Simple is the Reason of My Heart

Firing of BPL Football Managers and Maximal Efficiency

Till today, since the beginning of the Barclays Premiere League, eight out of twenty football managers are already replaced. Sometime back, together with two economists (Toke Aidt and Daniel Sgroi) and another fellow physicist in Cambridge (Bill Saslaw), we co-wrote a research paper entitled "Power Laws, Maximal Efficiency and the Turnover of Sports Managers" (which was published in Physica A and got some press attention in the UK after the World Cup 2006). Yes, I have done the "freaknomics" type research by looking at the phenomena of sports managers being fired for all sorts of reasons. It was the research that I have done on the football clubs that eventually led me to watching the Premiere League football till today. It was one of the most enjoyable and multi-disciplinary research collaborations for me. In this short blog entry, I will explain the research work with a "freaknomics" tradition and explain why the current firings will continue to happen because of  market efficiency in the Premiere League.   

The Birthday Problem

Three days ago, I discovered that one of my colleagues from Singapore Angle shares the same birthday with me. It reminded me of this interesting first year Cambridge undergraduate mathematical problem: What is the least number of persons required if the probability exceeds 1/2 that two or more persons have the same birthday (excluding the year)? So, I will offer the solution to the birthday problem (on my birthday, of course) and examine some interesting implications about the solution to this problem. Of course, if you want to read more about fun mathematical teasers which I have collected over the years, you can check out the actual document from this URL (note the document is in postscript format).

Combating Scientific Fraud in China

This article by Paul Mooney entitled "Plagued by Plagiarism" (republished on Fang Shi Min's website in both English and Chinese) talks about  how Fang Shi Min's role as a plagiarism buster in Chinese higher education. Fang Shi Min, otherwise known as Fang Zhou Zi, runs his own website 新语丝, where it is a site that exposes many cases of scientific fraud in Chinese universities. By the way, the site is blocked in China. At least, he has managed to solicit the younger generation of researchers to assist him, that reminds me of an online social network.

The Need to Focus on Basic Research

"One could not be a successful scientist without realising that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow minded and dull but also just stupid."
- James D. Watson "The Double Helix"

This article "Free mind on research" catches my attention today from Today Online. Our research direction has been charted on applied research and it does require a careful look. If we do not want to end up as a nation of "socially engineered PhD laboratory technicians" and have independent minded thinkers who can come up with maverick inventions, it is important for us to look to basic research. I heard about bureaucrats who possess the delusion of grandeur in managing science and cannot do it themselves by their own merit, but I am pretty sure in the back of their mind, they know that one Creative Inc or a Crick and Watson feat can trump over the rest of the mediocre numbers of companies or people generated. However, I see that there is going to be a problem with the government since their view of performance is measured in dollars and cents.

So is there no way to make basic research happen in Singapore? Of course, there are ways to do that and the only way to do this sadly is to look at private sector funding. It means that we need to have more people like Sim Wong Hoo and company who can be as far-sighted as Bill Gates and the founders of Google to put money in private foundations to fund basic research. I have written an article "Can Singapore support basic science and humanities?" in Singapore Angle last year to examine the prospects of creating a basic science culture.

Blogging about Science

For some time, I have been thinking about writing a science blog, as it remains to be my first and foremost passion in life. It has been sometime that I want merge blogging with my scientific research. At the same time, I want to create a repository that can help me collect scientific resources (publications, data and information) for my own research. It also helps me to clear my mind on the things that I want to understand about the research I am doing.

So the blog has started and it's called "The Science Abode". Hope that you will like it.

Comments on Stem Cell Research in Singapore

A moment ago, I read a commentary entitled "Stem Cell Research in Singapore" by two authors with the pseudonym "biomedical scientists in Singapore" in Yawning Bread (YB). Well, with some friends messaging me over the internet about this article, I have to say that I am not involved with the article, despite I have written a guest article on YB before. Here are my comments as a practitioner to their article on the issue of stem cell research in Singapore.

An article on Biomedical Research in Singapore

I refer to the article entitled "What ails biomedical research in Singapore" by Dr Lee Wei Ling, director of the National Neuroscience Institute. Thought that it might be of good read for those who are interested in thinking about science, research and development in Singapore. But not all the points are correct. I will find a time to discuss the points in this article later.