I have half a mind to stick this as an interview question except that I might change C to 0% instead.
Category: Random Musings
Secretary Problem
I learned about the secretary problem recently and found it extremely profound. 🙂
Imagine an administrator willing to hire the best secretary out of N rankable applicants for a position. The applicants are interviewed one-by-one in random order. A decision about each particular applicant is to be taken immediately after the interview. Once rejected, an applicant cannot be recalled. During the interview, the administrator can rank the applicant among all applicants interviewed so far, but is unaware of the quality of yet unseen applicants. The question is about the optimal strategy to maximize the probability of selecting the best applicant.
The solution is 36.9%
In my case, I have applied it to my hiring process. I think that I have found someone to hire as a full-time staff and I have made the offer. Extrapolating the problem further, it means that every hire that I make from now on, will need to be better than the last.
I think that this is a good policy to have as it will inevitably ‘raise the bar’ when it comes to my hires. Hiring continuously better people will result in an upward trending average capability within the company.
One might think that this problem can be applied to the problem of finding a mate.
At first inspection, it seems like a good idea but it fails on one assumption – that the person who applied for the position actually will take the position if accepted. In the case of a mate, that may not be the case as an offer made can often result in rejection.
Interesting little bit of math though.
Disorganised Thoughts
I do think that some things are going off the track, in my life. Certain things are getting derailed while other things seem to be steaming ahead. I need a break. Some time for reflection. However, there is too much work that needs to be done. Frak.
RIP Steve
I want to cry. I don’t know why. I think that we have all lost someone important in this world. I feel cheated by the loss of his reality bending superpowers.
Steve Jobs – RIP.
If I may be so bold, I would say that I aspire to be like him – to have a net positive impact on the world – to impact the world in such a way that when my time comes to leave this world, I can say that my time here was not wasted and that the world is a better place as a result of my passing through it.
While Steve has achieved a lot of greatness, his second act at Apple will not be surpassed by anyone else anytime soon. The world got the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, iMac, iBook, etc. These were all revolutionary products in one way or another.
Let us also not forget Woody and Buzz Lightyear who lit up the lives of a whole other generation.
Steve Jobs signs off for the last time.
PS: Visiting Apple’s website actually made me cry.
Love for Malaysia
Got asked a few times this past week – on the reason that I came back to Malaysia. Each time, I told them the truth – that I came back because I love Malaysia and that is the honest truth (emphasis added).
I don’t know why but it seems odd to me that others have to ask me this question because the implication is that, I should not be back here doing what I am doing and that most people probably think that I am making a mistake.
All is fair in love and war.
Personally, I don’t think that there is anything right nor wrong about coming back to Malaysia. It’s just a choice to be made by most Malaysians, particularly those whom were educated overseas. One just has to make a choice and live with it without regret.
In my case, I truly came back because of my love for the nation. It’s not because of family and certainly not because of friends. Food might have played a small role in tipping things in favour of coming home but it certainly wasn’t the determining factor. As my blog header says – I’m a romantic.
Home is where the heart is.
We cannot all leave. Some people have to come back to put things in order and fight the good fight. Otherwise, this country is going to the dogs and things will just get worse. I am glad that I am not the only Malaysian who feels this way and that there are many others who have returned home for various reasons to help put things in order.
I try my best to convince my friends on the virtues of coming home. Sometimes, I know that I am merely talking to the wall but I persist anyway because I know that it is important that someone highlight to them the importance of fighting for that which they believe in. Otherwise, they will die for nothing.
Life is unfair.
If we think that we are treated unfairly, fight to change the system and make it more fair, one step at a time. If we think that things are just too corrupt, work towards cleaning up the system, one sen at a time. We Malaysians must always do our best to improve the nation – one revision at a time.
Fight or flight.
When faced with a problem, one can either fight or fly. I have always been a fighter throughout my life, and I am too stupid to know when to give up. I know that most people will choose the path of least resistance but the rebel in me always liked a good challenge.
So, while I missed writing about this on Malaysia Day, I think that I should put this straight – I love Malaysia – not the country, but the nation.
PS: I must apologise for this slightly emo blog because it’s late and I’m chronically sleep deprived.
Being Shawn Maverick
A friend of mine put it in words the other day, I’m a maverick, which is the part of me that has been both the boon and bane of my life. It reminds me of Top Gun. While being a maverick can get you places, it can also just as easily kill you or those closest to you.
SaaS Upgrade
Some of you may have noticed that I am experimenting with a Software-as-a-Service blogging platform. I’ve basically moved my blog from a self-hosted and self-managed VPS server to a SaaS service from WordPress.
Yeay!
Notice that I’ve said that this is an experiment. I’m actually testing things out to see if I should move my company blog off-site onto a SaaS service. Cost wise, it would actually be cheaper and it should also be better in terms of maintenance, performance and uptime.
However, I’ve not quite settled on which service to use yet. So, I’m going to try them out for a bit.
WordPress was the obvious first choice as my previous blog was a self-hosted wordpress site. Migrating it over was pretty straight-forward except that the posts have lost their categories and tags, which is a pain.
I’ve lost a bunch of stuff – particularly my Google FriendConnect stuff, when moving over to WordPress. For some reason, WordPress just refuses to integrate with Google FriendConnect. So, I’ll have to see if some other solution is better instead.
Also, WordPress does not allow me to add in random stuff into the posts – e.g. only certain approved video sites such as youtube, vimeo are allowed. For example, TED videos cannot be embedded directly unless I embed the Youtube version.
Next, I’m going to try Google blogs and maybe even some other.
Sybreon Ones Nought 