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Friday, Jan 04, 2008 - 19:57 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

- - + -
Modulo Two

It seems that my aspirations towards a two-day week have been brutally dashed. Rest assured that this is not purely a reflection on my slothfulness, as I like to imagine that the non-negotiable one-and-a-half hour round-trip transport time incurred each time I haul butt down to campus can be more effectively expended on other matters.

The more-or-less confirmed list for the coming semester is:

CS3209 - Second half of UROP
CS3216 - Facebook fun, peace, laughter
EC3303 - Econometrics I. No choice since I plan for II and III in the final two semesters (towards Econs degree)
GE1101E - Place, Environment, Society. Exposure module (towards Econs degree)
SN1101E - South Asia: People, Culture, Development. The lure of threes is indeed great for Arts and Social Sciences. Exposure module (towards Econs degree)
CS3265 - Economics of E-Business. Combining CS with Econs, how can I fail? No tutorials on Monday or Thursday though *sobzz*, so I'll probably try for the Friday afternoon slot and hope for basketball after that.

Actually, I might have preferred to attempt something like Metaphysics or Introduction to Political Science in lieu of Economics of E-business for Unrestricted Electives, but it is finally time to string the CAP system in seriousness. Since learning is available everywhere, I might as well jack up the numbers for show.

Was checking up the local fixed deposit interest rates (DBS) (OCBC) (UOB) a couple of days ago, and got rather curious about the wide bands. For instance, take a one-year fixed deposit (information correct as of January 4 2008):

DBSOCBCUOB
S$10k0.825%0.800%0.825%
S$50k1.800%1.800%1.800%

Ignoring the fact that the interest paid either way is rather paltry, the question is why there exists such a huge discrepancy. Yes, it is understandable if the banks slap penalties on jokers who try to open a time deposit account with their lunch money, but the administrative fees for handling ten thousand bucks (or for that matter, forty-nine thousand bucks) should be about as tiny a fraction of the capital as a fifty thousand dollar transaction. Yet the interest is more than doubled!

Put another way, a guy who wished to put S$10k in a fixed deposit account could sit outside a bank with a huge sign announcing his intentions; All he needs is four other guys in the same situation, and then they could band together and each gain an extra S$100 or thereabouts simply by pooling their cash.

Of course, there are some issues - there is some loss of flexibility in withdrawal of individual contributions, and also the question of trust in the person whose name the deposit will be placed under. These are not insurmountable however, and I wonder if a service to aggregate such small savers contravenes any Singaporean banking laws.

The modus operandi would be blindingly simple - advertise for people with a few hundreds or thousands lying about that they are pretty sure they will not be needing for a year, and once enough is gathered throw it into a single big fixed deposit. The participants gain in that they achieve a higher return than they would otherwise have been able to get, since as far as I know banks do not tailor for this class of people, and the secondary intermediary gains in that it can take a cut and provide a legal framework for the (essentially riskless) service. The question is if a sufficient volume exists to make it worthwhile, and if so whether new entrants will quickly compete away excess profits...

Not that it takes much effort to make money sometimes, by the way. I've been actively trying to get my credit card information over to my web hosting provider, and even shot off a short and straightforward support ticket, only to get a response that once again looks as if it was cut-and-pasted off some generic template and does not even pretend to approach my queries. Seriously, I think the person who makes these replies has the easiest job on Earth, since it appears not to require any semblance of reading comprehension. Or perhaps some program just culled keywords from the text and selected a premade answer. I can't tell the difference.

On the far end of the industry spectrum is Toronto Raptors power forward Chris Bosh, who sure didn't wait for someone to hand him an NBA All-Star spot. He gamely produced his own campaign video to win votes, plastering it on his own website too. Just for that, he got a nomination from me.

Ah, I had to pick nine other fellas. Hmm, here goes:

Western Conference - Dirk Nowitzki (F), Tim Duncan (F), Allen Iverson (G), Tracy McGrady (G), Yao Ming (C)

Eastern Conference - Chris Bosh (F), Kevin Garnett (F), Gilbert Arenas (G), Dwyane Wade (G), Ben Wallace (C)

The chance that a single vote will make the difference in any large election is however close to zero, so the direct influence that it has on the outcome is likewise next to nothing according to standard game theory, which concludes that the personal/social gratification from voting alone must outweigh the costs of voting (very low if online) for a person to exercise his right to vote, i.e. PB + D > C where P is the probability that the vote will make a difference (which is only the case where the vote is otherwise tied), B is the relative benefit from the favoured vote outcome, D is the abovementioned gratification and C the costs (which may not be trivial if transportation and time lost from work come in).

Well, voting could always be made a compulsory obligation when people do get clever.

In recent local news, teachers are due to get some extra pay. While I support this overdue recognition of the profession, and my cousin on an MOE teaching scholarship should be rejoicing too, tacking bonuses onto "performance" could be a tricky innovation, if grades are considered a key component.

As explored in Freakonomics, the introduction of similar measures in California ushered in a quaint phenomenon - cheating not by students, but by teachers who found their pay and position tied to the results of their pupils. The book states candidly: "Teacher cheating is rarely looked for, hardly ever detected, and just about never punished". Indeed, the US$25k bonus for top performers in California was eventually revoked for this very reason.

Can this happen here? I would love to say no, but it is a fact that raising or maintaining results, as measured by number of passes in each subject, percentage of As, As+Bs, mean L1R5 or any number of such metrics appears to be extremely popular among schools here, or at least those which are put in a good light by those figures. It must be remembered though that there are many ways to manipulate this data, such as "encouraging" students who are performing poorly in a subject to drop it. Indeed, there has already been one case discovered where PSLE answers were changed with a different coloured pen - I suppose if the culprit took the care to at least match the pen colour, or altered pencil markings on OMR forms instead, the chicanery would be nigh undetectable (without specific checking with algorithmic methods, that is).

My hams certainly know how to live it up. Leave them alone for a couple of days, and they redecorate their pad:


Hmmm... something those clubs have in common?

Cleaning out their cage was a good opportunity to take them through some trials, where they demonstrated some tricks they had learnt by peeking out at the Football Channel between the bars:


I do 10000 stepovers!

Sadly things got rough real fast, as we learnt that they had yet to come across the concept of a foul:


No, biting an opponent's leg is not a legal move

Ejection of the offender proved to be thankless...


Unhand me! Now!



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Next: Fullness of Life


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2 comments


c.wenhoo said...

why must have gilbert on your team


January 4, 2008 - 20:09 SGT     

gilbert said...

sorry no chong to choose


January 4, 2008 - 21:47 SGT     


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