was describing about how science tells us that different phenomena observed are actually the same phenomena observed at different scales. For example, motion at the smallest scale gives us heat, at just slightly larger scale, it is just the propagation of waves (sounds and ultrasounds); it is only at rather grand scale when it is things changing location and stuff like that. The amazing thing is that a single concept of motion would explain all these seemingly different phenomena. At the same moment, I was wondering if Economics is the same, a rule applied to different scales, resulting in different phenomena. Then I realize it can’t be so. Physics exploits symmetries to make generalizations and aggregate effects of independent particles. That’s to say that even though at any one time, the behaviour of each individual particles are different, their behaviours are restricted to certain rules. By symmetry therefore, it is possible to simulate or calculate aggregate effects of these particles.
In Economics, the individual agents may be restricted to ‘rational rules’ but unlike particles in a substance, these agents can under special circumstances, infringe on those rules, making it rather impossible to sensibly aggregate the effects. Worst, in the physical world, we subject a substance to some conditions (pressure, temperature, presence of any other substance) and we assume the condition’s effect to be uniformly reflected on every single particle in the substance. That does not happen in the economy. Circumstances impact differently on different particular agents. Just think about how you might be able to measure the melting point of an alloy (a mixture of a couple of different metal particles) that is subjected to a few different mysterious forces, which would continually alter the way in which certain type of metal particle in the alloy behave with the other particles. Let’s say there’s a Force A that strengthens and weakens in a sine function; this Force makes the A-Particles in the alloy repel the B-Particles when it strengthens. Then there’s Force B that does something similar to B-Particles and C-Particles. There’s no way you’ll manage to melt the alloy at a particular temperature and then expect the experiment to repeat itself in the same way because the force strength keeps on changing, and then at certain moments some particles are tending towards melting (repelling or pushing away from the other particles) while others are tending towards bond-forming due to the force.
The biggest mistake in marginal analysis have been to make unrealistic assumptions and disregard the dynamic nature of the economy. However, that’s still the best possible way to even attempt to make economics mathematical. Some thinks economics is the science of today because its complexity can only be simulated on computers that have been invented just recently. Still, it does no good to make things more and more complex; it only makes it less accessible and applicable for predictive studies. Right now I have no answers to this problem and I doubt I’ll invest a lifetime to find the answer to such matters of the economy. Somehow the potential of getting an answer is a little too low and the question, like all questions on humans, never yields any sort of answer satisfactory to all. There’s however the branch of Game Theory in Microeconomics that I am interested in and I just got an idea to do a short research on incentive system set up by policies of an institution and matters like that. The first paper will be on late-comers in lectures. It’ll be on my site soon.
A while ago, when I was still a student of a particular premier institution, I criticized how poor a particular subject department of the institution was. Ruiyuan told me when when I am done with my tertiary education in that subject, perhaps even after completing my PhD, I should write the department a letter to ‘thank’ them for inspiring me. My criticism at that time ranged from the quality of the teachers to the design of lecture notes as well as the general pedagogical approach adopted by the department. Note, of course, that this subject is a social science.
Perhaps I was too anxious, or that this issue have been with me for quite some time – I decided I should do a draft of the letter that I am about to send 8 years or so down the road. Matters then, (hopefully) might not be the same as the present but nonetheless, a nice draft should convince the future me that I took this matter very seriously. Here’s my draft:
To Whom It May Concern
We all know your department sucks, please do the following:
(1) Review your course material and provide more readings (or recommendation on additional readings). Use good English and make sure diagrams are well-annotated. Ensure that your chunks of text in the notes are really in point-form.
(2) Prevent wastage of lecture time by cutting down on the scolding of late-comers, starting lectures on time and removing the administrative need of marking attendance.
(3) Please teach concepts and theories and introduce the history of these discoveries as lesson progresses. Do not merely feed ‘answers’ to the questions you believe would come out for exams. Such ‘assessment-oriented’ approach do not imbue students with the desire to explore the subject for themselves.
(4) Do not make us memorize definitions just for convenience of the markers, it kills our passion for the subject. Focus on making us understand the subject and appreciate the predictive beauty of these theories.
Please consider my suggestion for the good of students passionate about the subject before entering our institution.
Thank you for your kind attention.
Student,
Vib
To save myself of trouble, I’ll probably be sending out the letter after ORD. Nonetheless, I hope to collect at least a hundred signatures from ex-students (my peers) who have done the subject to accompany the letter, as a demonstration that my letter do indeed holds majority opinion about the department in question. I would also welcome comments on modifying the letter to reduce the impression of an intentional, vicious assault of the department.
I realised that I have been doing things so much more slowly than in the past; while that means I savour the words of the books I read, it also mean that I am absorbing the knowledge more slowly. As I work on some simple HTML with some of the sub-sites of this domain, I once again feel that I am not working fast enough. A day is sometimes lost with me just doing 2 activity – reading a book (not even completing it) and chatting online. These are real unproductive times. I suspect that it’s the lost of a very structured stress system (ie. the education system and the rat race in action) that has to do with my decline in productive activity. It is scary how we may actually be tempted into this sort of comfort. I suspect it is the same sort of virus that inflicts the civil servants of the past and the teachers who taught us when we were kids. They are not directly faced with the rat race in the society, protected by the job security and income stability – the only threat was probably inflation, which is alas, well controlled by wage-restraints in the days of economy-building of Singapore.
Nevertheless the rat race must have some effect on everyone involved as long as one is connected to the rest of society and for me, it has influenced me through the fretting of university choices and courses to study. Actually course is more clear-cut to me, university is not because of my ability to pay and whether I even qualify for admission. In some universities, I am competing on the basis of my brains and excellence in demonstrable fields (with the rest of the world) because all applicants are such. Other universities would force me to compete on basis on my brains with a select bunch who are as poor as me and admission will lead me on to compete with those who are rich but not necessarily capable. You may have notice that I don’t seem to be looking out for university based on branding or quality of courses. However, my search for ‘competitive spaces’ would naturally fulfill those requirements.
If I am not wrong, Jack Welch once mentioned in some university’s commencement address that if you have no idea what organization to work for, just go for the branded ones. In the same vein, if you don’t know what university to get into, just go for the best that you can possibly afford. In the society, stuff like universities and organizations have positive network effects from name and by joining them, you benefit from an established social network, a ready pool of already successful people (often by ability but sometimes also because of the organization brand name). By searching for ‘competitive spaces’ or choosing who you want to compete with in the environment you are heading into, you naturally seek out that kind of brand that best suits you.
For those who wants to study local, I have an argument for going overseas, and to me, it is a powerful argument. In fact, I rather use another perspective and reduce the arguments for studying local. Yup, I’m going to say that convenience, security and safety are ‘pros’ only for the weak-willed and weak-minded. Nevertheless, I want to point out something in relation to ‘competitive spaces’ that local universities are unable to provide. Having been in the asian-styled examination based competitive system, I do not think that at tertiary level we should be continuing with that – we need a chance to be engaged in other levels of challenges and emphasize other platforms at which we complete. On top of the system that serves to structure the rat race, there’s the type of people as partners or competitors, which we will have to look out for when selecting the ‘competitive spaces’. Ask yourself whether you want to compete in a cohort made up of more or less the same people whom you have been fighting with the past 15 or so years. Yes, there is a change in composition of the entire cohort but remember that the experience of those around you if you study local would very much be the same as yours.
No doubt a decade or even less time down the road, Singapore may be cosmopolitan enough to support a diverse mix of people with different educational experience in the local universities – I do not question that, but I am thinking about here and now. Right now in selecting ‘competitive spaces’, one need not even look at local-foreign distinction – one simply have to select the sort of competition he hopes to be in for. Of course, due consideration still have to be given to the ability to pay and so on.
I seem to have diverged from my point about searching for stress to motivate myself, but that’s actually what I just did. I was exploring something that was simmering inside my mind too slowly. I had to write them out to get them clear. I have been trapped in my stream of thoughts about these issues sometimes because I either digressed into some self-discussion about the ethical dilemma schools may have if they are solely need-blind to students of their own country and not international students, or that I throw myself into a downward spiral of negative thoughts, questioning my ability to even compete against brilliant minds around the world. Right now, I just have to be more logical and rational with my approach and then force myself to work faster with the decision-making and research. Oh yes, and through this thinking as I write, I just introduced a new structured stress system to myself.
I wanted to spend today making a plan of what I would do with the rest of my time before National Service but unfortunately (or fortunately, for those freaks out there), my mum got me to help out with cleaning the house. That means I have to help vacuum the walls, floor and ceiling corners, boxes areas; and clean the computer, all the tables and chairs in the house and change the bedsheets. I have got to help in any case, partly out of tradition and also because my mum needs it badly. As my mum decide to dump the old hi-fi speakers, I naturally decided to do some operation on it to extract the powerful magnet that is present in all of such sound-emitting devices. Unfortunately the screws used by that darn company is one with the strangest designs I ever seen, it was an ‘=’ sort of top.
As I appeared to be ‘slacking’ away and fiddling with the parts my mum started requesting me to get back to the cleaning because I am halfway through with the computers (which required me to remove all connections and clean the wires by running them one-by-one through a wet cloth). Frustrated with screws and my mum’s nagging, I rebutted her, saying that the reason why she’s always so tired and busy is because she spend so much time doing things the same old, inefficient way and none of her time exploring for new ways of doing things (the way I do). It dawned on me that this is very true – I mean I didn’t really think about it before and the point was merely a reaction to my mum’s nagging. Perhaps we have spent way too much time in our lives doing things we hate in ways that we hate but are forced to work on them. Other times, we pay those who have less degree of freedom to do the stuff, or maybe these people really like to do the work. If we were to just stop work and leave them alone, invest some time to explore other means of attaining similar results, or consider whether to scrap the entire activity all together, we may end up enjoying our lives more and benefiting mankind.
I’m of course not saying we devote all our energies into creativity and exploration and be in constant state of experimentation (like in the case of some screwed Institution doing some screwed Programme, which is ever-fine-tunning their stuff with radical measures). I’m suggesting we, as common people (as in we don’t consider ourselves innovators), lack the motivation to try and work things out differently.
