Authenticity, Job Search and Hong Kong

On Authenticity:

Lately and even not so lately, I've been thinking about authenticity. What does it mean to be an authentic and genuine person? I think through my work as a residence advisor and conversations with other residence advisors, I have heard about these stories of 'fake' advisors. These are advisors who act one way around their residents or around residents in general and then act another way to their friends or even after they are no longer a residence advisor.

That really got me thinking about whether I put out a genuine attitude to my residents - did I act one way around my residents and then act another way after I was no longer required by my job to be nice to my residents? I certainly didn't think it was that way but it's always hard to tell when you're involved in something to make a very clear and unbiased objective conclusion from all the facts that you think of and present to yourself. I also got to thinking about my friends and the new people I meet; do I act the same around everyone that I meet?

That's when I realized that I certainly do try my best to act the same way around all my friends. Given that most of my friends know me as a fairly nice, funny and somewhat witty person, I feel that I do act like my true self around most of the people I meet.

Why this authenticity stuff really got to me lately was because over the summer, I had befriended many people (at least I thought I did). For some reason, and this is only my intuition talking, which by the way is quite accurate most of the time, I feel that sometimes we are 'forced' into friendships because of work or mutual friends and such. It is a weird feeling to think that you are friends and then once that mutual thing that brought you two together is gone, your friendship somehow disappears. It is especially weird to be the only person to think that you are still friends. As I was saying, over the summer, I was talking to a friend about how I had befriended some of these people and my friend said that even though they knew one of my friends, they did not feel like my new friend was a genuine person. This was not based on brief encounters but rather, extended observations through my new friend's work and behavior towards others. I usually don't take these with too much weight and I honestly gave my new friend a chance to prove themselves. Anyway, this is fairly vague but I think I have my answer.


On job searching:

These past few weeks, I have been looking for job opportunities in the technical industry, mainly of the entry-level / new graduate type. Suffice to say, it is difficult. I'm not really sure whether its because of the recession, my resume / cover letter / qualifications, or even if I'm off the hiring cycle but maybe it's even a combination of all 3. I really wish there were some dedicated sites that told new graduates which companies hire new graduates, which companies have leadership development programs (for those on the prowl: Bell, Telus, General Electric, Deloitte are to name a few) and although I have found a few (again, eluta, collegegrad.com, collegerecruiter.com, aftercollege.com), a lot of the jobs I'm applying to I haven't heard back from. It's also a bit disheartening to hear back from the companies you did coop with and get rejected. It really gets me thinking about whether its because of my job application or because of my job performance that I was rejected at those companies (and I guess there's an outside chance it could be the recession). Anyway, just a few of my thoughts about job search right now - I'll continue looking and hopefully I'll be able to find one soon to start in January. I'm really itching to start full-time work somewhere so that I can bring in some new ideas and bring about some sort of positive change in the world.


About Hong Kong:

Very recently, my mom told me that she heard that my grandma was not feeling very well and with that being the case, my mom booked for herself and me, two tickets to Hong Kong for 2 weeks to visit my grandma. While I do enjoy traveling, I thought about the awful 15 hour flight and what I have to do to prepare myself. As I hear after the ticket booking, we will be arriving in Hong Kong at around 7 pm - this means that in order to adjust to the jet lag, I would have to stay up at least 10 hours in the latter part of the flight. It might be possible to sleep the first half of the flight and just stay up for the later half but I'm not too sure.

The great thing about Hong Kong is that its such a shopping haven - the first time I went, I don't think I really did that much shopping apart from clothing and I plan to do some more clothing shopping when I head back (Giordano, G2000 and Esprit come to mind). We may also book a tour to head to another Asian country but since we will be booking that in Hong Kong, I will be learning more about that later.

The Ambivalence of the Airport

One of my favorite movies of all time is The Terminal by Steven Spielberg. When I first watched it, I really did not think anything of it other than it being a really funny and entertaining movie. But after i watched the movie, I looked around for reviews and summaries of the movie to make more sense of the movie (something that I would do for most of the good movies I watch). I read in a review / interview with Steven Spielberg the reason why the airport was such an interesting location in general.

It has to do with the fact that at airports, you are either really happy that someone is coming back from somewhere and / or you haven't seen them in a while. At the same time, you can also be really sad because someone is leaving you and / or you won't be able to see them in a while. I've been to the airport several times and I feel that for me, it's very true. I have felt happiness from people coming back from far away places that I haven't seen in a while; I have also felt sadness from people leaving to far away places, sometimes for a temporary period of time and other times for good.

On June 22, I experienced both emotions at the same time. A good friend of mine who got into Pharmacy at U of T was flying in from Taipei and stopping over on a flight towards Toronto. Some of us had thought that she would be gone for good after the summer she did a work term at a Pharmacy here in BC. I had certainly thought this as well though somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that we would see her - whether we flew over to Toronto, she flew to BC or perhaps meeting somewhere randomly. To feel simultaneously ecstatic and sad in the short 20 - 30 minutes that I saw her, well, it was definitely weird. Certainly I wasn't sad for long as I realized that she had a wonderful opportunity at the U of T; I'm sure I'll see her many more times.

Sultan's Dowry Problem

The Sultan's Dowry Problem, also known as the Secretary Problem is this, copied from wiki:

The secretary problem is an optimal stopping problem that has been studied extensively in the fields of applied probability, statistics, and decision theory. It is also known as the marriage problem, the sultan's dowry problem, the fussy suitor problem, and the best choice problem. The problem can be stated as follows:

- There is a single secretarial position to fill.
- There are n applicants for the position, and this is known.
- The applicants can be ranked from best to worst with no ties.
- The applicants are interviewed sequentially in a random order, with each order being equally likely.
- After each interview, the applicant is accepted or rejected.
- The decision to accept or reject an applicant can be based only on the relative -ranks of the applicants interviewed so far.
- Rejected applicants cannot be recalled.
- The object is to select the best applicant. The payoff is 1 for the best applicant and zero otherwise.


Suppose we have 100 candidates. It is obvious that choosing the first candidate will only have a 1/100 chance of selecting the best applicant. The same goes for choosing the last candidate and ignoring all other candidates up to that point. Both options rely on the ordering of the candidates so that the best applicant is the first or the last, respectively in those situations. Clearly the best option is somewhere inbetween choosing the first applicant and the last application. We can go through some of the applicants and use that information in order to choose the best applicant out of the rest we have not seen so far. For example, we if look at 10 applicants and see who is the best applicant out of the 10, then we look through the 90 and choose the applicants such that the applicant is better than the 10 we've seen so far, we have at least a better than 1/100 chance of choosing the best applicant.

It turns out that the probability of selecting the best applicant from the pool goes to 1/e - ex. with 100 applicants you would look through about 100/e ~= 37 applicants and then choose the first applicant that is better than the 37 applicants that you have seen so far. The odds of choosing the best applicant is 37%.



What applications does this solution have?


Let's say that you want to eat Japanese food (sushi more specifically). You know that there are 20 restaurants and you have a general feel of the quality of food at these Japanese restaurants by looking at each of the restaurants. Because of soaring gas prices, you decide that you will not go back to any of the restaurants even if they are better than the ones you have seen so far. How many restaurants should you visit to get the best sushi possible?

Well, the Sultan's Dowry solution says that you should visit at least 20/e, or about 1/3*20 = 6 / 7 restaurants, figure out the best of those 7 restaurants and then choose the first best restaurant out of the ones you haven't been to that is better than the best one you have seen so far.

Post Exam Analysis

Its midterm season and that probably means what I think it means: students are getting a cold splash in the face and a huge reality check. Students think that they’re doing pretty well so far: the assignments they’ve handed in have all been good, the lab work has been solid, they are taking concise and coherent notes and they understand everything going on. Everything is going swimmingly, but then they get their midterms back and the mark is less than they expected.


What went wrong?


It happens to the best of us. The midterms are (what I think) the professor’s way of telling students to get on track with all the coursework that has been handed out. It is the professor’s way of telling students that if they do not understand something, they better ask the professor. It is the professor’s way of telling students what they need to know and what they need to learn. However, in light of the professor’s advice, it is up to the students to use the information from the midterm to help them succeed in the final (which usually makes up a larger portion of the overall grade than the midterm does).


Suppose you do badly on a midterm which is worth 30%. The final is worth 70% and you almost ace it, getting 95% on the final. Overall, your grade jumped from 50% on the midterm to 15 / 30 + 66.5 / 70 = 81.5 %. That is quite a substantial leap from a D to an A-. Of course, this doesn’t happen every day, nor does it happen with every student but it tells us something important about midterms and finals. If you do badly on a midterm, you can usually make up for it by having an excellent final.


This point stresses the importance of learning from your midterms and making that jump from only getting 50% on your midterm, to getting 95% on your final. In real world situations, the jump is smaller mostly because students who can get 95% on the final are outstanding students and getting 50% on a midterm means that those students just had a bad day. It is also smaller because students usually do better on their midterms (say 65 – 70% ) and then get 80 – 85% on their final after the jump. Talking about acing your finals is easy, how do we actually plan out this success and make it a reality?


The first thing is to put the midterm into perspective. If you did receive 60% on the midterm, what did you lose 40% of the marks on? Thinking about things one way, 60% may really not be that bad. For example, suppose that you didn’t have any time whatsoever and there was nothing you could do about it. You only had time to study 60% of the material; you then get 60% on the midterm. Although on the outside it means you got a C, it can actually mean that you knew and aced 100% of the material you studied.


Now suppose that you studied 80% of the material and received 60% on the midterm. Again, you receive a C but in actuality you received 60 / 80 = 75%  B+. I’ve definitely been there enough to know that getting 60% on a midterm after only studying 70% of the material covered is quite an accomplishment even if it is only a C on the midterm itself. It has probably happened to you while you were sulking about your horrible grade on the midterm.


How does all this translate to succeeding in the final? Well, getting 100% on a test means not only knowing 100% of the material, but it also means losing 0 marks to things like silly mistakes.


We can analyze the marks lost on the test as follows: (Borrowed from the LEAP website on Post Exam Preparation)


1.

Remembering Formulas / Definitions


To gain these marks on future tests, try using flash cards or mnemonics to help you remember.


2.

Understanding Concepts


Go over your notes and make sure you are writing down clear notes that you can understand. Can you summarize your notes in a few sentences or less? Can you explain concepts learned in class to friends not taking the class?


3.

Knowing how things relate to each other


Use mind maps and concept maps to help you relate things in the notes together. Not only will this be good review, but sometimes visually seeing it will give you a new way of learning things.


4.

Silly Mistakes


Get enough sleep before the exam. This means that you’re not up cramming the night before and that you’ve done plenty of studying beforehand. Do practice exams in real exam environments (losing marks on a practice exam is better than losing marks in the real exam)


Another thing to keep in mind is considering the time that you have to study for the test. Suppose you have a hypothetical test that has 10 questions out of a database of 100 questions. You are given the database of questions and it takes you 5 minutes to read, answer, understand and memorize the answer to one question in the database. You have 400 minutes or about 6 hours and 40 minutes. You now have a choice as to how to allocate your time. You can memorize 80 questions solidly or you can try to memorize all 100 questions (using about 4 minutes each question). Which is the better option?


Memorizing 80 questions solidly means that out of the professor’s 10 questions chosen from the database of 100, you should be able to answer 8 of them solidly (and get an A- overall).


If we evaluate this more closely:


Probability of all 10 questions being from the 80 you memorized = (0.8)^10 = 0.107 = 11%


Probability of 9 questions being from the 80 you memorized = (0.8)^9*(0.2)*10 = 0.268 = 27%


Probability of 8 questions being from the 80 you memorized = (0.8)^8*(0.2)^2*10C2 = 45* (0.8)^8*(0.2)^2 = 0.301 = 30%


Probability of 7 questions being from the 80 you memorized = (0.8)^7*(0.2)^3*10C3 =

120*(0.8)^7*(0.2)^3 = 0.201 = 20%


Probability of 6 questions: 0.08 = 8%

Probability of 5 questions: 252*(0.2)^5*(0.8)^5 = 0.026 = 3%

Probability of 4 questions: 210*(0.2)^6*(0.8)^4 = 0.005 = 0%

Probability of 3 questions: 120*(0.2)^7*(0.8)^3 = 0.00 = 0%

Probability of 2 questions: 45*(0.2)^8*(0.8)^2 = 0.00 = 0%

Probability of 1 question: 10*(0.2)^9*(0.8) = 0.00 = 0 %

Probability of 0 questions: (0.2)^10 = 0.00 = 0 %


And your expected mark is: 0.11*10 + 0.27*9 + 0.30*8 + 0.20*7 + 0.08*6 + 0.03*5 = 7.96

No surprises there since you studied all 80 questions, knew them backwards and forwards and made no silly mistakes on those questions.



What if you studied all 100 questions at 4 minutes each instead of the 5? Let’s also say that there’s a 20% chance on any question that you forget it completely (but you do vaguely recall it on the test).


Again, if we do expected value analysis, the analysis will be the same – BUT, we did not take into account the fact that you only studied for 4 out of the 5 minutes required to fully understand the question and you are prone to silly mistakes on the questions. We also cannot forget that since you did look at all the questions, you may be able to obtain part marks on the questions you couldn’t answer (whereas before you had no idea whatsoever). It’s difficult to know whether this will balance out but all this lengthy and probably quite boring evaluations of the two options tells us some important things:


1.

Use as much time as possible to study for exams (that means starting early – maybe even from day 1)
2.

If you don’t have enough time to study all the material, evaluate how much material you know now. If you plan on getting an A- on the midterm and know about 80% of the material, you should probably be studying the material that you know to make sure you fully understand it and won’t make any silly mistakes on it. If you only know 70% and want that A-, study until you know 80% of the material.


Remember that this analysis is based on a very simple model of a test. It is hard in the real world to evaluate how much material you know, have professors select from a database of 100 questions for your midterms or even know what kind of questions will come up and whether it will fall within the domain of the material you know (probabilities are good for large sample sizes rather than one individual case).