Story of Dr Richard Teo

I was re-reading the transcript of the talk of Dr Teo. It is very meaningful. Some people need to face death to understand life. However we can all learn from others if we have an open mind.

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Below is the transcript of the talk of Dr. Richard Teo, who was a 40-year-old millionaire and cosmetic surgeon with a stage-4 lung cancer, sharing at a Dental Christian Fellowship Meeting. He would have liked to share this with you too.

Recorded at the Dental Christian Fellowship , on 24 Nov 2011, 8 months after his diagnosis.

Richard would have liked to share this with you. We are doing this to continue his work. 

HIS BACKGROUND

Hi good morning to all of you. My voice is a bit hoarse from the chemotherapy, so please bear with me. I thought I'll just introduce myself. My name is Richard, I’m a friend of Danny’s, who invited me here.

I’d just begin to say that I’m a typical product of today’s society. Before this, I was talking about how the media influences us etc. So I’m a typical product of what the media portrays. From young, I’ve always been under the influence and impression that to be happy, is to be successful. And to be successful, is to be wealthy. So I led my life according to this motto.

Coming from a poor average family, back in those days, I was highly competitive, whether in sports, studies, leadership. I wanted it all. I’ve been there, done that. But at the end of the day, it’s still about money.

So in my recent last years, I was a trainee in ophthalmology, but I was getting impatient, cos I had friends of mine who were going out into private practise, making tonnes of money. And there I was, stuck in a traineeship. So I said, ‘Enough, it’s getting too long.’ At that time, there was a surge in protégés of aesthetic medicine. I’m sure you’re aware, aesthetic medicine had peaked over the last few years, and I saw good money in there. So much so that I said, ‘Forget about ophthalmology, I’m gonna do aesthetic medicine.’ So that’s what I did.

The truth is, nobody makes heroes out of the average GP in the neighbourhood. They don't. They make heroes out of rich celebrities, politicians, rich and famous people. So I wanted to be one of these. I dived straight into aesthetic medicine. People were not willing to pay when I was doing locum back in those days. Anything more than $30, they would complain that “Wah, this lo kun (doctor) jing qwee (very expensive)”. They made noise and they were not happy. But the same people were willing to pay $10 000 for a liposuction. So I said, ‘Well, let’s stop healing the sick, I’m gonna become a beautician; a medically-trained beautician.’

And that was what I did – liposuction, breast augmentation, eyelid surgeries, you name it, we do it. It was very good money. My clinic, when we started off, waiting time was 1 week; 1 month; became 2 months; became 3 months. There was so much demand that people were literally queuing up to have aesthetic work done on them. Vain women – easy life!

So the clinic grew. I was so overwhelmed, from 1 doctor, I employed 2, then 3, then 4 doctors, and carried on. Nothing is ever enough. I wanted more and more and more. So much so that we set up shop in Indonesia to lure all the Indonesian tai tai’s. We set up shop, set up a team of people there, to get more Indonesian patients to come in.

So, things were doing well. I’m there, my time has arrived. 

Around some time in February last year, I said, ‘OK, I have so much spare cash, it’s time to get my first Ferrari. So there I was, getting ready for the deposit. ‘OK! There comes my first Ferrari!’ I was looking for land, to share with some of my friends. I have a banker friend who makes $5 million a year. So I thought, ‘Come, let’s come together. Let’s buy some land and build our houses.’

I was at my prime, getting ready to enjoy. At the same time, my friend Danny had a revival. They were going back to church, some of my close friends. They told me, ‘Richard, come, join us, come back to church.’

I have been a Christian for 20 years; I was baptised 20 years ago, but it was because it was fashionable to be a Christian then. All my friends were becoming Christians then. It was fashionable! I wanted to be baptised, so that when I filled in a form, I could put there “Christian” – feels good. In truth, I had never had a bible; I don’t know what the bible is all about.

I went to church for a while, after some time, I got tired. I said it’s time to go to NUS, stop going to church. I had a lot more things to pursue in NUS – girls, studies, sports etc. After all, I had achieved all these things without God today, so who needs God? I myself can achieve anything I want.

In my arrogance, I told them, “You know what? You go tell your pastor to change your sermon to 2pm. I will consider coming to church.” Such arrogance! And I said 1 statement in addition to that – till date, I don’t know I’ve regretted saying that – I told Danny and my friends, “If God really wanted me to come back to church, He will give me a sign.”. Lo and behold, 3 weeks later, I was back at church.

THE DIAGNOSIS

In March 2011, out of the blues – I was still running around, ‘cause I’m a gym freak and I always go to the gym training, running, swimming 6 days a week. I had some backache, and that’s all I had, but it was persistent. And so I went for an MRI to exclude prolapsed disc. And the day before I had my scan, I was still in the gym, lifting heavy weights, doing my squats. And the next day, they found that half my spine had bone marrow replacement. I said, “Woah, sorry, what’s that?” 

We had a PET scan the next day, and they diagnosed that I had terminal lung cancer, stage 4B. It had spread to the brain, half the spine, whole of my lungs were filled with tumour, liver, adrenals…

I said, “Can’t be, I was just at the gym last night, what’s going on?” I’m sure you know how it feels – though I’m not sure if you know how it feels. One moment I was there at the peak, the next day, this news came and I was totally devastated. My whole world just turned upside down. 

I couldn’t accept it. I have a hundred relatives on both sides, my mom and my dad. 100 of them. And not a single one has cancer. To me, in my mind, I have good genes, I’m not supposed to be having this! Some of my relatives are heavy chain smokers. Why am I having lung cancer? I was in denial.

HIS ENCOUNTER WITH GOD

So the next day, I was still in a state of denial, still unable to accept what was going on. There I was lying in an operating theatre in a hospital, for a needle biopsy (for histology). There I was, just completed the biopsy, and lying in the operating theatre. The nurses and doctors had left; told me I had to wait for 15 minutes to do a check X-ray to make sure there’s no pneumothorax (a complication).

And there I was, lying on the operating table, staring blankly at the ceiling in a cold, quiet operating theatre. Suddenly I just heard an inner voice; it was not like coming from outside. It was inside. This small inner voice that I had never felt before. And it said very specifically, it said, “This has to happen to you, at your prime, because it’s the only way you can understand.”

I said, “Woah, why did that come from?” You know, when you speak to yourself, you’d say, “OK, what time should I leave this place? Where shall I have dinner after this?” You’d speak from a first person point of view. You don’t say, “Where should YOU go after this?” Whereas the voice that came spoke as a third party. It said, “This has to happen to YOU, at YOUR prime, because this is the only way YOU can understand.” At that time, my emotions just overflowed and I broke down and cried, alone there. And I knew then, subsequently, what it means to understand that why this is the only way.

Because I had been so proud of myself, my whole life, I needed nobody else. I was gifted with things that I could do, why do I need anybody else? I was just so full of myself that there was no other way I could have turned back to God.

In fact, if I were diagnosed with stage 1 or 2, I would have been looking around busily for the best cardiothoracic surgeon, remove a section of the lobe (do a lobectomy), do preventive chemotherapy…The chances of it being cured is extremely high. Who needs God? But I had stage 4B. No man can help, only God can.

A series of events happened after that. I wasn’t sold after that, because of the inner voice, I became believing, prayers, all that. No I wasn’t. To me, it was just ‘maybe there was a voice; or maybe that was just me talking to myself.’ I didn’t buy the story.

What happened next was that I was being prepared for chemotherapy. I started off with a whole brain radiation therapy first; takes about 2 -3 weeks. In the meantime they prepared me for chemotherapy, supplements etc. One of the things they used for chemo was a thing called Zometa. Zometa - they use it to strengthen the bones; once the bone marrow (replacement) is cured of cancer cells, it becomes hollow, so we need Zometa to strengthen the bone to prevent compression fractures. 

One of the side effects of Zometa is that it can cause osteonecrosis (bone death) of the jaw, and I had to have my wisdom teeth removed. Years ago, I had my upper wisdom teeth removed, cos it was giving me trouble. The lower ones didn’t give me trouble so I said, “Forget it, just leave it.” So of cause, Danny volunteered to remove it for me.

So there I was, lying there in a dental chair, asking myself, suffering all the side effects of radiotherapy, and now I have to go through wisdom tooth surgery. As if I’ve not had enough to suffer! So I asked Danny, “Eh, bro, is there any other way? Can I not go though this?” He said, “Yes, you can pray.” 

I said, “What’s there to lose? Ok lah, pray lah!” And so we prayed. And we did an X-ray after that. Everything was all there, all the appliances and everything. And lo and behold, the Xray showed that there was no wisdom teeth in the lower jaw. I know most people have 4 wisdom teeth, maybe some have none, but to be missing one or 2, as I understand – I’m not too sure, as I understand – is not that common.

Still I was, “Nah, I don’t care about that.” To me, as long as I didn’t have to take out the tooth, I was happy. At that point, I still wasn’t sold on prayers. Maybe it was just a coincidence – for whatever it’s worth.

I continued meeting my oncologist, asking him, “How long do I have?” I asked him. He said, not more than 6 months. I said, “Even with chemotherapy?” About 3 – 4 months, he said. 

I couldn’t grasp that. It was difficult to come to terms. And even as I went through radiotherapy, I was struggling everyday, especially when I wake up, hoping that it’s just a nightmare; when I wake up, it’s all over.

As I was struggling, day after day, I went into depression, which is the typical denial, depression blah blah blah that you go through. But for 1 reason, I don’t know why, there was this specific day that I was supposed to meet my oncologist. At about 2pm, I felt this sudden surge of peace, comfort, and in fact, a little happiness. It was just overflowing. For no rhyme or reason, it just came about 2pm, as I was getting ready, dressing up to meet my oncologist. So much so that I whats-apped all my friends that, “Bros, I just feel so good suddenly! I don’t know why, it just came!”

And it was only days, or was it weeks after, that Danny revealed to me that he had fasted for 2 days for me, and he was bargaining with God, and fasted for 2 dyas, and he ended his fast at that exact same point, about 2pm thereabouts, that this surge of sensation came to me for no rhyme or reason. And I didn’t know that he was fasting for me. And when he ended the fast, I felt that sensation!

Whoa, things were getting a bit too coincidental. I was starting to buy a bit of the story, but still I wasn’t sold. As days passed by, I completed my radiotherapy, about 2 weeks plus. Getting ready for chemo, so they let me rest for a few days.

See, the mortality rate of lung cancer : Lung cancer has the highest mortality rate. If you add up breast, colorectal (colon) cancer, and prostate cancer (the top few cancers in Singapore for men and women), if you add up the mortality rate of these 3, it still doesn’t add up to lung cancer. Simply because, you understand, you can remove the prostate, the colon, the breast, but you cannot remove your lungs.

But there’s about 10% of lung cancer patients who do pretty well for some reasons, because they have this specific mutation; we call it the EGFR mutation. And it happens, only 90% of the time, in Asian ladies who never smoked in their lives. Me, first of all, I’m male. 2ndly, I’m a social smoker. I take one a day after dinner; weekends, when my friends offer me, I take it as well. I’m a light smoker, not a social smoker. But still, my oncologist was still not hopeful for me to have this mutation. 

The chances of it happening for me was maybe 3-4% for me to get it. That’s why I was being primed to go for chemo. But through all the intense prayers, friends like Danny, people that I don’t even know, it turned out that, during my waiting for chemo, the results came back that I was EGFR positive. I was like, “Woah, good news!” Cos now I don’t have to undergo chemo at that time, because there’s this oral tablet that you can use to control this disease.

Just to share with you some idea – this is a CT scan – thorax – of my lungs, before treatment. 

AFTER BEFORE 

Every single dot there is a tumour. You can see all the mets (metastasis) there. This is just one single plane. Literally I had it in both lungs, and I had literally tens of thousands of tumour. That’s why the oncologist told me, even with chemo, at most 3-4 months.

But because of this mutation, they have this oral medication. This is what happened after 2 months of treatment. As you can see over here; this is what God can do. And that’s why I’m still here having this opportunity to share with you. As you can see over here, the difference between before and after treatment.

At that point, I said, “Well, it’s to be expected, isn’t it? The medicine is good.” I’m still not buying the story. Well, the guys prayed for me and the tumour markers started to come down. 90% of the tumours were wiped out, and the tumour markers came down to more than 90% over the next few months.

But still, you know, once you have the clinical knowledge, you know the statistics. One year survival, two year survival; having all this knowledge is not a good thing. Cos you live with the knowledge that even with all this, the cancer cells are so unstable, they keep mutating. They will overcome and become resistant to the drugs, and eventually you’re gonna run out of medication.

So living with this knowledge is a huge mental struggle, a huge mental torture. Cancer is not just about a physical struggle, it’s a huge mental torture. How do you live with no hope? How do you live with not being able to plan for the next few years? The oncologist tells you to bear with it for the next 1 – 2 months. So it’s a lot of struggles as I went through: March, then April. April was my lowest point, in deep depression, struggling even as I was recovering.

HIS ACCEPTANCE & PEACE

And one of those days, I was there in bed, struggling in the afternoon, asking God, “Why? Why do I have to go through this suffering? Why do I have to endure this hardship, this struggle? Why me?” 

As I fell asleep, in my dreamy state, a vision just came, that says Hebrews 12:7-8.

Now mind you, at this time, I had not read the bible. I have no clue what’s Hebrews, I don’t even know how many chapters there are. Totally clueless.

But it says Hebrews 12:7-8, very specifically.

I didn’t think too much of it. I just continued sleeping. Then I woke up, and I said, “What’s there to lose? I’d just check it out lah!” Danny had bought me a bible; it’s still quite new. I said, “It’s ok, just try.” So I flipped to the Old Testament. Hebrews to me sounds like something ancient, so it should be in the Old Testament right? So I flipped through the Old Testament. No Hebrews there. I was so disappointed.

Then I said, “Maybe New Testament, let’s have a look!”. WOW – New Testament, there’s Hebrew’s!! It says Hebrews 12:7-8. It says, “Endure hardship as discipline as God is treating you as His children.”

I said, “WAH!! Where did that come from?” I was getting goose pimples all over my body. I said, “This can’t be, right?” I mean, what’s the chance of somebody, who has never read the bible, to have a vision of a chapter of a specific verse, that answers my question directly?

I think God called to me directly as I was there sleeping, struggling with it, asking God, “Why do I have to suffer? Why do I have to suffer this?” And God says “Endure hardship as discipline as God is treating you as His child.”

At this point, the chance of that happening is even lesser than my EGFR being positive. There’s just no way; there’s so many millions of thousands of verses in the bible, how can I just conjure up something like that?

So at that point, I was sold I said, “YOU WIN! YOU WIN!!”

Ok , I was convinced. And so from that day onwards, I started believing in my God. And the last time I heard that inner voice was the end of April. And that inner voice, same thing, in the afternoon, as I was sleeping (this time I wasn’t struggling, just going to sleep). In a dreamy state I just heard Him say, “Help others in hardship.”

It was more like a command, rather than a statement. And that’s when I embarked on this journey, helping others in hardship. And I realised that hardship is not just about being poor. In fact, I think a lot of poor people are probably happier than a lot of us here. They are so easily contented with whatever they have, they’re probably pretty happy.

Hardship can happen to rich people; it can be physical hardship, mental hardship, social, etc. And also over the last few months, I started to understand what this true joy is about. In the past, I substituted true joy with the pursuing of wealth. I thought true joy is about pursuing wealth. Why? Cos let me put it to you this way, in my death bed, I found no joy whatsoever in whatever objects I had – my Ferrari, thinking of the land I was going to buy to build my bungalow etc, having a successful business.

It brought me ZERO comfort, ZERO joy, nothing at all. Do you think I can hold onto this piece of metal and it’s going to give true joy? Nah, it’s not going to happen. 

True joy comes from interaction with other people. And at a lot of times, it is a short term pride, the past. When you pursue your wealth, Chinese New Year is the best time to do it. Drive my Ferrari, show off to my relatives, show off to my friends, do my rounds, and then you thought that was true joy? You really think that those guys who sold you your Ferrari, they share their joy with you? And your relatives, wow, they share this joy with you? In truth, what you have done is just to illicit envy, jealousy, and even hatred. They are not sharing the joy with you, and what I have is that short-term pride that wow, I have something you don’t have! And I thought that was joy!

So what we have is basically a short-term pride at the expense of somebody else. And that wasn’t true joy. And I found no joy at all on my deathbed, thinking of my Ferrari – to hold on to it, sayang it?!?

True joy I discovered comes from interaction. Over the last few months I was so down. Interaction with my loved ones, my friends, my brothers in Christ, my sisters in Christ, and only then was I able to be motivated, able to be uplifted. To share your sorrow, to share your happiness – that’s true joy.

And you know what makes you smile? True joy comes from helping others in hardship, and because I’ve gone through this, I know what hardship entails. In fact, there’re some cancer patients who tell me a lot of times, people come up to them and tell them, “Stay positive. Stay positive.” Yah, right. You come in my shoes and you try to stay positive! You don’t know what you’re talking about!

But I have the licence. So I’ve been going out to meet other fellow cancer patients, to share with them, encourage them. And I know, because I’ve been through it, and it’s easier for me to talk to them.

And most importantly, I think true joy comes from knowing God. Not knowing about God – I mean, you can read the bible and know about God – but knowing God personally; getting a relationship with God. I think that’s the most important. That’s what I’ve learnt.

So if I were to sum it up, I’d say that the earlier we sort out the priorities in our lives, the better it is. Don’t be like me – I had no other way. I had to learn it through the hard way. I had to come back to God to thank Him for this opportunity because I’ve had 3 major accidents in my past – car accidents. You know, these sports car accidents – I was always speeding , but somehow I always came out alive, even with the car almost being overturned. And I wouldn’t have had a chance. Who knows, I don’t know where else I’d be going to! Even though I was baptised it was just a show, but the fact that this has happened, it gave me a chance to come back to God.

Few things I’d learnt though:

1. Trust in the Lord your God with all your heart – this is so important.

2. Is to love and serve others, not just ourselves.

There is nothing wrong with being rich or wealthy. I think it’s absolutely alright, cos God has blessed. So many people are blessed with good wealth, but the trouble is I think a lot of us can’t handle it. The more we have, the more we want. I’ve gone through it, the deeper the hole we dig, the more we get sucked into it, so much so that we worship wealth and lose focus. Instead of worshipping God, we worship wealth. It’s just a human instinct. It’s just so difficult to get out of it.

We are all professionals, and when we go into private practise, we start to build up our wealth – inevitably. So my thought are, when you start to build up wealth and when the opportunity comes, do remember that all these things don’t belong to us. We don’t really own it nor have rights to this wealth. It’s actually God’s gift to us. Remember that it’s more important to further His Kingdom rather than to further ourselves.

Anyway I think that I’ve gone through it, and I know that wealth without God is empty. It is more important that you fill up the wealth, as you build it up subsequently, as professionals and all, you need to fill it up with the wealth of God.

I think that’s about it. It’s good to share. Thanks.

Verdict Day

It must have been the coming of age. There was no tossing and turning the night before. Life was as per normal. There was no anticipation. It was just another day with multiple verdicts to be revealed.

This could possibly be due to the travails of life. I have gone through a number of disappointments in life. My initial feelings have transited from disbelief, denial to acceptance and moving on. Worrying over split milk would not change the outcome. Life would still go on. Often good outcome does not guarantee a happily ever-after ending. Life is a journey that one needs to constantly learn from it. In a sense, it has made me more forward-looking. Instead of asking why certain thing happen, I ask how should we move on from here. 

Verdict 1 was the prognosis of my mother's surgery. After months of groping in the dark over her unexplained discomfort, light was finally cast on the cause. At first, it was thought to be a run-of-the-mill issue. However, there was a more deep-rooted matter which required a minor surgery. As each event unfolded, we took it in our stride.

It was good news. Her surgery was a resounding success and she was firmly on the road to better health. My mom was visibly relieved that she finally relented to have lunch together. My mother is a home person who would prefer to eat at home than out anytime.

Verdict 2 was P's PSLE results. The months of mugging was condensed into a number. Lim's family was behind him no matter what happen. He turned in a decent report card. I felt that he could have done better. For the past year, I have been trying to push him for him to reach his potential. However I can only do so much insofar he is willing to carry his own weight. While PSLE was over, I hope P could learn from this episode. Of course, I would always be there for him.

With these outcomes known, we have also settled our year-end holiday plan.   We managed to head down to the GPS service centre to loan the country map.

Thereafter we did what family do together when parents were on leave - play. It was another day of cycling and swimming. It was topped off with a heartwarming family dinner at a western restaurant where we tucked in merrily.

Indeed, verdict day or not, the choice is with us to be or not to be happy.

All the Best to Primary 6 Pupils

Just a short post of encouragement to all P6 pupils who would be receiving their results soon.

Whatever your results, continue to reach out for the sky. Study hard and do remember to make time for your interest too. As long as you have the drive and determination, one day you will taste the sweetness of success.

More is NOT always Better

Just as big is not always beautiful, we can have too much of a good thing. The most obvious thing is food, an excess of which can make us fat.

Why is this so? It is because of an inverted-U curve relationship between food consumption and health. Many things in life follow the inverted-U curve relationship. Productivity and amount of things on To Do List is another.

Inverted-U curves have four part:

- Stage 1, where the curve is linear. More food will lead to better absorption of nutrients and hence a rosier cheek. 

- Stage 2, where “the initial linear relation has flagged.” This is the area of diminishing marginal returns. 

- Stage 3, where extra resources have no effect on the outcome. 

- Stage 4, in which more resources are counterproductive. The more you eat, the rounder your cheek.

This is what Gladwell wrote in his book David and Goliath "We take a term in house construction—footing—to label the first stage“and then use the mnemonic ‘footing, flagging, flat, and falling.’”

Besides food, there are other tangible things, such as information and money, that can also have an adverse impact on our quality of life in excess. 

It may sound counter intuitive. But having too much money can be an ill. So how much is enough? A study from Princeton hangs a price tag on that happiness: $75,000.  That is the annual household income that gives you the most joy for your buck. People with incomes below that magic number report less happiness, overall, than those at or above it.

Having too much money re-draws boundaries. And this heralds uncharted territories. Rags-to-riches parents do not have it easy to bring up their children in the same values that made them successful.

For many aspiring-to-be-rich, as they climb up each rung, they will want more. More money to buy a bigger house or car to confer a higher social status. More money to sate yet another craving for the latest in thing,

Inability to achieve these goals, is often equated to low self-worth. This in turn, makes them want even more what they don't—or can't—have. The dangers of abundance are very real. 

So what is the best thing for us to do? As the playwright Plautus put it: "In everything the middle course is best: All things in excess bring trouble to men." Moderation is the key.

That is food for thought for this week.

What is data sampling?

We know about food sampling. We take a pick of the different food available and conduct a taste test. Thereafter we make conclusion of which restaurant is better.

It is the same in the case for data analysis purposes. At times, there is not enough time, energy, money, labour/man power or it is simply not possible to measure every single item of the population.

Sampling is a shortcut method for investigating a whole population. Data is gathered on a small part of the population, and used to inform what the whole picture is like.

An appropriate sampling strategy is adopted to obtain a representative, and statistically valid sample of the whole.

Today, I will touch on the basics of sampling strategy. 

The bigger sample size, the more accurate a representation of the population. However there is a need to balance between obtaining a statistically valid representation, and the amount of resources needed. 

A sampling strategy made with the minimum of bias is the most statistically valid. 

There are 3 main types of sampling strategy:

1. Random - the least biased of the 3. E.g. To carry out a survey of 100 out of a small town with a population of 1,000, we can randomly pick 100 people.

2. Systematic - essentially a variant of 1 that involves some listing of the 1,000 people in our earlier example. Divide 1,000 by the sample size of 100, yielding the result of 10. Next we pick a number between 1 and 10, say 6. Then records 6th, 16th, ... to 996th will form the sample.

3. Stratified. In this form of sampling, the population is first divided into two or more non-overlapping groups (known as strata) based on some characteristics of interest in the research. If a random sample is drawn from each group. The whole sampling procedure is described as stratified random sampling.

More on Stratified Method

Let me dwell a little more on stratified method. 

The key benefit of this method is to ensure that cases from smaller strata of the population are included in sufficient numbers to allow comparison. 

E.g. If we are interested in how job satisfaction varies by race among a group of employees at a firm. To explore this issue, we need to create a sample of the employees of the firm. However, if the employee population at this particular firm is predominantly white, with a simple random sample of employees, we are likely to end up with very small numbers of Blacks and Asians. The numbers could be too small for comparison in one or more of the smaller groups.

Rather than taking a simple random sample from the firm's population at large, in a stratified sampling design, we ensure that appropriate numbers of elements are drawn from each racial group in proportion to the percentage of the population as a whole. Say we want a sample of 1000 employees - we would stratify the sample by race (group of White employees, group of African American employees, etc.), then randomly draw out 750 employees from the White group, 100 from the African American and 150 from the Asian. This yields a sample that is proportionately representative of the firm as a whole.

Hope this little post has piqued your interest in data analysis.

Data analysis - Logic and Simplicity

Today, I will like to share about something which is my bread and butter. Something which is close to my heart - data analysis.

If I were to use one word to describe data analysis, it would be beauty - sheer beauty - to be exact.

Data analysis is a body of methods that help to uncover the story behind numbers. Technical terms include to describe facts, detect patterns, develop explanations, and test hypotheses. It is used in all of the sciences. It is used in business, in administration, and in policy.

In data analysis, the golden rule is to simplify the problem. And the best data analyst is the one who gets the job done, and done well, with the most simple methods. Oscar Wilde once said, "Simplicity is beauty." That is why to me, data analysis is beauty.

Data analysis is both a science and an art. Present the same data to two persons, you are likely to have two different answers. 

Of course, there is a set of common toolkit used by fellow data analysts.  They are: 

1. Think about the data. 

2. Look for the central tendency such as mean and median. It can also be rate of growth. 

3. Look for outliers and explore the possible reasons. E.g. Is it due to the data collection process. If need be, go back to first principle.

4. Prove your point using evidence.

5. Think if the data make sense. Think about the world behind the numbers and let good sense and reason guide the analysis.

6. Strive for parsimony.  Parsimony is the analyst’s version of the phrase “Keep It Simple.” It means getting the job done with the simplest tools, provided that they work.

To me, the most powerful rule is the first one, “Think”, followed by the fifth one. The data are telling us something about the real world, but what?

This is a good example of the thinking behind a data analyst.

Between 1790 and 1990 the population of the United States increased by 245 million people, from 4 million to 249 million people. 

Can one say, the population grew at an average rate of 1.2 million people per year, 245 million people divided by 200 years? 

The arithmetic is correct — 245 million people divided by 200 years is approximately 1.2 million people per year. But the interpretation “grew at an average rate of 1.2 million people per year” would be wrong. 

Why? Because the conclusion is not “sensible”.  How is it possible that the American population of 4 million people in the United States in 1790 increased to 5.1 million people in one year? That would have been a 30 percent increase in one year — which is not likely (and didn’t happen). 

It would be more valid, to describe the annual growth using a percentage, stating that the population increased by an average of 2 percent per year — 2 percent per year when the population was 4 million (as it was in 1790), 2 percent per year when the population was 250 million (as it was in 1990). 

Have fun thinking.

Technology

"Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories.

–Laurie Anderson"

Thanks to the advent of technology, I have been sharing my stories to the world for 5 years and counting. Just recently, I have switched from blogging using my laptop to my smartphone. The latter has empowered me to blog on the fly.

A few weeks ago, I got myself the latest smartphone gadget. This has brought me and my boy much happiness. Though I changed my phone, all the contents were transferred to my new phone without a glitch. In fact, it was a breeze.

As for my boy, he was happy to be the proud owner of my pre-loved smartphone. Though it was about two years old, the phone was in excellent condition and was jam packed with features.

I used to be paranoid about technology especially the internet. There are dangers lurking in the dark. And I am concern about the bad influence on my boys at their young and vulnerable age. However protection through denial of access is not an option as Internet and social media have evolved into an important part of our life. Rather than blockage, I have decided to provide guidance and instil moral compass in them. 

I shall end this blogpost with the following quote by Steve Jobs.

"Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.

–Steve Jobs"

Circles on the table

It has been a while since I last penned a poem. Poem encompasses the true essence of the English language. It calls for wits, a good ear for music, an appreciation of beauty and an arsenal of words. What that keeps me writing is that it is FUN.

Enjoy and do pen a poem too.

Circles on the Table

The vacant chair cuts a forlorn figure.

Staring at the purple flower sitting in the centre of the table.

The lovely patterns are swimming in circles.

Twirling in endless rounds.

Exotic and enchanting with patterns big and small.

Exuding the beauty of the regale royal of the flower. 

Her name is life.

And the vacant chair is waiting.

For the rightful owner to take stock of life.