Kremmydi Basics

Still an ENTP-9

2011-01-04T10:02:00.004-05:00

It's the new year and I have been having a tradition of doing a MBTI + Enneagram test at the turn of each year. There is not much surprise this year - I am still the same person.

My 8-year history of MBTI scores are below:

I have the say that this test is extremely consistent. In terms of improvement, it still looks like that I think too much. It is becoming more clear to me that, in order to understand people, I need to develop my feeling. For now, I can understand others' feeling, but I don't feel what they feel. I hope that one day I will be able to do that...

My Enneagram history is below:

I am still a strong type 9. My "calmness" score is consistently high over the last 8 years. The second highest score is "perfection", and it seems that it is also fairly consistent in my whole life. One big change this year is my "helpfulness" score. Perhaps there is problem with the test on this one - because it spiked up so high last year, and crashed this year. Although I do believe the score has gone down a bit. I was quite exhausted by the end of last year, and began wondering about the long term impact of some stuff I did. I realized that the tools I have acquired in the previous years need to change, and I need to equip myself for the next phase of change.

Looking ahead, this year is going to very interesting. The key learning that I expect to see this year would be: (1) Growing a heart for the voiceless in this world, (2) Paradigm shift of locus of control and a redefinition of self, (3) Growing interpersonal skill with non-engineers, (4) Becoming fluent in language and processing of finance, (5) Enjoying the simplest elements of life (e.g., basic color, time, heat beat...).

Oh my teeth: Invisalign Video

2010-12-27T12:55:00.000-05:00

My teeth my teeth...

學打廣東話 - Learning to Type Cantonese

2010-12-25T12:55:00.003-05:00

I always find it strange that I have learned to type every other language but my mother tongue. The fact is, typing Chinese is very difficult. Most people type by decomposing Chinese characters into basic root shapes. That is difficult for me because I can recognize more character than I can remember to write them from scratch. For mandarin speaking, phonetic input can also be used because they have standardized way to do so. My mother tongue, however, is Cantonese. I have searched online many times, and find that there isn't really any official ways to do romanization of Cantonese sounds. And worst yet... looking around online, there isn't really any good systematic approach to explain how Cantonese phonetics work.

Anyways, I found an Cantonese input system and reverse engineered a phonetic table:

It will take quite a bit more time to get used to this sound system... but at least this is a start...

Christometric - Differential Equation of the Journey

2010-12-04T11:19:00.008-05:00

About 8 years ago while in grad school, I had my first attempt to describe life using mathematics. At the point, I borrowed basic notion from quantum mechanics, optimization theory and belief propagation to understand how one perceives and acquires "the truth".

Another set of equations have been cooking in my mind for a few years now. This time, it is about the Christian journey. This set of equations shapes my world view, and how I evaluate my own life as well as lives of others. This time, a simple differential equation is used.

Let x(t) be the state of being of a person. A large value of x(t) is good. In secular term, a successful person is often used to describe a person with high x(t). It is generally good that a person aims for a high x(t), but only looking at the value of x(t) is deceiving. While x(t) shows us what a person already possesses (in wealth, knowledge, relationship, etc.), it tells us nothing about intangible things like happiness and faithfulness.

So much of life is captured in , the derivative of x(t). For example, wealthy people (who have large x(t)) feel that life is horrible and may even attempt suicide because something is happening that decreases their x(t). In other words, our feeling tends to be a function of the change of x(t), that is - . A negative derivative means we are losing something.

Now, let's dive into the equation. In the following e(t) is our own effort, s(t) > 0 is effort from the evil one (Satan if you will), c(t) is life circumstances. d(t) is the distraction function which takes on value between 0 and 1. Finally, h(t) >0 is the work of the holy spirit, whom every believer possesses.

For , we use our own strength e(t) to helps ourselves grow. Clearly, we can help ourselves as much as we have the ability to do so, hence e(t) is multiplied by x(t). e(t) can be negative when we give up and takes on a lose-lose perspective. The evil one s(t) always try to do harm to us. This is a bit of technicality, but I see s(t) is a series of impulse functions with varying magnitude. This is because the evil one is not all-present, and he has to time share his effort. The effort of the evil one is also multiplicative of x(t) - the stronger we are, the stronger its effort affects us. The average power of s(t) is stronger than x(t). That is, we don't stand a chance against evil in the long run.

The term c(t) describes circumstances of life. It acts somewhat like a random variable. They are just there and they influence us. Sometimes we get lucky and have high c(t), and sometimes we are not and we have low c(t).

So far, the picture is pretty gloomy. We stand no chance against evil. How then can we grow? Do we have to wait till we get lucky and get some high c(t) for long enough time? Human effort e(t) may help, but since we are power limited, we eventually burn out. Without the holy spirit, I am afraid that's all we have. Some people in this world have gotten lucky early on in life, and they rely on their e(t) to keep growing. However, even if they become successful in such a way - life will eventually catch up, and s(t) will eventually sink the boat.

As believers, we have the disposition to good. In other words, if we look at the second derivative , we always have a positive value h(t) > 0 due to the work of the holy spirit in us. Regardless of life circumstances c(t) or evil deeds s(t), we also have an intrinsic desire to maintain a positive due to the presence of the holy spirit. If we are attuned to h(t), there is nothing in life or death that can stall us of our growth.

Nonetheless, we sometimes are distracted. The distraction function 0 <= d(t) <= 1 takes us away from the influence of holy spirit. In some sense, a person without God has d(t) = 1 for all t. However, even a believer may have d(t) near one. Frankly we get distracted a lot. And if we do want to grow, we tend to spend our energy on e(t) rather than d(t). How silly are we? e(t) has linear effect on , whereas d(t) has exponential effect. Spending energy in e(t) stands no chance against s(t); but a bit of discipline and spending our energy on d(t) will eventually lead us to victory.

The problem is that we are too impatient. Our effort has immediate effect on , whereas lowering d(t) is a slow process, and its dividend takes years to mature.

So be patient, look for long term good. Be self-controlled and disciplined. Spend our energy to set our mind on lowering d(t), so that the work of the holy spirit h(t) can be multiplied in us.

Reverse Living

2010-11-09T08:42:00.003-05:00

I read this the other day - not sure what the source is, but very cute indeed.

"Life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time, all your weekends, and what do you get at the end of it?... Death, a great reward.

"I think that the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way, then you live twenty years in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement.

"You go to college, you do drugs, you do alcohol, you party, until you're ready for high school. You go to high school, you go to grade school, you become a little kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating, and you finish off as a gleam in somebody's eye."

==

Cute, eh? But then wonder, if indeed life is like so - we probably hate the fact that we get smaller and smaller over time. We would probably be celebrating old age - death as it would be birth. equally we would hate having to go into someone's womb to end our lives - birth as it would be death.

Enjoy every moment. We need to be both a kid and an old man at all time. And most of all - we know of a God who loves us from eternity to eternity. We should celebrate both birth and death, young age and old age, for every moment is a gift.

Invisalign Week 1

2010-10-08T12:59:00.002-04:00

Day 1:
Some buttons got installed on the teeth, feels like things are in the mouth all the time. No pain at all. Overall feeling was good. Flossing is easy! By the evening, oops one button came off...

Day 2:
Major weirdness. Why did I get this thing again? It was hard to see others eat while not being able to eat myself. Front teeth are hard to use for eating, the bite is different than using. Stuff all food to the back teeth for chewing. Use knife extensively.

Day 3:
I feel trapped. Why did I get this thing again? Eat a LOT whenever the aligners are taken out. Teeth feel weird. Aligners sometimes get dirty with white stuff, clean clean clean.

Day 4: Bring tooth brush and toothpaste to work place. Find private bathroom to take braces out and do brushing after lunch. Had pizza... hard to bite but fortunately it was thin slices..

Day 5:
Things are getting normal. The aligner doesn't seem to be doing much. It snaps on easily and not much pressure. After lunch at Mulan, ingest a whole can of coke right after lunch before putting the braces back on. Speech is getting strange... I can hear my speech problem... concern about spitting while talking - too much saliva in the mouth.

Day 6: Bubbles... at least the feeling of bubble behind top lips. Not comfortable. Rinse with water, no help. Feels like my lips are falling apart.

Day 7: My top lip feels like plastic. Very weird. On the top teeth, clearly space has been created. If I push on a front teeth, I feel that it can be moved back (maybe the next aligner will do that?) Discover a hole in a button on top, and realize that another button at the bottom is getting smaller.

Day 8 (today): Feeling of lips gets back to normal.. phew~ Went in and fix the buttons at lunch. Put back the aligner on. Wow~ now I feel pressure at the bottom of my teeth. They are pushing my canine teeth outward. I suppose the lost button delayed that effect. Feels quite good that those teeth are being moved. Decide to skip lunch and let the aligner do its job.

GDP: measures everything except what makes life worthwhile

2010-08-30T11:47:00.001-04:00

Robert F. Kennedy - "The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."

Reed Muller Code and Plotkin Composition

2010-06-23T23:21:00.006-04:00

Reed Muller Code is an elegant code that can be used for error correction. Reed Muller Code RM(r,m) is constructed using monomials of m logical variables and maximum degree r. For example,

RM(0,m): 1
RM(1,2): 1 + x1 + x2
RM(1,3): 1 + x1 + x2 + x3
RM(2,2): 1 + x1 + x2 + x1 x2
RM(1,3): 1 + x1 + x2 + x3
RM(2,3): 1 + x1 + x2 + x3 + x1 x2 + x1 x3 + x2 x3
RM(3,3): 1 + x1 + x2 + x3 + x1 x2 + x1 x3 + x2 x3 + x1 x2 x3

The monomial for RM(0,m) consists of only value 1. Hence, the generator matrix for RM(0,m) = [1 1 ... 1] (m times), which is repetition code.

The generator matrix of RM(1,2) can be constructed by considering all combination of terms 1, x_1 and x_2:

1	\| 1	1	1	1
x1	\| 1	1	0	0
x2	\| 1	0	1	0

We see that the generator matrix consists of 3 rows (input bits) and 4 columns (output bits). This means out of 2^4 possible code words, only 2^3 of them are valid. The code rate is then 3/4. The minimum Hamming distance of the code is 2.

As an example for those without background in information coding, if the input bits are x=[1 1 0]', then the output bits are Gx = [0 0 1 1]' in modulo 2 arithmetic. The following table lists all 16 possible 4-bit combination, and the valid code words in RM(1,2):

Pattern	Valid?	Pattern	Valid?
0000	Yes	1000	No
0001	No	1001	Yes
0010	No	1010	Yes
0011	Yes	1011	No
0100	No	1100	Yes
0101	Yes	1101	No
0110	Yes	1110	No
0111	No	1111	Yes

The generator matrix of RM(2,2) can be constructed by considering all combination of terms 1, x_1, x_2 and x_1 x_2:

1	\| 1	1	1	1
x1	\| 1	1	0	0
x2	\| 1	0	1	0
x1 x2	\| 1	0	0	0

The four rows are linearly independent. Hence, the code spans the whole space {0,1}^4. In other words, RM(2,2) has rate 1, and every 4-bit sequence is a valid code word.

It is easy to see that, in general, RM(r,m) is composed of monomials that D = \sum_{i=0}^{r} nchoosek(m,i) number of terms, which gives a code rate of D/2^{m}. The minimum Hamming distance is 2^{m-r}.

Plotkin Composition
Plotkin observed that any monomial f(x1, x2, ... , xm) can be decomposed into

f(x1, x2, ... , xm) = g(x1, x2, ... , xm) + xi h(x1, x2, ... , xm)

where g(x1, x2, ... , xm) contains all the terms from f(x1, x2, ... , xm) that do not contain xi. After factorization, h(x1, x2, ... , xm) also does not contain any xi. In other words, both g(.) and h(.) have one less variable than f(.). Furthermore, g(.) has the same order has f(.), and h(.) has an order that is one less than f(.). That is, RM(r,m) can be constructed by RM(r,m-1) and RM(r-1,m-1).

Let u be a valid codeword in RM(r,m-1), and v be a valid codeword in RM(r-1,m-1), then a (u, u+v) is a valid codeword in RM(r,m), with reordering or indexes. Beautiful!

As an example, consider RM(2,3). Its generator matrix is

1	\| 1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
x1	\| 1	1	1	1	0	0	0	0
x2	\| 1	1	0	0	1	1	0	0
x3	\| 1	0	1	0	1	0	1	0
x1 x2	\| 1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0
x1 x3	\| 1	0	1	0	0	0	0	0
x2 x3	\| 1	0	0	0	1	0	0	0

We break down the 8-bit code into two 4-bit codes:

1 + x1 + x2 + x3 + x1 x2 + x1 x3 + x2 x3 = 1 + x2 + x3 + x2 x3 + x1 (1 + x2 + x3)

On the right hand side, in blue, the four non-zero vectors are exactly as same as those present in RM(2,2), 1 + x2 + x3 + x2 x3. On the right side, in red, the vectors spans the same codeword space as those spanned from addition of bases from RM(1,2), 1 + x2 + x3, and RM(2,2), 1 + x2 + x3 + x2 x3.

For example, consider a valid codeword in RM(2,3), [0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0]'. We know that u = [1 0 1 0]' and u+v = [0 1 0 1] '. It is easy to find v = u + (u+v) = [1 1 1 1]'. Indeed, u is in RM(1,2) and v is in RM(2,2).

Katakana evolution

2010-06-20T23:01:00.000-04:00

Japanese and Korean Mapping

2010-06-20T12:08:00.004-04:00

Here is an attempt to consolidate what I have learned so far in the two languages.

Particles

Korean	Japanese	Notes
은/는	は	topic
이/가	が	subject
을/를	を	object
의	の	's
하고/랑	と	with
하고/과	と	and
none	や	and (non-exclusive)
에	に	to (place)
에서	から	from (place)
에서	で	at (place)
서	から	because
로	で	by means of
부터	から	from (time)
까지	まで	until
도	も	also

Others

Korean	Japanese	Notes
씨	さん	honorific address
이	これ	this (speaker)
저	それ	that (listener)
그	あれ	that over there

Feedback Abstraction vs Reality

2010-05-18T23:22:00.003-04:00

From Peter Drucker:

"With the coming of the computer... the decision-maker will, in all likelihood, be even further removed from the scene of action. Unless he accepts, as a matter of course, that he had better go out and look at the scene of action, he will be increasingly divorced from reality. All a computer can handle are abstractions. And abstractions can be relied on only if they are constantly checked against the concrete. Otherwise, they are certain to mislead us...

One needs organized information for the feedback. One needs reports and figures. But unless one builds one's feedback around direct exposure to reality - unless one disciplines oneself to go out and look - one condemns oneself to a sterile dogmatism and with it to ineffectiveness."

Drucker was right. So much of decisions today are made based on abstractions - GDP numbers, housing start number (like today), accounting number, GPA, publication numbers. As a result, so much of human productivity now goes into engineering numbers. More so, we are not merely looking at abstractions, but abstractions that are meant to be inflated. Executives now have the heighten responsibility to get out and understand reality beyond the numbers.

What life expects of us (Repost)

2010-05-18T22:56:00.000-04:00

"It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - hourly and daily. Our answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answers to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual." - Viktor Frankl

What a beautiful quote. Recently, I have heard so much about "follow your bliss", and I think that is utterly selfish non-sense. Life is not about us and what we want to do. Life is about something much greater. The right question is what "life expects of us".

We cannot find meaning by looking at ourselves. More importantly, we cannot find joy and happiness if all we do is talk and think about what our bliss is. It is in "right action and right conduct" that we discover our next step. We are evolving beings after all. It is too arrogant of us to think that we can figure out life before we die.

Keep driving and do good. Learn to love. And life will unfold in amazing way.

Bailing out the Past

2010-05-16T23:40:00.003-04:00

From "The Effective Executive" by Peter Drucker:

Executives, whether they like it or not, are forever bailing out the past... Yesterday's actions and decisions, no matter how courageous or wise they may have been, inevitably become today's problems, crises, and stupidities. Yet it is the executives specific job to commit today's resources to the future. This means that every executive forever has to spend time, energy, and ingenuity on patching up or bailing out the action sand decisions of yesterday...

No one has much difficulty getting rid of the total failures. They liquidate themselves. Yesterday's success, however, always linger on long beyond their productive life. Even more dangerous are the activities which should should do well and which, for some reason or other, do not produce.... Unless they are pruned, and pruned ruthlessly, they drain the lifeblood from an organization.

The Necessity of Information Filtering

2010-05-04T23:33:00.005-04:00

It is fairly easy to recognize that there is a disconnect between the amount of information that are observable to an individual and the brain processing capacity of the individual. As a result, part of the processing capability of the brain is allocated to a filtering algorithm, aiming at omitting part of the observed information, compressing information using the bias from the brain memory, and condensing hard information for the thinking side of the brain, and soft information for the feeling side of the brain.

This filtering algorithm is essential. Without it, our brain suffers from information overload, and nothing would ever get done. However, this same filtering algorithm also works against us. It makes us pick and choose what we want to see or feel, so as to create a unstable positive feedback system. It also makes us insensitive to other observables.

So much of our own life, and the causality of it, is changed by our filtering algorithm. Understanding our own filter and the filters of others are very important.

More to come..