Author Archives: Kevin L

I thought it’s pretty late to be saying this but it would be nice to share some sites that would very much help with your mugging, whether it’s for Blocks (if you are seriously desperate) or for your A Levels (final dash).

Tutor2u Economics Site: A collection of notes and presentations that features qualitative economic concepts and suitable for those who don’t really give a damn about Mathematics in the study of Economics. The topics adheres to the A Levels Economics for UK Cambridge so Singaporean students should find them handy as well. Eurocentric examples are used but if you really need more Singapore-slant examples, I would very much recommend you to read Henri Ghesquiere’s Singapore’s Success: Engineering Economic Growth – it has a whole lot of things about policies, which would extremely relevant to students desperate for Singapore-based examples.

The Integrator: Who says brute force computing doesn’t work for High School and College Mathematics? It’s only when you are armed with the machines from Texas Instruments. ‘The Integrator’ by Wolfram Research is an amazing brute calculator that does the Integration operator particularly well (not that it can do anything else). Using crudely worked out algorithms that have been done tediously by hand, the calculator compiles wholesome general formulas that uses no short cuts in working out your sums. Best of all, they help you generate general formulas, which means you can happy key in some unknowns and they would generate the answer with the unknowns factored in. Of course, learn how the inputs works first.

SEAB Syllabus Site (for 2007 A Levels): Confused with what is tested or at least what you need to know? Go download the relevant syllabuses and check them out. It’s hard to interpret some parts though, so try to study everything if you can. It’s good to know more anyway. Best perk about the site is that it provides you with a handy copy of Formula List MF15. So in case you can’t find your Ten-Year Series, you can see the .pdf beside your World of Warcraft icon on your desktop. In addition, the entire Data Booklet for Chemistry H2 is also at the kind of the syllabus document for it. No sweat if you misplace your Data Booklet! Same applies for the Physics Students’ list of constants.

Chemguide Site: Chemguide should be known by lots of students; a helpful Chemistry resource site that provides clear explanation of reactions and almost everything that we need to know in our syllabus. Since it’s for the UK A Levels, they have some reactions that we may not need to know so you can refer to the syllabus document to clarify any doubts you have about Chemguide. It covers all the 3 main themes of Chemistry at A Levels, ‘Inorganic Chemistry’, ‘Physical Chemistry’ and ‘Organic Chemistry’, and the topics and separated distinctly so you shouldn’t have any problems finding the information you need.

Physical Geography Fundamentals: Great site for students of Geography, though most stuff there are out of syllabus and may not be useful for Singapore A Levels Geography students. Nonetheless, the fundamentals are concise unlike the paper textbooks and there are relevant diagrams that we are required to know. The language used are highly accessible in contrast with some difficult research papers we may receive as readings. Useful for brief revisions.

That’s all the featured ones, in addition to the common sites people visit but often overlook their academic value, such as Wikipedia, The Economist and Miniclip.com. Oh, the last site is for relieving academic stress after your mugging.

I have spent the recent 2 to 4 years studying with the top talents in the nation, and in the experience, I have interacted (and is constantly interacting) with the polarized crowd of what the public would term elites. This would probably be a short commentary on those right at the top, but not conspicuous. I guess this is the group of people, silently slogging, and accomplishing who deserves our attention, since those ‘rah-rah’ councilors of different institutions would have easily caught it. Before the social commentary on this group of people, I guess there’s a need to first delve into how the system has created different kinds of people.

The education in our nation has created extremely distinct, polarized groups of students; but that’s not to discredit the role of the environment, family, and culture played in molding these students. I am, in essence, saying that there’s distinctly different approach or perceptions towards the same system that I speak of here. Sparing the lower extremes, the hierarchy starts from those between going out of school and in school; those in school but failing tests and willing to continue with failing; those failing, or just passing but working hard to move on; those who are average but hoping to get out of the system fast; those who are doing well but want to be at the top; those who are doing great, and have exceptional portfolio; and finally, those who are simply out of the world in intelligence, would hope to remain so, but also to remain excluded from the rest. Well, I can insert some more groups in between, or expand the list, and go on rambling but I’ll just stop here. I am saying that the attitudes instilled and held by the students belong to such vast categories that I really have to doubt they are really thinking about the same thing. In any case, I guess it’s because of the different position they are in the hierarchy that affects their attitudes and perhaps their subsequent actions and that would mean that the information flow within the system, between different hierarchy is not consistent and there’s informational asymmetry that would potentially further escalate the differences between each of these ‘classes’.

I am starting to sound like I am criticizing a social system, a society but I guess we can’t escape from the fact that the education system is essentially a society manipulated partially by the authorities and subjected to differing artificial conditions that have intended and unintended consequences on these players involved. There’s a greater need for communication between the hierarchy, to let everyone see for themselves what everyone else’s lives are about. Information flow is the prime factor that determines the incentives for individuals to work hard, that reveals the prospects of any individual and spur them on, that democratizes opportunities, that enhances the true competition and eliminates the ‘crony’ tinge in our systems. And perhaps, in writing this tract, I am essentially contributing to this body of information that may spur some on and encourage others while placing some others in less complacent positions and thus would continue to work really hard for what they truly want. It is the different barriers in information, the uneven distribution of information that stifles and block opportunities from some who really want them and further polarize the attitudes that students have.

Going back to the key topic, I have discovered that out of the people whom we normally identify as the top, there are those who are really noisy and ill-disciplined although they can study hard and produce results. On the other extreme, there are really studious people who studies really hard and get really good grades but they are extremely quiet, conservative and they believe fun lies in reading books and surfing really educational websites (they probably also think MSN is evil). Finally, there are those who balances things really well (plus a glib tongue that is tinted with truth and sincerity, compounding on their strong capabilities and sometimes the lack of need to sleep) and are easily considered the best of all students and indisputably the Crème de la crème. I guess those who grabs our attention enough are good enough with that and so I’ll turn my attention to really quiet people.

The system has emphasized on grades and results so there the quiet hardworking group of people who pushed on, even after the system emphasized on speaking up. Many people actually talks often but there’s a difference between those who daren’t talk and those who have nothing better to say. I have met people who are simply average who can speak a great deal about movies, fashion and chic fic but when it comes to academic stuff, they simply have nothing to say. To them, the body of knowledge they draw from is both academic and social but that which they contribute to is essentially that of social. In this sense, these people don’t interact and involve themselves in the things they learn in school and simply take them at face value and apply them wherever deemed fit on conditioned so. The quiet workers, on the other hand, is highly involved in what they are learning and are constantly thinking if not interacting with this intellectual body of knowledge. They engaged themselves if not the others in the learning process and have their own ideas, which perhaps, more often than not, they daren’t express for fear of rejection and criticisms. The system has created a culture of fear of criticism that has impeded some students from reaching the top notch where scholastic potential is concerned. Those perfectly and conspicuously on the top has gone pass that barrier but these quiet workers have failed there despite their innate abilities. Of course, the noisy but hardworking bunch are simply unable to hit the top because of their natural abilities or simply because their skills are not demanded if not for the fact that their noise may have been too much to bear.

Singapore has ample talents, it is just that they don’t show themselves. There are simply some exceptional people who believes that overt demonstration of talent is wrong. The system, instead of over-focusing on molding people into the way they want them to be, they should be actually eliciting more information from the crowd, fostering a culture of self-promotion and finding out how to channel the different talents into the jobs they need to fill. People can be perfectly suited for a job, specially trained [sometimes against their wishes] for the job, or [something which is so often overlooked] grow to meet certain of the job’s requirement and then redefine the job scope such that the job also evolves to accommodate them. This unexplored means of work distribution and defining or grooming talent may prove to work exceptionally well for our current nation of shy people, since the culture has not been altered. The local talents should have their brand and style of being talented while conforming to global standards of what constitutes a talent and not allow our system’s definition of talents to be the only one in the market.

The past week seen me struggling with SAT, and I am pretty sure I am not going to America for any sort of tertiary education, at least at this moment, after taking the test. I guess I subconsciously took the test to strengthen my resolve not to go over there (this has absolutely nothing to do with Mib though) – a decision I made previously after hoping to strengthen my Mathematics in the field of Microeconomics. Then I took on the challenge to finish Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe (book version), in a week. I am still at it, and I think I can do it. Besides getting fascinated by the beauty of General Relativity and the freaking Weird phenomena of Quantum Mechanics, I got to immerse myself in String Theory’s description of the world and challenge the limits of my imagination.

Mathematics wasn’t included in the book but just imagine my attempts to conceive the fact that every single space we are experiencing now is full of tiny dimensions curled up in Calabi-Yau Spaces that are six-dimensional. Try again to imagine that every moment you move your hands across the space, the particles may have entered and left these tiny-dimensions without you discovering. Well, all these may still be a dream given that String Theorists haven’t quite grasp the mathematics of everything necessary to explain our phenomena but all we can tell is that the Occam’s Razor hardly works in the fundamental theory of the universe given the complex nature of dimensions, resonance patterns, string tensions and relativity.

The rest of the time have me reading a couple of Economics related stuff – getting to know how playful and active was Keynes’ life, and how Milton persevered to show Velocity of money was stable and advocated passive monetary policy. Was also looking for details on how David Riccardo made a fortune but it wasn’t available anywhere. In any case, I am pretty sure economists don’t get rich based on their knowledge of economics. I was also thinking of writing a ‘Tract on Problems of Economics Education’ but I decided not to. I need to come up with a more elegant name before writing it. I have identified the outline of the essay though. Although labeled a tract, it may well be rather long. It is going to take on the rather tough stance that Economics, at least at A Levels under the Singapore education system, is heading the wrong way. Despite great macroeconomic achievements in our nation, the education fail to help students appreciate the ingenuity of our policies or for that matter, the beauty of economic analysis. It will elaborate on a few aspects that is vital but have been left out, namely ‘Social Indifference Curves’ as a tool for welfare analysis, Mathematics of competition is also left out and historical backgrounds to the debate on macroeconomic theories. All these would not only stimulate the interest of student but provide better tools, if not basis for other content to be built upon.

I would also like to highlight redundant topics that can be left out absolutely, like that of the loanable funds theory that cannot even explain interest rate determination for any economy in the world. There’s a need to really set the basis right and establish the true identity of economics. As far as I know, students like many of my peers are still unable to grasp the essence of what truly constitutes economics and how it is a science in its very own sense. Teachers of Economics will have a long way to go before shifting their emphasis from pure aiding students to score well to inspiring them to be economists – and more importantly, they will have to learn to look beyond this holy document we come to know as the ‘syllabus’ and stop discouraging students interested in pursuing the subject by saying ‘this is not important since it’s not in the syllabus’ when asked things beyond their area of expertise (which incidentally, could be just teaching students the means of attaining good marks). I guess I sounded too angsty – if you have nothing better to do besides reading this blog, you might like to check this out!

My sister has tonnes of tuition for her schoolwork and so she gets lots of cool encounters with tuition teachers. There’s this English one:

Tuition Teacher: Hey Jess (not real name), did you do your essay outline?

Jess: Oh yes! I wrote it in my palm.

*Tuition teacher wide-eyed stare at my sister*

*Sister realizes the joke; took out her palm handheld computer*

Tuition Teacher: Oh okay. So hi-tech.

Language is getting kinda complex huh?

The Elegant Universe – Borrowed one. Micro SD Card – Verified One. Cliptec Cardreader ZR-418BK – Insulted One. Logitech Two-Button Mouse – Dismantled & destroyed one. Economics Essay – Wrote one. The Sixth Singapore Economic Roundtable – Made sense of it. Singapore’s Success, Engineering Economic Growth – Cheers Henri! WordPress Theme Generator – Discovered it. My Thumb – Scalded it. Today – Slacked one. SAT – Going to screw it. New Ideas from Dead Economist, End of Faith, MicroMotives and MacroBehaviours – On my table, half-read. The Joy of Freedom (Chinese Version) – In my shelf, Unread. Blog – Neglected, until now.

Kinda summarizes my week.

Every time I truly expend effort to write an essay, I find myself reducing lots of complex issues into simple, logical arguments that should have been very obvious to any one who first encounters the issue. I realized that many times, we thought too deeply into the topics we are attempting to engage and in the process, we lost the sense of individual issues’ simplicity. Identifying the most fundamental and basic components of an issue allows you to tear it apart and treat each of the bits with a wholesome discourse. The result can be either a trivialization of the issue at hand or a great depth of analysis. Of course, the latter happens more frequently than the former unless the writers are not thinking about the issue at all.

The most tricky part about writing any essays is really about pin-pointing the segment of the question or issue that interests you the most and that you can engage passionately. For me, politically-correct topics are hard to handle because of the sheer (self-perceived) hypocrisy necessary and my unfortunate desire to criticize things in a bid to make the world a better place for everyone. On the other hand, when it comes to Science & Technology (maybe also Globalization), I am often too biased towards innovations, and I disregard the importance of traditional stuff that we have been withholding. That being said, it doesn’t naturally mean that I embrace all things new equally – because when you expect me to tackle moral and ethics, I attack all the new alternative cultures that are springing up from nowhere and stick wholeheartedly to traditional values and principles. How about solemn issues of death penalty and war? I take on this very cynical attitude that dismiss all as part of nature and all that exist are necessary.

Other times, I always want to achieve a breakthrough in the ideas I raise. I hope for the sort of impress that would make a reader exclaim how well crafted the argument and logic is. I guess I had that sort of epiphany when I read Sam Harris but then again, I may be just plain biased then so it’s hard to say. For my essay, it hardly happens to myself but I wonder if it happens with the other readers of my essay. There was once though, when I read what I wrote last time (I forgot completely what I wrote) and found it surprisingly well-wrote. The analogies in the essay, I can recognize as my style but I just don’t recall the state of mind I was in when I penned the words. Of course, there will be times when I simply chose the wrong question to write and ended up with crap that would give me a fail grade. I guess it’s all about being serious with what you are doing and giving thought to what you have written.

This entry feels so weird, not in typical mode today.

Because my name was mentioned by Kwang Guan, I cannot escape the responsibility of a decent discourse on ‘comparisons’ as he has pointed out. While his entry is on something entirely different and probably something too mature for my understanding, the part where he raised my name and concluded about the whole idea of reference anxiety, needs to be reviewed. As Wensi has intelligently pointed out, the entry seems to be inspired by reference anxiety and I sure hope this post of mine doesn’t seem so.

In the entire of humanity’s history and as far as society is concerned, there has always been a tension between competition and collaboration. The very fact that a society is formed at all is enough to demonstrate that a high degree of collaboration is possible and essential for the advancement of all man but more importantly, it fosters the correct environment for healthy competition. Therefore, ‘comparisons’ essentially is a manifestation of the 2 forces at work. While comparing seem to be all about competition, in that we are trying to show how one is superior over the other in terms of something, it can also be for the sake of collaboration (why else would we have ‘comparative advantage’ for trade and specialization). In any case, there are many perspective that has not been considered in Kwang Guan’s critique of reference anxiety and more importantly, the habit to ‘compare’ has never been ‘strange’ at all. Friction in relationship can arise out of pure incompatibility and not to be attributed to comparisons because comparison places everyone at the same level, just like comparing prices of the products on the market. A society, with humanly comparison is merely a microcosm of the economic forces at large that governs almost every aspect of our behavior and while we cannot help it, the increasing flow of information and connectedness of the individuals is making things more fair and equal.

The world has always been unfair and it is all of our responsibility to make it fair to us, by working to its requirements, by relentlessly pursuing what it considers to be merits. Sometimes, the world is just not meant for us – but neither is it meant for anyone else. So go on, attempt to change the world to suit yourself, or more easily, shape yourself to suit the world and you will be on the better end of the comparison, the one to cause others to shy away upon thinking about you. It takes efforts, and the process is not going to be too comfortable. More essentially, at the end of the day, you might even think that you have been slogging for something you never wanted. The fact then is, you haven’t discovered yourselves enough.

实用华语似乎不再那么自在了。已近一年多没有靠华文的经验了；虽然仍有用话语，而说话还算与以前一样流利，但感觉似乎有点不同了。除了与家人说话还是一样的自在，但来到工作室，我对华语的态度已有了转变。华语对我来说好像就只适合朋友间交谈，聊天，与家人沟通的语言，而工作室，总是用不上。恐怖的是，这话语重要性的萎缩似乎是说大家欢迎的。我的GP就像是因为没有了中文课的存在而进步的。难道，真得不能同时学习，并且精通两种语言吗？对此，我感到很不自在。

新加坡真是烦。近日大部分对国家政策（包括莫些人薪金膨胀一事）的争论，都是由一些洋派的人士发表。这类趋势该是反映受中文教育人士‘原吃苦’的精神还是新加坡人‘有苦难言’呢？当真可笑的是，这些批评国家领袖的人们，便是希望取代他们，甚至成功取代，但却重蹈覆辙的人们。始终不言不语的百姓，的大众，则是永远守护着国家，一心为国，任劳任怨的人们。我呢？只能算是个旁观者吧?就在这儿观着人间的冤案。这也不怎么自在。