11/2/11 WHEN FIGURE IS NOT OUR CONCERN

The terms: Empherical Evidence or Statitically Significance had always been a very scary terms among the Malay students. At the higher educational level, the terms warrant a running of a regression and simulation of a huge numbers of statistic that sometime the formula used doesn't click with their simplistic thinking process (mind). In those early school days, most of my Malay colleagues would shy away from Mathematic and worst in the subject of Statistic. This I found out continues to this day, even among the educated working population. Due to such a syndrome, therefore, we could see that most of our Malay students avoiding taking subject such as Physic (pure and applied), and thus engineering. Most would go for subjects that deal less with Mathematic and Statistic.

(2) In this article, there are two aspect of Figures that I would want to dwell with. The first was about our Body Figure. Today, as I was sitting waiting for my number to be called for my passport renewal, right behind me, a lady was enjoying herself taking mouthfull after mouthfull of sandwiches. I was amazed with her eating appetide. The food that she took seem to be on sequentail volume to her body growth. Apart from that, I began to scan the rest of those surrounding me. Gosh, so much of our young and middle age are putting weight beyond the healty norm. If this, the attitude of not be concerned of their figure continues to expand, I wouldn't be supprised, 10-15 years from now our working productivity would be cut into half.

(3) Though without the staitiscal proof, I'm confident to say that, the Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and the Chinese ability to catchup with the rest of the world economic success because of their population high mobility characters. The same with the Singaporean. American was the same probably 20 years ago, but now, over weight had increased their heart disease problem, thus they are gaining fast working productivity setback. The Arab, especially the richer one such as Saudi, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Iraq, Lebanon, etc their population are much over size, and thus let see their Country progress, if all those foreigners are taken out!

(4) The second concern on Figure that I want to dwell on is wrt Mathematical Figure, ie statistic as pointed out in the article entry statement above. In fact the terms: Empherical Evidence or Statistical Significance is one of the way to proof that whatever we did (especially wrt experiments or researches), and in order for the result to be conclusive or (rationally) acceptable, the result(s) must have been derived through a series or sufficient repeatition of tests, experiments or observations. As an illustration, for us to conclude, say 10 percent of the honey dew that we planted would bear pale yellow rather the golden yellow skin fruits, we can't just make such a conlusion by merely observing from small numbers of plants or crop cycle. Various crop cycles and involving probably few hundred or even thousand of plants must be taken into account.

(5) The idea of this second Figure concern came into my mind when, also based on my observation, while waiting for the renewal of my passport, an elder couple, while paying their passport renewal fee, were grumbling: "Ini kelitas macam inipun, tiga latut mau bayat!" They purposely said the words aloud and made almost everybody looking wondering at them. Even while taking the money out of his wallet, the man took and counted his RM50 notes, also very loudly.

(6) Looking at the act of this elderly couple, it crossed into my mind, probably why the Malays are 'less calculative' in their acts, probably are due to their less liking over Mathematical or Statistical matters. Is there any Statistical Evidence over the matter? No serious research had been done on this, nonetheless, it is an acceptable norms, that the Malay students would try to avoid Mathematic and Statistic in their curicular.

(7) To me, as long as we the Malays are not concern with figures, definitely we would be less calculative on many matters. Even if we are culculative, we would be culculative in the different direction.

(8) In politic for instance. The Malay voters would think about power control as their main aim. With power the Malays believe they would gain all the privilleges that they believe they should enjoy. But in today reality, with the international interference in our domestic affair, the ideas of Malay Previlleges won't work much. This ideas has been attacked as racial and class discrimination and a violation of the Human Right and the deviation of a true Democratic Practice. As we know, the Malays in the Javanese term: lekas ngalah, thus they would easily give-in to the idea of revisiting the NEP or even abolising such a policy. PKR and PAS had sunng the DAP intent to do such. Some youth in the UMNO also had try to dissociate themselves with the NEP or DEB matters.

(9) But for the Chinese in particular, their calculation would be directed toward real Mathematical gain. If pomised being made on what would they get, they would want the real figure to be revealed. By doing so, they later would have all the legitimate ground to pursue their course.

(10) Therefore, it is timely that the Malays now should change their attitude from subjective concern to be more mathematical-based concern. If we are to be in power, we must set clearly what would that power mathematically contributed to us. If we don't set our targets mathematically clear, we will always be nowhere.

(11) The Malays' heart and mind must be concern about figure, both mathematicall and body physical before we can't effort to run fast to trail along!

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
20 Feb., 2011