Stats

Yesterday, I walked into Stats class with a heavy heart. Clearly this was the most dreaded subject we had to complete this semester, because it was mathematically intensive. I don't know why I had a preconceived notion about my teacher (perhaps it was a derivative of the many slanderous rumours), but I didn't think much of him. He is a Chinese, has a strong accent, but fortunately discernible. As soon as we settled down, he kicked off the tutorial with the question "Why do you come to a uni to study?"

And then he challenged the class with this equation:

cos(α+β) = ?

He opened to the floor his challenge, and was pretty confident none of us knew the answer to it. And he was right.

The point he tried to make was that many of us, after so many years of education, still cannot deny that these years were spent on cramming information in our heads and imprinting them on a piece of foolscap - all for that few hours that we thought our lives were determined by. Amongst this wisdom, he further surprised me with so many personal philosophies which I come to ardently admire. He opines that the process of thought and the exercise of the brain is core to learning. The application of logic to derive at answers is not only relevant in academics, but also everything else in life. Without a logical thought process, our world would merely be an unsolved puzzle with the pieces strewn around, unconnected and without meaning. He also points out that anything technical or quantitative in nature can essentially be completed by a computer, and hence only a fool would think to compete with it; similarly, only a fool would hire someone to do what a computer can perform at greater precision and speed.

Often I think about how I would have done things differently. More radically, I have recently harboured the thought of changing my course of study. I know it to be insane, but I did admit that I want crazy, so it doesn't really shock me that much.

It feels almost painful to think about.