I just approved a comment on one of my earlier posts, a post about my possible foray into sales. A post that, as I re-read it, brought back plenty of memories. A post that reminded me how my career as it stands now, that of data science and analytics, is quite different from what I had once... Continue Reading →
The Teacher Being Surpassed by the Student
I was in class on Saturday thinking about how nice it would be if an article of mine on edonn.com was used as a piece of "teaching material" - i.e. quoted in class, or perhaps in the lecture notes. It was then that a recollection of "some saying" hit me, something about the aim of... Continue Reading →
The Difference Between Amateurs and Professionals…
...is that amateurs practice till they get it right, but professionals practice till they can't get it wrong. I love that quote. Reminds me of how I push myself to obtain my IPPT golds. In the months leading up to it, I'd train like I was training for the Olympics. During the test days itself,... Continue Reading →
Making Measurement Count
There's a saying I've heard many times that goes something like this: what gets measured gets done. And though I completely agree with that saying, I think it misses a crucial point: that before measuring anything, we have to make sure that what's getting done is what you want to get done. After the army... Continue Reading →
On Public Speaking
Yesterday, I gave a presentation for a group assignment in my Master's class. It was exhilarating and a whole lot of fun, despite (or perhaps because) of the fact that we had overrun our stipulated time and I had to go really quick, determining what could be skipped and what could not on the fly.... Continue Reading →
Building a Vocabulary
I just found a new favourite pastime: playing the Vocabulary.com Challenge. A great example of gamification, it makes learning new words engaging and actually quite fun. I do wonder if such a similar thing exists for Chinese/Mandarin.
KFC and the Representative Survey
I had KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) for breakfast yesterday. Chicken rice porridge and a "breakfast" wrap (that oddly enough didn't seem to contain any chicken). It was decent, and I liked it. So when I was quite excited when I saw that the receipt had a link to an online customer satisfaction survey, for which... Continue Reading →
On Planning and Project Management
"So how long," he asks, "do you think you'll take to complete the project?" "Two weeks," I say. Three weeks later, I'm still two weeks away from completion. What happened? It's not like this hasn't happened before. It's happened many times before. Rolf Dobelli says it beautifully in his excellent book The Art of Thinking... Continue Reading →
The Default Option
Saw the following via Avinash Kaushik on Google+. Too good not to share, and on so many levels. It is worth highlighting that the power of the "default option" is a very real one. Organ donation is a good example. Whether organ donation is an "opt-in" (i.e. the default option is not donating), far fewer people... Continue Reading →
Great things don’t just happen
Like a blog post.I've been thinking all month that "I ought to update my blog", but "inspiration" didn't hit and so I just let it slide.Day after day, thinking about it; not doing anything.And then I thought, "what if I don't wait for inspiration? What if I just got out there and wrote?"Well, I did.... Continue Reading →
Donn, fragments 