Wisdom tooth

I visited a dentist last Thursday to do some simple scaling.

After doing the scaling, he told me that my wisdom tooth on the upper right has decayed and he advised me to remove it.

Should I remove it?

After some thinking, I decided to make an appointment with the dentist to extract that wisdom tooth.

Nothing so wisdom about this tooth, it's more like a troublesome tooth.

My next appointment is on 6th July (Wednesday). Scary...

What to do if you are too free?

What do you do if you are really free and have nothing else to do ("eat full, too free")?

Read a book on statistics.

Yes, I have nothing else to do but to read a book on statistics.

The good thing is that this book is unlike other ordinary dry boring statistics textbooks that could also put you to sleep. This book is written in the style of the Dummies series or the Complete Idiot's Guides series. So, dry humour and puns are scattered throughout the book. And yes, there are comics in it as well. That's what I like about such books.

If you think you hate statistics, you will end up loving statistics after reading this book. This book covers all the basic statistics from descriptive statistics to inferential statistics to some basic guides and pointers to SPSS software. Unfortunately, they don't cover advanced multivariate statistics. That's the one I needed most - multivariate statistics.

I hope some professors would quickly write up a book like Multivariate Statistics for Dummies and that would make learning multivariate statistics more fun.

Tesco Tanjung Tokong

The newly opened Tesco at Tanjung Tokong was packed with cars and people. It was officially opened just about three days ago on 23rd June (Thursday), so, not a surprise with the crowd. The car park was completely full. Fortunately, there is still Straits Quay (shopping mall) just about 200 metres away. There's always next time for Tesco.

Anyway, as I was waiting at the traffic light junction. I noticed a purple Proton Wira stopping at the corner for no apparent reason and the cars behind were honking away. Yet, the purple Proton Wira still refused to budge. Apparently, the purple car driver must have thought he was supposed to stop at the red light but the red light was meant for those wishing to turn right, not left.

I have completed my research, my first scientific research.

Yes, I have completed my very first scientific research.

This research looked at the correlation between two variables and the hypotheses were tested in a non-contrived setting.

Yup, I lifted that sentence from my abstract.

It was fun playing around with the SPSS software analysing the data relying on factor analysis, reliability analysis, descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis.

Statistic is never my favourite subject, what's more advanced multivariate statistics, but now I realise statistics are not really that boring.

My research supervisor told me she will help me to publish this research in an international journal. Great!

Now, the MBA is over. So, what's next? A doctoral research!

But, I still have to make several decisions.

Should I do a quantitative (a scientific deductive) research like what I just did or should I do a qualitative (interpretive inductive) research? A qualitative research can be quite interesting, it involves a lot of interviewing and observation compared to a quantitative scientific research which involves more on distributing and collecting questionnaires and using statistics. I stumbled upon a USM thesis where the candidate had to personally live with the orang asli in Pahang and to immerse with them in order to write up her anthropology doctoral research. That is one example of a qualitative research. That is anthropology, so I am not going to Pahang for sure, LOL. For me, my research interest is in organisational behaviour. So, if I were to do a qualitative research, I would have to meet up with some factory managers perhaps and interview them.

Should I do it at the business school or the social science school since I am venturing into the behavioural field? Well, I think it doesn't matter because a PhD is still a PhD no matter which school it is from. That's what my supervisor told me.

The journey has just begun...

The puppy is gone

I just found out that the puppy that I blogged in my previous post has passed away.

I found out that she was run over by a vehicle somewhere in the neighbourhood.

That's life as a stray dog.....

Abandoned puppy

Somewhere in January, a cute little puppy was abandoned by some irresponsible person in my neighbourhood. The puppy (below) has now grown up a bit.

From what I see, stray dogs are naturally friendly to human. If it is a Rottweiler or an Alsation roaming in the street, well, I think you better not mess with them. They are definitely pet guard dogs. It is unlikely they are strays. Don't ever try to pet them.

I am referring to friendly Mongrels. Stray mongrels are naturally friendly to human unless they have been abused in the past. You call them and they will wag their tails, they will come to you and lick your shoes, your trousers, your leg, and sniff your butt. They pose no harm to anyone. Instead, human beings are the real menace to stray dogs.

My neighbour, Ah Beng, is a dog owner. Just a few days ago, this puppy (below) roamed into his house. To punish the puppy for coming to his house, he decided to walloped the puppy repeatedly with a stick. And yes, you can hear a very loud cry from the puppy.

And of course, he likes to whack his own pet dog as well. From time to time, you will hear his dog whine and cry from the beating. So, it beats me why they decided to keep a dog in the first place.

It's been a long time

It's been a longggg time....

Finally, I found time to write something.

I have collected, roughly, about 160 completed questionnaires. But, out of that, only 132 questionnaires are usable. It's because the rest are not filled in correctly. What do you mean by that? Example, some people just filled in the questionnaire by ticking...Neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral, neutral......

Everytime I see such a response, I feel like waving my magic wand sending them to a research methodology class immediately. Some people still don't see the importance of filling in questionnaires, thinking that research is something useless.

It would be good if all undergraduate students have to conduct a research before they can graduate. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Research projects are not compulsory in most undergraduate studies.

Even in some postgraduate studies, especially coursework Master's degree from Australia, research is not part of the syllabus. So, I ponder what is the point of getting that postgraduate degree if one does not have to do a research. It's just like doing another one-year diploma programme, except that it is called a Master's degree.

Anyway, it's so obvious that such blatant responses cannot be used. So, the questionnaires had to be discarded. If I were to include it in, it would wreaked havoc in my analysis.

No, I'm not to going to do a simple analysis in the Excel worksheet or producing simple graphs and charts. Instead, I'm going to analyse statistically using the SPSS 17.0 Software (Statistical Package for Social Science). And this software is smart enough to detect anomalies.