how to get a million dollars

realised that i havent blogged for over a month! was getting bit lazy until...

i found out the easiest way to get one million dollars!

drumroll....

act stupid and enter the gameshow "are you smarter than a fifth grader?" maybe the gameshow may sound unfamiliar, but it's the gameshow THE dumb blonde was in.

geez. basically, it's like "who wants to be a millionaire" the elementary/ pri sch version with adults. was watching it on channel 5. there's this chap who was answering his 300,000 USD question. Yes. 300,000 USD. And the question is... drumroll...

What do plants lose during the process of transpiration?

A. Seeds. B. Water Vapour. C. Roots...

Mika, her sister and I were like... What?! So simple?

And... this American chap just gave up and said that the question was too difficult.

???????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Worse, he walked away with 175,000 USD!

?????!!!!! I worked so hard to get a good degree to get a well-paying job and sloughed for the past two years and yet i dun get such good money.

There's really something fundamentally wrong with this world.

But maybe life's not so bad after all. after two years, my paper submission to a math journal is finally accepted! actually, not v excited, cos of the long delay in the refereeing process. haha. anyway, mika asked me how much i may get for publishing a paper.

i said, "i dunno. but definitely much less than 175,000 USD."

the alchemist

it's been some time since i read a fictional novel. well, mika said it was nice and i should read it. yeah. so i read it. quite nice... so i put some excerpts here.

*****************************************************

"What's the world's greatest lie?".....

"It's this: that a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie."

**************************************************

(Basically, the main character is a boy, who became a shepherd. Here he met an old man in a town.)

"Why do you tend to a flock of sheep?"

"Because I like to travel."

The old man pointed to a baker standing in his shop window at one corner of the plaza. "When he was a child, that man wanted to travel, too. But he decided first to buy his bakery and put some money aside. When he's an old man, he's going to spend a month in Africa. He never realised that people are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of."

"He should have decided to become a shepherd, " the boy said.

"Well, he thought about that," the old man said. "But bakers are more important people than shepherds. Bakers have homes, while shepherds sleep out in the open. Parents would rather see their children marry bakers than shepherds.

...

"In the long run, what people think about shepherds and bakers becomes more important for them than their own Personal Legends."

************************************************

Hmmm. As you might guess, the book goes onto describe the boy's adventure to fulfill his Personal Legend. Like what mika pointed out, the book expounds that when one tries hard to realise his/her dream, the "whole universe conspires" to help him/her. There'll be numerous signs/omens along the way.

When I was reading it, I was wondering, "Is this book an omen?"

2 years 21 days.

run your own race

42.195km is really no joke. i tot after being able to complete 21km in an ok fashion, 42km shouldnt be too unsurmountable. wah... it was really tough. and many others were like struggling to complete. i think for the last 10km, almost everyone around me were walking/strolling. even when the volunteers were cheering us on, we were all super bochup. haha.

anyway some lessons learnt:

1. must at least run 30 km before the marathon... 21km is really not enuff

2. must put petroleum jelly or something to prevent abrasion. this time, my nipples kenna quite a bit. and some point of time, i was like pulling the singlet away from my chest and running.

3. must drink lotsa lotsa water... hmmm. had some gruesome encounter which i will not describe

anyway, i still manage to complete the race!! thanks to my wonderful, adorable, lovely, inspirational, sweet, awesome, exceptional girlfriend who came down to support with this beautiful placard!! really helped a lot in motivating me to get to the marina cove, kallang stadium (though i missed her) and the finishing point. hee. mika's the best!

innumeracy

yesterday, i was helping my boss do some analysis with some data (have to be vague here). anyway, i realise some disturbing (but not-so-surprising) misconceptions.

1. ppl who get good scores in a-level maths or engineering maths do not necessarily know wat they studied. i'm not saying ALL who get good scores do not know wat's happening. but rather a majority of them are able to solve exam questions using standard methods without any idea why the methods work. so when they go to work in the real world, they try these standard methods, hoping (and sometimes succeeding) to impress other ppl (who also dunno wat's happening). i wonder how many people really know wat all the t-tests, z-tests mean...

2. ppl think math majors study engineering maths/a-level maths and statistics. the logic is simple. for those who are not engineers only come to contact with maths via statistics. so maths = statistics + a-level maths. for those who are engineers come to contact with maths via engineering maths + stats. so maths = engineering maths (which is advanced a-level maths) + stats. somehow, this logic applies only to math and does not seem to extend to other discipline... anyway, i did only one module on statistics, and it was not even close to statistics. it was on probability theory. so i'm one of those who dunno wat t-tests, z-tests, really mean...

3. ppl think that math majors can solve any problem which has numbers in them. this is like the most irritating thing. ppl like to ask me if i can help to analyse a set of data. huh??? i think a social science major who did two courses on statistical methods can do a better job (assuming that he/she knew wat he/she was reading). then when i say 'i didnt learn this in uni,' they'll respond 'then wat do you learn?' sometimes, i just feel like saying 'things that u'll never comprehend in this lifetime...'

haha. but at the end of the day, somehow, and with some help from google and microsoft, i can do some decent work on the problems... haha. this brings to mind a somewhat arrogant quote from euler (when he solved the 'bridges of konigsberg' problem):

'i do not know why even questions which bear so little relationship to mathematics are solved more quickly by mathematicians than by others.'

heh

super cruncher

ooops. just realised the last time i posted something on this blog was more than one month ago. had a good month slacking as my boss was away on some duties and some course. was so slack that i pretty did nothing much...

but i did read a book called super crunchers: why thinking by numbers is the new way to be smart. it's not about maths, but more about using statistical analysis to approach to problems / issues nowadays. the author, ian ayres, no mathematician, but a lawyer with a wonderful understanding of statistics (what's the probability??), and coincidentally, a friend of steven levitt, the co-author of freakonomics (a book where the authors "uncovers" interesting facts thru some smart statistical analysis).

anyway, the book's about why pple should rely on statistical analysis to make predictions / give advice / blah blah than to rely on "expert opinion" or intuition. yah. like most modern authors, he support with numerous anecdotes and reports.

one area he discussed on was the medical field, where he noted that most doctors are adverse not only to numbers, but also to doing research on the problems of their patients. ie. many choose to rely on their experience to do the diagnosis, rather than "looking up studies" to "confirm" their diagnosis. and he picked the example of ignaz semmelweis. apparently, in the 19th century, hand washing is not a common practice for operations. semmelweis observed that handwashing reduced mortalities due to childbed fever and did a statistical study to verify his observation. but despite his studies, the medical community then rejected the practice of handwashing. cos the studies lack a "theory" and handwashing was troublesome. hmmmmm... lucky for us, the medical community is a bit smarter now.

but really, doctors do make stupid mistakes occasionally. i went to a gp once as my hand developed some allergic reaction. basically, during the diagnosis, the gp said something weird. he claimed that our human skin is naturally acidic and had a pH level of 3.5 and recommended a soap which has a pH level of 3.5. when he said that, i was kinda shocked and he asked "why u looked so shocked?" ok... so my chemistry is only at o-level. maybe i'm wrong... so let's not argue with him. after the consulation, i looked at the soap he prescribed. it wrote pH 5.5. i checked the internet. he's right, our skin is naturally acidic but the pH is 5.5. pH 3.5 corresponds to orange juice...hmmmm.

21 Sep is ...

a weekend to slack

1. army half marathon

completed my second ahm last sun. this time round, i took 2hr 14 min. approx 10 min faster than my first attempt. hopefully, next year will be faster.

this year the running route was much better. more lanes were open and there were less traffic lights. but the organisation at the ending point was a fiasco. the choice of using the "area beneath the steps at the floating platform" was horrible. the area was so cramped and stuffy. plus all the heat sweat and smell from the runners. the worst part was the collection of bags... the queue was so long and the organisation was so horrible that it took me 2 hours to collect my bag. yeah, 2 hours! i can almost run another half marathon in that time!

hope next year the end point is back at padang.

2. prison break season 2

couldnt resist the temptation to buy the vcd, although i've watched almost half of the episodes. there's no need for me to add that the series is exciting clever blah blah blah.

some interesting trivia for those who watch the series:

in some scenes, depicting president reynolds re-election campaigns, the placards/posters/banners show a website reynolds-again.com fox actually created the website...

another one is the famous europeangoldfinch.net which michael told sucre about, so that they can communicate with each other. the site was used in the show indeed and if u go to the website now, you can see the messages that they posted to each other.

yay! from 1 jul 07 to 26 aug 07, i've ran 106km!

numb3rs

it's been a long time since i last blogged. been busy at work, preparing for a big exercise. also, has been watching a series called numb3rs online. it's those csi type, crime series. but the highlight of the show is that one of the fbi agent's brother is a mathematician. and the math brother uses math to help the fbi brother solves crime.

the math in the show is real math and not some magical math that makes math look almighty and awesome. and coincidentally, today (18 aug) in the science section of straits times, they wrote an article about applying math to the real world.

the focus of the article is this guy called stanley osher, who coinvented the level set method for image processing. basically, the method is quite hot in the movie industry and more recently in the bioscience industry.

wat link is there between numb3rs and stanley osher? well, the latter also helped to solve a crime in LA. basically, there was a riot then in 1993 and lots of beatings. there was a video clip of a guy throwing a brick at a truck driver. the clip showed a speck on the arm of the guy. stanley osher with his methods enhanced the video image and the speck turned out to be a rose tattoo and this led to the eventual arrest of the brick-thrower.

yeah. we all use math everyday.

google saves the day

had a scare last tue. v bad scare. my laptop at work for some reason lost its administrator account. that is, i could no longer log in as the administrator and worse, i lost all access to the files which i was working on. total nightmare. i was super super distraught..

my friends.. those computer gurus tried helping me. do sys restore lah. accessing sys progs which i nv knew of... but alas to no avail.

hopelessly, i went home and googled "lost administrator account", "administrator account disappeared" and "administrator account deleted". and lo and behold... the solution appeared! and not just dat, i also found out the cause of the disappearance... all in some computer forum.

the power of google.

and guess who are the brains behind google? (haha. if this question comes from me, there are only a few possibilities.) mathematicians. k lah... maybe some computer scientists with a strong mathematical ability. more specifically, they are called search engine optimizers.

they are the ppl who make sure crap dun turn up when u do a search on google. k... crap do turn up... but they are not horrible crap or "contrived crap". examples of "contrived crap": sites which include many popular (but irrelavant) keywords, or sites which are "made popular" (i've heard of naive pple starting a company to employ ppl to click on certain websites to make them popular). so, when u search for things on google, the companies that do turn up are usually credible and are really THE companies you are looking for.

dun ask me wat's the secret formula google has. cos no one outside google knows. but google does have an interesting way of recruiting these search engine optimizers. google labs have an unconventional aptitude test called the GLAT. and here's one of my favourite question (with a bit of modification).

Fill in the gap in the sequence: 10, 9, 60, __,70, 66,...

Hint: Google is a play on what word? highlight for the answer: 10¹⁰⁰... ten is the biggest number/word with 3 letters. nine is the biggest number/word with 4 letters and so on and so forth. GOOGOL is quite a big number/word with 6 letters.

In additional to recruiting creative ppl, the company has a simple mantra: DUN BE EVIL.

Haha. So next time, dun ask me, besides lecturing, wat can a math PHD do..

ebay order #76640450001

recently bought a book over ebay. actually second time i bought an item. the first time was this maths text from china. (nope..not in chinese. e text is the same as the original. basically, it's like some china uni co-op thing that somehow went onto ebay)

anyway, this time the item is from america. and it was reasonable 16 usd / 26 sgd... quite cheap for a hardcover book in singapore... somemore deliver to doorstep somemore... anyway...

to my surprise, when the package came and i opened it, the book looks like it's from a library. refer to the typical label (with the watever reference code) at the bottom of the spine of the book. then i notice the sticker above... it writes "New York Public Library". Haha. Then i found the following note:

oh. so, there are ppl actually sell books from libraries online. the world is getting v it-savy indeed.

dim sum dollies: history of singapore

just came back from the show and tot it was not bad. very hilarious (but v singaporean jokes) and refreshing. unlike most musicals which have a simple plot, the show has no plot at all. it's just local jokes intertwined with history.

in fact, it's v local and twds the end, quite ndp-ish... n (no offence to anyone) the show makes one feel more singaporean than ndp itself. perhaps one should learn to be more open and laugh at oneself, so that one can learn to be open to others.

anyway, i think the show's worth catching.

seriousLY.

wat a short summary of wat happened last week..
5 paragraphs, 6 sentences and 231 words...

egoistic post

haha. was looking at vjc maths dept website for some other purposes... and to my pleasant surprise. i found a paper that was written by yours truly seven years ago...

it's about non-transitive dice. basically, it's about a set of dice, call them A, B and C, with numbers which are not the usual ones. we have A being more likely to win B, B more likely to win C and (here's the weird thing) C more likely to win A. through some stroke of luck, i managed to find a way to create a set of non-transitive dice, of any size and each dice having any number of faces (strictly speaking, a dice should have 6 faces). with some fanciful presentation, the team managed to get some gold award in some science festival. haha.

oh... i also remembered getting pm lee's (then dpm lee) autograph on a report for e project. e amazing thing was that he knew about our topic by just looking at the title. (not many maths pple know wat are non-transitive dice) i knew he knew cos he asked, "so how many triplets did u come up with?" when the title of the project did not give any hint of the set being a triplet. n u can guess my answer...

haha. this post is so bhb...

guide to solving bohliao puzzles

stayed onboard on monday and my boss was feeling boh liao and got all the officers together for supper. now is uni vacation, so got a lot of young officers who are attached to ship to entertain my boss. somehow, they started asking each other stupid puzzles which seem to make my boss relive his younger days. dunno if it's "i'm a maths guy" or it's "i got a super memory for puzzles". i seem to have heard most of the puzzles and recall the solutions readily.

anyway, while it seems the puzzle require some great ingenuity or wat pple call "think out of the box", it's not difficult if one attempt to use some method. (maybe different pple got different sizes of boxes to think out of) here's a simple tip to solving most maths-related problems.

reduce to a simpler/smaller case.

===================================================

example 1. there are 10 boxes, each containing 10 marbles. in 9 boxes, the marble each weighed 1 gram and in one box, the marble each weighed 1.1 gram. we have an electronic weighing machine which can give the exact weight.
aim: in one weighing, find the box with the heavier marbles.

some analysis: obviously weighing everything together will not help and ppl get stuck here. Let's reduce to 2 boxes with 2 marbles each. One has marbles weighing 1 gram each and one has marbles weighing 1.1 grams each.

how many marbles from each box should i choose to weigh? if i take 2 marbles from each box, i'll definitely get the reading 4.2 gram. similarly, if i take 1 marble from each box, the reading will always be 2.1 gram. ie. no conclusion.

now, let's name the boxes B1 and B2. if i take 1 marble from B1 and 2 marble from B2.

if B1 contains the heavier marbles, the reading will be 3.1 gram. if B2 contains the heavier marbles, the reading will be 3.2 gram. there's a different reading for each possibility. that is, we are able to conclude from the reading which box contains the heavier marbles.

hmmm... not v difficult to guess the solution for 10 boxes and 10 marbles right?

==============================================

example 2. there are 8 marbles with 1 lighter than the rest. there's a balancing weigh (ie those see-saw type which can tell which marble is heavier).
aim: in two weighing, find the lighter marble.

let's reduce the problem. in one weighing, how can i find a lighter marble?

let's call the scales, left and right. in one weighing, how many possible outcomes can there be? three. (A) the left being heavier, (B) the right being heavier, (C) both just as heavy. hmmmm. so, if i got three marbles with one lighter, i just weigh any one against another. (A) would imply that the right is lighter. (B) imply the left is lighter. (C) would imply the one not weighed is lighter.

it's also clear with only 3 possible outcomes, there's no possible way to find a ligher marble from a pile of 4 marbles with just one weighing.

so, returning to the question, let's say we completed the first weighing. we must conclude that the lighter marble is one in a pile of 3 marbles. So, that means, in our first weighing, we must weigh a pile of 3 against another pile of 3. the rest of the details can be worked out easily.

as a maths guy, i like to generalise the problem. so, in N weighings, it's possible to find a lighter marble from a pile of at most 3^N marbles. So, if some guy ask you to find the lighter marble from a pile of 30 with just 3 weighings, you can tell him, mighty mao say impossible.

=========================================================

hmmm. so where's the box to think out from?

super boh liao post

any guesses to where's this picture taken? Yes... it's sentosa. more specifically, it's a small island off palawan beach.

and it's claimed that this is the southern most point of continental asia. ie.. if you wanna head south some more. u must jump into the waters and get wet.

then... at work, when i was looking at charts (the naval term for maps), i realised something... then i decided to verify with google earth... and to my astonishment..


the so-called "southern most point of continental asia" is NOT the southern most point!!!!

running

realised that i'm getting fatter... my appetite getting bigger. yesterday was eating and eating at the steamboat with the roosters while mika was talking about her adventure at macritchie..

anyway, been running q a bit lately. running prob the best way to keep fit for a psychomotor-impaired guy like me..

joining the milk run with mika and soka this july. hoping to find pple to go for the mizuno wave run at bedok reservoir in late july.

today found this website, called mapmyrun, which plots down a running and calculate the distance q efficiently. the streaming is much faster than the streetdirectory.com, so actually one can use it to navigate in singapore much faster. not sure how often it's updated though...

below is the regular route which i run usually. 5.68km.

target for the end of the year: 42km standard charter marathon.

genting trip

While mika goes to tioman with her family, me decides to go out with my jc friends to genting. it was a long time since we went overseas together (the last time was to hk after a levels)... anyway.. q difficult to describe and imagine wat we did and how we actually can derive fun from it... basically, was just gambling, eating and chilling out. and 'occasionally' bitching about the 'efficiency' of the place...

moreover, it's q disturbing to realise that genting (e company) in a few years' time will be running the sentosa's integrated resort.

things i hope they'll learn:

1. to have a much more parking slots with a properly managed carpark. and not to allow cars parking out of proper parking lots.

2. to have a nicer reception lobby which does not remind one of a refuge camp (with hundreds of ppl waiting with luggages) or an A&E ward (with queue numbers LED display).

3. to have Kenny Rogers' Chicken to be served with the side dishes and not serve a plate with sides dishes only.

4. to manage a HUGE crowd during public hols.

5. to have an eloquent service, which is able to describe food on the menu (even though the food is not what they can eat).

6. to have a friendlier service. (kaimin wanted to upgrade his genting card to some genting 'green' card. the lady at the counter told him to do so in the casino and sacarstically told him that he has to wear polo t-shirt into the casino... huh? we entered the casino without any shirt/polo t for two days...)

7. to have fastfood served fast. (as pointed out, the elderly at mac's or the handicapped at kfc serve much faster)

hmmmm... but all in all, still enjoyed e trip and it was an excellent break from work.

Soka Kindergarten Camp at Sentosa



Helped mika out in this camp for kindergarten kids at sentosa last fri.



First station was at mount imbiah. They put up some kiddy stuff at the place. Below is a house with a giant head inside. The teacher told them there was a rabbit which went missing. So i bluffed them that it was inside the house, behind the head. Then i went in the house to look for the rabbit. It's q dirty and dark behind the head, so no kid followed me. Note to the right of the picture, there's a door. The kids there started banging the door and hence, created the sounds "in the house". The kids in front of the head cannot see the kids behind the door, so i bluffed them that it was the rabbit trying to come out. And some kids actually believed and some were frightened... Haha.. Sorta got a bad reputation...

Yeah... So some kids started picking fights with me... Grrr...

In the afternoon, there were some free play at the palawan playground. And i decided to take a nap. and some kids (both big and small) refused to leave me alone..

a final shot at sentosa.

Navy 40th Anniversary Book

SGD 10.00


Title Page













Back Page













Introduction















Page 1














Page 2














Page 3 - XXX??














An appropriate book to commerate 40 years of singapore naval history.


To witness this showcase of 40 years of singapore naval history, you can come down to changi naval base on 26 or 27 may 2007 for the navy open house. roosters are invited to come down on 26 may morning!