Penang Trip

Long holiday fatigues me so I decided to have a trip to Penang. I called a friend who inspired me to have this trip, called four more friends but only three more were able to join. Managed to got a Nibong Tebal friend on board by saying I would drive there from BM. I didn't even know why I came up with that idea but I gotta say it's not a really bad decision. 

It was Sunday and after Raya, so traffic going out of Penang was exceptionally heavy. Driving down to Nibong Tebal was quite uncomfortable but I guessed I could learn to get used to it. Who knows, years later I will be one of the contributors to this nasty traffic.

Next, we headed to Penang.

First Stop

First stop was Prangin Mall. I parked my car there and we walked our way to komtar and went to eat cendoi and laksa at the stall immediately adjacent to it. The food was nice, but not so lovely to be called two-thumbs up. The price, however, was two thumbs down. Incredibly exorbitant.

Image taken from http://grabyourfork.blogspot.com

The weather was scorching so we left the place quite fast. A friend came out with the idea to go Armenian Street to seek the street arts, but considering the sweltering weather was a huge hindrance, I said we'll go in the evening, and we agreed. After the meal, we went to the next stop.

Second Stop

Gurney Paragon!

Image taken from www.leinvest.com

Comments: Too high class for ordinary people like me. Winding and extremely narrow parking and poor system. I'll say the lousy system is pardonable because the mall is still new, but the way they built the parking was laughable. The construction was poor (a bit too low), the curve was intimidatingly narrow (huge cars please be aware), and most of the lights malfunctioned. Oh, and we almost got into a lift made up entirely of soft wood.

Not my cup of tea. Won't visit again.

Well, I did go to Harvey Norman to kill some time while waiting for time to dinner. Having none advanced technology in possession, being able to fiddle with some at a crowded mall is quite appealing. The new computers with touch cover looks very weird and the keyboard is so flat and solid, I don't even know why would anyone bother to use it. Then I was looking at several iPads and smartphones that looked nice, but the price alone would rob you one month of meals.

Third Stop

Northam! The food I aimed!

It was only 5pm but because we still had several stops, we had to make it quick and take early dinner.

The restaurant was situated at a seaside, and while sitting there you could hear the sound of the waves hitting the beach. Okay, the foul smell emanating from the beach is a little disgusting, but the sound of the waves was really relaxing. 

So we ordered some foods that were, in retrospect, quite exorbitant. Two chicken pot pies, one German sausage, one Arabian sandwich, pasembur, hokkien mee and umm....two cups of drinks. 

I would really love to go there again.

Fourth Stop

Armenian Street! It was around 5pm, the sun had begun to set and the weather had begun to cool down. It was quite fun walking around the streets with lots of strangers. The atmosphere was different, and somehow the ebullience spread out the entire place and your fatigue would be wiped out instantly if you were there.

So my friend went there to look for one of the newest drawing: the minions! It took us a while to find it, and when we've found it, to be frank, I never expected it to be the pole on a middle of a narrow road. No wonder my friend said "find the tiang". Now I know why tiang! 

The street arts were not centralised within a street so we had to walk quite a distance to find the others. I had to drive from one street to the other end to find the drawings of a young girl and a young boy on the swing. 

And the traffic had really become heavy.

Fifth Stop

Ubah bird!

We didn't know where the bird was and so we had to try every place we can go. My friend suggested it was beside the highway so I literally turned into every left turns available along the stretch of the highway. It was dark, almost 8pm, so finding a floating plastic bird on an unlit water was quite tough. Eventually we found it, and the location was really unexpected.

Due to time constraints and fear of traffic jams, we left rather fast. Anyway, it was dark, and photo snapping was quite impossible.

Sixth Stop

Nibong Tebal pasar malam! Lol!

After dropping one of my friends at Perniagaan Gemilang, I had to drive my friend back to NT. The traffic had turned so slow even tortoise could walk fast than your car. After exiting Juru Toll the traffic was fine, and I could drive to 110km/h. And I thought the traffic was so smooth and everything would be fine.

Shortly after Simpang Ampat toll, the traffic came to an immediate halt. There was no reason for the sudden gridlock. The first stretch was due to two massive lorries, driving side by side, that crawled slowly on the highway and caused the extremely long line of cars behind them. After passing them the second gridlock was long and I didn't get to see what happened. I exited the Nibong Tebal and freed myself from Hell.

It took me one hour to drive from BM to NT, and I drove the last 1.5km on the emergency lane, tempted by my friends and other cars. Thinking of it now, I don't even know I should feel ashamed or I should laugh at it.

Exiting the toll, my friend brought me to pasar malam in NT. It was still crowded despite being 10pm at night. I met up with another friend there, who went there 9.10pm and waited for 1 hour to meet with us. Sorry ya, lol. My friends had supper but I had only a cup of coffee because I felt sleepy and my leg was sore due to the jam.

After dropping my friend home, I drove back to BM by highway again. Going back to BM was smooth and the traffic was light. It took me a mere 25 minutes to reach BM and everything was fine.

It was a nice day, a nice trip, a real eye-opener for heavy traffic, and nice experiment. I would love to go out like this again in the future, haha!

*Photo credited to my friends, YYX

Guide for Mathematics T Assignment, Sem 3/2013

You can't copy all the answers as this semester involve random digits that are impossible for two individuals to have completely same data, hence, this guide will only be assisting you in solving the questions. This serves as only a guide, so no detailed solution here.

Question 1
Give the definition of subjective probability. Find the definition online and describe three examples. Don't just give, describe! For example: "The subjective probability that a China player would win in the match, as deemed by the Chinese player, would be 0.95 because they have faith in him".

Question 2
Generate 30 random digits, and then compartmentalise them into three sections: three different digits, two same digits and three same digits. Tabulate your result, find the respective probability. (If you got 20 out of 30, probability is 0.67).

That is your probabilities for the three categories. Find the answers according to the random numbers you generated.

In making deduction, just say which cases have high chances of occur, and which have low chances.

Question 3
Generate 100 random digits using either excel, calculator, or a website. Here's a website to help you:
http://www.random.org/integers/

Again, compartmentalise them into three categories.

This time you'll be asked to find the 90% and 95% confidence intervals. This involves knowledge on sampling and estimation.

Assuming that the population is normally distributed, to find its 90% confidence intervals, you merely want to find the 90% regions around the centre, which means you'll be eliminating 5% from the left side of the normal distribution, and 5% from the right side of the distribution. Same theory applies to the 95% confidence intervals (find 95% of area under graph at the centre, eliminating 2.5% at the left most and 2.5% at the right most. If you don't get what I mean, search your books for diagrams). Since 95% confidence intervals has a higher confidence, the intervals you get should be larger.

This questions requires only direct application of the formula, so just do it. Show your steps, and make a summary by tabulating them in a table would be helpful.

Question 4
a) Not sure what to do about this part, but we simply write the subjective probability obtained in Q3 in a table.

b)
Generate another 100 random digits, and find the subjective probabilities for each category. Chi-squared Tests is performed to investigate whether to accept or reject the null hypothesis. Your null hypothesis is "the distribution fits the distribution in (a)" and your alternative hypothesis is "the distribution does not fit the distribution in (a)".

You would be expected to have knowledge on Chi-Squared Tests. Just directly apply the formula and see whether the chi-squared calculated exceeds the critical value. If it does, the null hypothesis is rejected, and you can conclude that the distribution obtained in (b) does not fit the distribution obtained in (a).

Note that for chi-squared calculation to be valid, each category must have frequency of at least 5. If your "three same digits" category has less than 5 values, you need to merge it with another category of your choice to form a category of frequency exceeding 5.

Thus, if merging is done, your degree of freedom would be equal to 1 (2 - 1 = 1). You'll have to observe here whether your expected frequency of all categories are bigger or smaller than 10. If your expected frequency is less than 10, then Yates' Correction needs to be employed. But it is unlikely for your expected frequency to be less than 10 now that you've merged two categories. However, if this situation does arise, use this equation:

If all your categories have frequency exceeding 5 and no merging is done, meaning your degree of freedom is 2, and if your degree of freedom is one but all your expected frequency exceeds 10, then ignore this correction and just use the normal chi-squared formula.

Note:
Use Yates' Correction Only When
1) degree of freedom = 1
2) expected frequency < 10
Both conditions need to be met for Yates' Correction to be employed. 

Chi-squared tests is chosen here because the object to be investigated is categorical which does not, and could not, presume a normal distribution graph. (behaviours of categories)

Question 5
(a) Use the subjective probability you obtained earlier.

(b) Generate 64 digits using your calculator. Compartmentalise them again and find the probabilities. Then use hypothesis testing (normal approximation) to check whether to accept or reject the null hypothesis. Your null hypothesis is "the probability that a number has three different digits is more than the probability you have suggested in (a)".

Hypothesis testing of normal approximation is chosen because the object to be investigated here is numerical that could resemble a normal distribution graph. (The probability of three different digits).


*The guide above is only a guide and is not an official answer by MPM. 

Competitions

Official competitions do not engage me. whether its sports, chess, or academics. To me, lots of people want to win more than to enjoy the game, and to win, they could be really, really nasty.

It wasn't a lie I made up to cover up my weakness, but its based on my past experience.

I did take part in some competitions a few years ago. I didn't participate many because I was also lazy to join any. But there was one event, not a competition but merely a game, that completely changed my perception towards competition-based games.

There was a guy, he was, and is, exceedingly good at playing chess. We were merely having fun. We were just playing a game like usual, and as an ordinary game, they would be win and defeat. In that games, I happened to defeat him once. Because he was such a great player, he didn't receive it well. Frankly speaking, it was just a game. Nothing official. Nothing serious. But when he was defeated, he received it very badly, and was quite.....angry.

He got quite angry as he lost to a person who had no training. So he forced me to play another match with him. I refused to. But he insisted, and he kept insisting me to play another match with him, and he asked me to quite publicly and loudly. I had no choice but reluctantly agreed, and didn't want to even play a serious game. So I lost the match to him, and he was finally satisfied.

Actually, even if I did play seriously, I would still lose to him. He was just too great a player who just happened to make a careless mistake and lost to me. I was, and am, not his opponent.

I remember this event screamingly vividly because this changed my view towards competitions. There are always people who want to win more than to enjoy the game. And I hated it. To me, if you wanna play a game, play happily. Win or lose, let it be. I got into so many matches in so many sorts of games, and I would unashamedly admit that I lost more than I have won, yet I have not reacted the way he had reacted. 

Competitions are good at encouraging improvement, but if to do so I have to sacrifice the joy of games, then I would prefer to withdraw myself from such competitions. A game is meant to be fun, not win. And when you have come across a player who wishes to win more than anything, it simply spoils the mood of playing a game. At least to me.

And my view stays.

STPM 2013 Second Sem Result

My second term result. I won't say it's very good but I think it isn't really bad either.

I didn't expect good results because I knew I couldn't do PA and Chemistry, but surprisingly I got an A- for PA and a B+ for Chemistry.

I don't know what happened to my Physics. I couldn't do only a few questions and I ended up got only a B+.

Anyway, I got a CGPA 3.58 for second term, slightly higher than 3.50 for first term.

Satisfactory. Will strive harder for the last term.

Natcomp 2013 - Grand Final

Natcomp Grand Final ended last Friday. To say the truth, it was a horrible event this year, and the organiser was really horrible in organising this event. They should feel ashamed of their appalling running of MWBC. It's supposed to be an international event but they ended up managed to invite only 2 international bands - one from Indonesia and one from The Phillippines. Failing to plan is planning to fail.

Anyway, let's enjoy what's enjoyable. Sultanah Asma, the Malaysian champion, never fails us. Here's the video. Still mesmerising.

SMJK Chung Hwa Wei Sin Band, or otherwise known as Swadaya Band, reused the theme last year "Prince of Egypt", with major modification in their movements and this year they had pitch percussion. Both Swadaya and Asma share the same coach but I find Swadaya's more inferior and a little dull. Their last year's performance, without pitch percussion, attracted me more than this year's version.

Enjoy. 

Cancer

I have just came back from visiting my uncle who has cancer. He was diagnosed with stomach cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy treatment once in three weeks. The cancer isn't affecting him, the treatment is. Chemotherapy brings side effects that literally paralyses him, and the fact that his stomach is the point of damage means he couldn't ingest anything solid and he has been taking fluids for weeks. This has resulted in his extremely emaciated physique and weakness. He's only 50, but looks as old as a 70 year old uncle. His manner of speaking is very soft because he is very weak. He has lost at least 20kg and all his bones are visible due to inability to eat. Like he said, the cancer isn't killing him, the treatment is. He's hardly recovered from the previous chemotherapy and tomorrow he has to go on for another.

Take care of your health, everyone. It will really bring you down and crush your world into oblivion, and even if you survive the ordeal, the effect will most likely be permanent. Take care.

Despicable Me 2

Went to watch Despicable Me 2 today. I had been looking forward to watch this movie for a very long time because I had been attracted by the minions ever since I watched Despicable Me. The minions were simply a piece of beauty, an example of pure talented creation. In Despicable Me 2, Gru had stopped being a villain and had unwillingly worked for the Anti-Villain League. The minions were as cute as usual, but the evil minions were very nasty. Lucy Wilder was a nice new character in this movie and I quite liked it, but like any other movies/dramas, when the story diverts from its main storyline to the love life between any two characters, the movie gets dull. Anyway, Despicable Me 2 is still nice, and I would still rate it 10/10.