More GP Resources
By Kevin
Besides the already-famous GP Blog, I'd like to alert everyone to this other GP blog, by Adrienne. And if teachers' blogs are not enough, there are the one by passionate students, who have continued writing. ERPZ has slowed a bit with updating but we'll try our best to keep it updated!
Selling Stuff Right
By Kevin
Tesco's Homeplus campaign in Korea was absolutely amazing. It truly demonstrates how a study into culture-specific consumer behaviours and psyche is really worthwhile for businesses. Time to hire more psychologists and behavioural economists in your marketing departments.
Educating about Transport
By Kevin
Colourful Choices
As we all move forward in our personal development, we realise that including the citizens in policy decisions and complex issues that involves their personal welfare is important. I was really heartened to see Lui Tuck Yew takes his time to write Facebook notes that intelligently engages the public - the ones explaining the formula PTC used for manage the fares and also the issue on quality of service. It is important to show that while there may be some problems with the system, it can never be perfect and that we need to get together and work on it. Suggestions should come forth, without fear of being shot down even if they may be truly dull (I personally don't agree with public transport nationalization).
As Tim Harford said, we should acknowledge the complexity of the world and stop suffering from the God Complex - leaders who have the courage to say, "I've no idea if this works but information I gathered point this way; there's a chance we may fail but let's work together to try something else if that really happens."
Using moralistic arguments or trying too hard to stand by an action that have been taken usually produce flawed arguments that reduces a leader's credibility. Bear in mind that there's no end to issues of 'fairness'. Lim Boon Heng's statements cited in this article is such a grave disappointment. It's amazing how the reporter arranged the quotes to stay perfectly objective while surfacing the flaws of the argument made. Given the education levels of Singaporeans today, it seemed somewhat embarrassing that our leaders are trying to bullshit us this way:
"You know raising bus fares is unpopular," he said. "But if we cannot raise bus fares, how will that impact your fellow workers? I am sure you will understand that it is not fair if they cannot get wage increases."
"But their wage increase will be funded by fare increases, which adversely impact the public."
[...]
"But from the worker's perspective, when there are millions in profits, they want the employer to pay them better wages," Lim added.
"To them, millions of dollars in profits is a lot of money, and the commuting public feels fare increases are not justified."
SMRT posted net earnings of S$161.1 million for the financial year that ended this March, while SBS Transit had a net profit ofS$54.3 million for last year.
And what's wrong? There's no way to argue that fare hikes are for the transport workers. We all know that financial accounting puts down wages and salaries of workers of the firm as expenses in the income statement. Millions of dollars of profits are basically fares/revenues that did not go to the transport workers. Of course, they went to the people who contributed the capital and own the firm. Who is to guarantee that a fare hike would mean money is directed to the workers? If we want the wages of the workers to rise, why can't we reduce the profits of the owners instead? The last thing we need is the nationalization of public transport; what we need is perhaps better regulation. Perhaps PTC and NWC can work together, and negotiate both the fares and the wages?
Extra platform should be at Clementi and not Jurong East...
I could do a deeper analysis of SMRT and SBS Transit's patterns of cost and revenue and we could see profit margins have been constant or steadily increasing over the years. If it's been increasing, we can conclude that either the owners have exercised good cost control but refused to share some of the profit gains with the workers, or that hikes in fare so far have mainly been used to raise profit margins rather than to defray costs.
Let's use SMRT's figures as a demonstration: In 2007, fares rose 1.1%, FY2007 profit margins was 10.5%; in 2008, fares rose 0.7%, FY2008 profit margins was 13.5%; in 2009, fares fell by 4.6%, profit margins soared to 18.5% and then finally in 2010, fares were raised 0.5% and profit margins dipped a little to 18.2%. I'm not sure if my simplistic comparison of the time series of these figures distorts reality but I leave intelligent readers to arrive at their own conclusions. But I do want to remind readers that it is possible for fare reduction to invite more commuters, improve the green-ness of our economy, while providing that very profit boost that can be poured into investing for more capacity to reduce the overcrowding - perhaps already demonstrated by some figures I've presented.
The God Complex
By Kevin
Tim Harford delivered a wonderful talk at TED, on an issue I've long wanted to discuss and talk about. This is something I first learnt about from Origins of Wealth by Eric D Beinhocker several years ago. It is amazing how timeless this idea of trial and error would be.
Perhaps the most important part of Tim's talk was the last part, on the point of how obvious it is to us that trial and error underlies most of our important discoveries and approach to problem solving. Guided trials and learning from the error presents one of the most powerful means of design. We must, indeed come to this point of realisation that we should perhaps, no longer attempt - in our haste to simplify - to make kids believe that there's only 1 right answer to questions they encounter. The kind of struggle that we experience as we mature to accept that there's a need to hold multiple views and suspend judgment should have taught us that. But we wanted to shield our young ones from that suffering (and as a result, merely helped to postpone it) - one that turns out to be inevitable.
Big Mac Index
By Kevin
Burgernomics, anyone?
Moving on from Trade imbalances, I started work writing on prices around the world and was examining the Big Mac Index from The Economist when I discovered that some other geniuses at UBS has actually moved further to demonstrate differences in purchasing power of average wage-earners by calculating the time taken for them to earn a Big Mac in their country, which is totally cool! This is probably pushing my nerd reputation a little too far but anyways, it's worth a look.
The latest edition was published in 2009. And there you can see glaring differences in the standard of living and welfare of workers (albeit assuming that Big Macs were what the people wanted). The average Nairobi worker had to work more than two and a half hour in order to enjoy a Big Mac while the dudes in Tokyo, Toronto and Chicago could enjoy a Big Mac every 12th minute they worked. That is a difference of more than 12 times! By the time the Nairobi worker sits down to enjoy his first Big Mac, these other dudes would have enough money to buy more than 5 Extra Value Meals in their markets respectively.
If we do a slight comparison with the situation in the 2006 report, you'd realise further that while the guy at Chicago spent the same time working for a single Big Mac but the guy in Nairobi worked less in 2006! He became worst off 3 years later. In fact, he only had to work one and a half hour for a Big Mac in 2006. Apparently prices have rose so much more than wages that the poor Kenyan now have to work an extra hour before getting to enjoy his Big Mac.
Of course, this also reflects productivity differences between countries and talking about that, it's time for me to get back to work.
The UBS reports and updates are available on this page.
Rethinking Groupthink
By Kevin
You sure that works?
Finally, after years of bashing the notion of brainstorming, there is research indicating its usefulness. As a matter of fact, people do consistently come up with better ideas on their own when they think hard and deep rather than spending half the time listening to the ideas of others and the other half just waiting around for ideas to pop up. There is, what the researchers call 'evaluation apprehension' - so there's a natural tendency to hold back your ideas when ideating in a group as compared to when doing it on your own. Having led countless project teams and committees at meetings and sessions when we need to come up with ideas for a variety of different sort of stuff, I guess I have a pretty good idea how useful group-brainstorming is.
I was introduced to brainstorming when I was 11, where I attended a course on WITs (Work Improvement Teams) and subsequently represented the school in a WITs competition organized by one of the polytechnics in Singapore. Subsequently, I picked up individual ideation techniques from the Edward De Bono's Six Thinking Hats course when I was in Secondary school. I found it much easier to come up with lots of ideas when you don't feel like you're at risk of being judged.
And books I read about thinking, group work, and management agree with me on that and emphasized the need to create a space for thinking and ideation that suspends judgment completely. And it's not just about verbal judgment, it goes beyond that. Participants must truly believe that they are not being assessed, judged or perceived negatively in that group thinking environment. It works well in a setting with people who are already extremely familiar with each other but may be more difficult amongst strangers.
So why not designate group thinking sessions as meetings where people already came up with lots of individual ideas and then are asked to reconcile them. As mentioned in the research, this 'brainwriting' technique appears to work much better. It is surprising then, that it hasn't quite been used that extensively in work and project settings.
A hint then, for those of you working on PW and frustrated with your teammates who may be 'social loafing'.
Taking Examinations
By Kevin
Best advice ever
It's slightly more than 12 hours to the first examination I'll be taking in university, at the London School of Economics. I am probably not excited enough about it given that I'm still typing away on my computer and fiddling with my website when I really should be studying. Fact that all student should recognize at this point of time is that you should get rest and be mentally prepared for the papers rather than try to cram more stuff into your mind. It is a time when you start considering the difficulty of the challenge that you are taking on and preparing yourself mentally for it so that you have the capacity to handle it and to accept it when there are areas you simply cannot conquer at the moment. Expectations management is as important as forgetting your expectations altogether and focusing on the moment.
Besides being constantly reminded of the dangers of not panicking during examinations, we are informed that we must expect examinations to be difficult - and that the teaching staff of LSE are proud to say that. I pointed out in my personal blog that LSE includes the following statement in their document on examination procedures:
Please note that examinations are intentionally difficult, and feel more so under the pressure of timed conditions. The cachet of LSE degrees, in the eyes of other universities and employers, is at least in part based on the School’s rigorous academic standards. You should not therefore be surprised when your examinations feel more difficult than the previous years’ papers from which you have been revising. Examinations may contain questions that surprise you and that are unlike past examination questions. This is intentional: the examiners want to test that you have understood the material well enough to cope with new types of problems. Though challenging and difficult, the examination will also be fair. – Examination Procedures for Candidates 2011
Yet, I'm sure every year, the examinations still 'surprise' students in their creativity in terms of design and questioning methods. This is because, for a typical student with experience over the past 15 years or so of examinations have always walked into examination halls having done piles of past year questions. These are often an accurate reflection of the questions that will be coming out in the examination. The scope for creativity in question-setting haven't actually been exploited in those cases. At LSE, we are constantly informed that this will not be the case and we should really all be mentally prepared for that. This is a good thing because it reflects challenges we face in the world. Problems are not exactly problems when you already solved it before and know exactly how to approach it. My Mum says issues always crop up when she is the one using the computer. Fact is, I do often encounter those 'issues' but they are not exactly 'issues' to me - I navigate through them like the waking up ritual (rubbing eyes, folding duvet, checking time, heading to the toilet). A decent university knows that they should not be testing you with how to run through routines (that might even already be second nature to the brilliant students).
And it is these surprises in examinations that can make us proud of ourselves when we manage to overcome them, and when we manage to achieve some decent results out of it. At this point of time just before the paper, for those who feels they are still inadequately prepared: accept that no one is ever perfectly prepared for examinations. Instead, focus on making yourself ready by familiarising yourself with the examination procedures, the things you've to do for the paper and getting enough rest. As our undergraduate tutor advised in her email addressing the undergraduates of the department:
I do urge you, no matter how ill-prepared you might feel - to get really and truly enough sleep, not to try to cram, and to have a rehearsed routine for avoiding panic if you find an exam harder than you have ever faced so far in your life [...]
You actually need more sleep if you have not studied steadily because you will need to be in good control. There is almost nothing you can cram that will compensate for not having good reaction time and that ability not to loose your perspective.
I do find this to be brilliant advice and I'd urge anyone reading this to do the same in the time towards the examination. And life, more often than not, moves on during the moments when you stay calm. Time freezes when you panic. So if there's anything in the paper you realise you don't know, keep calm and carry on.
Global Imbalances
By Kevin
This entry has been sitting in my draft basement for ages and it probably is a little outdated by now but I still think it is of relevance to those interested. I was looking to find more news and writings to supplement my reading recommendations but the other global events overshadowed this issue and the entry got forgotten pretty quickly.
Liquat Ahamed, author of Lord of Finance, wrote an article in Foreign Affairs to comment about the global currency landscape now and compared it to those times. He's using his research pretty wisely and he is seeing trends of economies today following the misguided steps of past versions of themselves (obviously there's a reshuffling of economic powers). It's an excellent read for anyone interested in economics as well as political science. For those who have no access to Foreign Affairs, find a copy in the library or try to use your university library's electronic subscription.
And the former Director of LSE, Sir Howard Davies, delivered a talk at the school based on his writings and perspectives on the financial sector and financial regulation in China, more or less related to the ideas of global currency imbalances.
In his talk, he cites figures from McKinsey's article, which I found to be an incredibly solid treatment of the the issue and attempts to debunk myths about the imbalances of the Chinese economies using data. Once again, this is an article requiring paid access, so try and use university or school library electronic or print subscriptions to have a look. As I said, there's a lot of scope to do policy-thinking based on actual data and Singapore Statistics probably have a lot of work to raise standards of our current data presentation and usage (currently limited mainly for justifying policies, though I'm not entirely sure how much of it is use in actual thinking).
PW Season II
By Kevin
Any Resolution?
I noticed some reader searching 'Conflict' on ERPZ already! It's the Task 2 of the PW question this year and seeing my entry on 'Risk', you naturally think I've prepared something for conflict as well. Well, perhaps. I'm laying down the guidelines for 'Conflict' in this entry.
As usually, the two PW question themes for each year are quite closely related and I remember when I was working on mine - the project we've chosen is so versatile it actually fits both of the themes and we had to decide which one it matches more nicely. That sometimes have to do with reading the requirements of the question carefully. In this case, 'Risk' requires you to provide a guideline for risk-taking while 'Conflict' requires a guideline for resolution.
I personally find this more tricky than 'Risk' because conflicts may sometimes be resolved not because of any external force or a specific path that any party takes. It can be resolved by the changing nature of the conflict, the balance of power of the two parties in the conflict. In my studies of the Cold War, that's exactly how it worked out. There was a gradual but steady shift in the dynamics of the conflict as it progressed. The periods of Détente may not have done as much to end the Cold war as the exhaustion of Soviet Union's ability to sustain growth.
Aim
This project asks you to show how an understanding of conflicts may be of help in resolving conflicts in the future.Task Requirements
Identify one conflict (in politics, education, human interaction, etc.).
Explain its main causes and analyse the positive and negative effects which resulted.Suggest how lessons learned might help resolve fututre conflicts.
Once again, there is a whole load of cases and examples out there for conflicts and their resolution (and also conflicts that dragged for ages and fail to be resolved; eg. Arab-Israeli) so just take your pick and then try and analyse them carefully. Think about some of these points:
- Analyse the conflict by classifying the factors contributing it (you can follow the political scientists method of arranging them into 'agency', 'structure' or 'idea' factors).
- Examine the agenda and intentions of each sides of the conflict. Question their interest in the continuation of the conflict.
- Investigate the trend in the unfolding of the conflict; did it escalate at any point; is there a climax; at each stage, what might be the key to the turn of events (use counterfactual reasoning).
- What are the effects of the conflict on other parties/stakeholders? Did it help push them to take action to resolve or fuel the conflict?
- What are the aspects of the conflict that each side controlled and how did this impact on the eventual resolution?
- Once again, combine these parts to obtain a mindmap linking all these ideas and then identify the key characteristics of the conflict, then carefully select the actions that might have led to resolution. It might be important to identify the sort of conflict that your guidelines can resolve because I believe that it cannot be generalised to all conflicts. If you want to come up with a truly general guideline, it'd be so abstract that people have no idea how to execute it; it's going to be just 'common sense' that add nothing to our knowledge.
Like the previous PW guidance, comments are welcomed though students should not expect me to be guiding them on their specific projects.
PW Season
By Kevin
Take the right risks...
I guess it's the Project Work season again and it'll be worth your while to check out our PW page for some generic advice. This year, I'm glad to be able to offer some of my personal take on the question and the potential ideas and approaches. This could possibly the most useful piece on PW that ERPZ can offer for this year.
I shall first tackle Task 1, 'Risk'; it is not too tough and usually, PW questions are given so that you have a lot of room to explore different things. Which is wonderful.
Aim
This project task encourages you to took at the idea of risk and then show how risk-taking might affect people.Task Requirements
Choose one example of risk-taking (in history, business, environmental studies, science, etc.), show how the need to take specific risks arose and analyse the positive and negative effects which resulted from the actions taken.Suggest how lessons learned might be used to guide similar risk-taking in the future by individuals and/or groups.
There is a whole load of cases and examples out there for risk-taking and risky behaviours so just take your pick and then try and analyse each of the cases carefully. Ask yourself some of these questions:
- What are the impacts of the action taken?
- What is the agenda of the risk-takers?
- Think abt how the risk-taking has been coordinated.
- What're the aspects within their control and how did they manage these aspects?
- What are the aspects they couldnt control and how they take actions to cover up down-side risks or prevent undesirable outcomes?
- Use all these different parts to piece together the lessons and come up with a sort of 'guideline' or training programme
Comments are welcomed though students should not expect me to be guiding them on their specific projects.
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