The World As I See It

Recently I came across an article narrating the difference a foreign business venture received in China and in Singapore. In China, they were flooded with various offers, proposals or contacts of SMEs ranging from suppliers, partners, logistics and so on. While in Singapore, a perplexing silence made them wonder if the local SMEs were waiting for an invitation. In my view, the SMEs were waiting for the Government to organise a convention or any event to help the businesses meet.

Why the lack of initiatives? We have grown up overly dependent on the Government in many aspects. But isn’t it incorporated in the syllabus the elements of thinking, acting or learning independently? From my experience, they are much emphasised in almost everywhere.

This brings me to my point. I believe the best way to teach independence, is not to teach. At the same time, relax the tight arrangement of workloads¹ so that those who wish to initiate a business venture, a discussion group on any subjects, an extra-curricular activity, a research, or even just to think, do not have to make a hard choice whether to pursue their interests at the expense of grades. Obviously, on this topic, the examinations are not really valid i.e. what we are tested on is not what the papers are intended to test. The papers can be reliable, meaning they consistently rate the students on something else which I do not bother to find out, but not the quality of being independent.

I very much admire the atmosphere in Cambridge during Bertrand Russell’s time (1890 - 1894). In his essay "My Mental Development",

I found a group of contemporaries, who were able, rather earnest, hardworking, but interested in many things outside their academic work - poetry, philosophy, politics, ethics, indeed the whole world of mental adventure. We used to stay up discussing till very late on Saturday nights, meet for a late breakfast on Sunday, and then go for an all-day walk.

I had the luxury of this experience a bit during my secondary school in Malaysia. The schedule was quite lax then. We had at our disposal ample time for long discussions, immersing ourselves in the libraries and bookshops, and long walk. Though back then, we were rather confined only to the world of physics and mathematics, our progress was tremendous. I don’t see this possibility in Singapore universities now. It appears that, by packing our timetables even in the holidays², they do not intend to encourage this culture.

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1. Note here that what we have to do in term times are already tightly arranged by the schools.
2. The bulk of my engineering friends cannot make it home in this holiday because of a project in which they need to commit their time in labs every working day. No doubt they need to discuss and design solutions to some problems. But the distinction between this and what I am talking about is a clear one. They are discussing something initiated by the school, including the problems they are looking into.

I am describing 2 attitudes of students. Both sets are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive. But their contrast is best to illustrate my point.

"I came to philosophy through mathematics" - Bertrand Russell, in his essay Logial Atomism

"The mathematicians do not treat mathematics as what we have in mind in our daily usage. To them, it is a philosophy." - Wong Wei Pin, a friend of mine, majoring in pure mathematics, currently pursuing a joint master programme by NUS and Ecole Polytechnique.

How many students possess this attitude when coming to their modules? When we deal with mathematics, are we aware of its beauty or the fundamental philosophical ground? Or do we stop at the "engineering level" of maths feeling satisfied to fulfil the grades? I do not mean to insult engineers, but merely to allude that some of us, particularly those that confine themselves only to the syllabus, treat the subject only as a tool and do not wish to see the bigger or deeper picture in their fields of study.

Are languages merely a tool to communicate? Have we ever been touched by the aesthetic value of our favourite language? Are all subjects really separated? Do you feel it unthinkable or ridiculous that a study in Chinese language will affect one’s tastes in music, chess, calligraphy or painting and vice versa? Will philosophy help in the understanding of martial arts? (I believe this is the reason Bruce Lee took philosophy in University of Washington.) Are we puzzled by one’s claim that his study in Economics has piqued an interest in Law, subsequently leading him to delve into the area of human behaviour - Psychology (which partly work beneath the two), and finally the stock market? [edited] 

It seems there are some common grounds, some overlappings at the fundamental level of each field. A study in a subject will drive an enlightened student into others, and slowly branching out in all directions. Compared with those appeased only with grades, who is likely to lead a fulfilling life?

Think again, are you tasklessly bored in the holidays because there is no syllabus assigned to you?

I was always of the opinion that the two are not incompatible. My senior attempted to convince me that my course terribly requires full focus from us. My professor advised against my taking up of positions in extracurricular activities. I tried to disprove them, but failed so far. Probably I just played too much. "Thirst for wisdom and knowledge" has always been the priority in my life. I don’t think I want to shake it for now. It is painful. Does it make a good reason to "move out of our comfort zone"?

My enthusiasm for blogging is waning. It is a nice and fulfilling experience. But it takes too much of my time. I am slow at organise and sort out things. I find it interesting that it started after my first paper and ended before the last paper in this final exam. Many thanks for the commendations, though I seriously do not think I really deserve it. I will only update once in a blue moon.

"About Schmidt" is a nice, sad and funny show about a retired actuary. For this movie, Jack Nicholson won the Best Actor title in the Golden Globe Awards. I came across this in Warren Schmidt’s letter to his foster child Ndugu,

"I believe I mentioned in my previous letter that I was an actuary at Woodmen and The World insurance company. If I am given a man’s age, race, profession, place of residence, marital status and medical history, I can calculate with great probability how long that man will live. In my own case, now that my wife has died, there is a 73% chance that I will die within 9 years, provided that I do not remarry."

This is a very layman interpretation of what the statistics reveal. The underlying assumption of the model and analyses is that we can observe groups of identical lives, or at least lives whose mortality characteristics are the same. To pluck from my notes,

"As a result of this heterogeneity, our estimate of mortality would be the estimate of the average mortality over the whole set of lives. We could use the estimate to predict the level of mortality for a similar group of lives but it would not be correct for any single individual. This could be a particular problem for an insurance company that wishes to set premiums that accurately reflect the risk of each individual policyholder."

It might sound the same to a layman, but the distinction is of utmost importance to a statistician. In the Institute of Actuaries exam series, one of the papers is on communication, which requires us to explain the technical findings in an understandable way to a layman, like our clients or the management. I am particularly worried about this, as what the MBTI personality test reflects on me, I have difficulty expressing myself and find myself frequently misunderstood, and

"INTJs tend to blame misunderstandings on the limitations of the other party, rather than on their own difficulty in expressing themselves."

You might wonder why the insurance company would not just continue to subdivide the populations to solve the problem of heterogeneity. This is because it will result in a much smaller populations in each class and we will have a problem with the validity of the samples, ie are they representative of the whole population?

"A balance must be struck between obtaining more and more homogeneity, and retaining large enough populations to make analysis possible, ie the finer the subdivision of the data, the less credible the results of the analysis." - Survival Model course notes

Similarly, I need to strike a balance in retaining the truth and making myself clear to others.