The Luminous

Is this the end of my blog? I think NOT! In the future, I might use this blog to share my life story, I might use this blog to share my opinion about certain topic, I might use this blog to analyze some drama or movie, such as Game of Throne or Black Mirror. But before this, I need to make sure that I have free time for the blog. From the schedule so far, I do not have free time for any creative thinking activity. I would love to make video blog about my own though, I would love to write a song about my life, I would like to write a story about a magical world with different creature, I would love to share my opinion about the movie or drama that I watch. The problem is do I have time for that?

What mark do you think you deserve for this Blog Assignment? Honestly assess your own work and effort for this assignment and give yourself the marks you think I should award you. Justify your answer by referring to the assignment brief and its requirements. Use the marking rubric on page 2 to evaluate what you have done and how well you think you have done.  My own analysis for this blog assignment, 1. My blog posts is full of grammar mistake. 2. My blog posts answer the questions posed each week , unless some secret agent delete my memory which cause myself forget to write the blog, if this happened, I cant help... 3. I did tried to connect the idea discussed in class to my blog. However, some of the blog might not directly connect to the idea discussed in the class, these blogs mostly talk about my own though about that particular topic. 4. I think it is important to convey my own thought in my blog, so most of the post is my own opinion about the related topic. Except cri...

Identify a minimum of 2 things you l earnt from our class this semester that you can apply in your daily life. Explain and/or describe what these 2 things are and why they are important to you. (You can write about more than 2 things if you wish).  Through this Critical Reading and Thinking class, I learnt the way to decide whether information that received can be accept or believe or not. First of all, if we received information from reading material, we should always check the source of the data to determine if the information is reliable or not. For example, we can check the author of the article or check the credibility of the website to determine if the article is reliable or not. Secondly, we should carefully read the material and determine if the article is trying to persuade the reader in some direction or not. If the article is not neutral, think about what is the motive of the article. Always ask our self, will the author get benefit if the reader follow the directio...

After completing your class participation assignment, what is your view of speaking up in class? Did you learn anything from this assignment ~ has it changed your mindset or behaviour in any way? Do you think speaking up in class is important? Why or why not? If you think it is important, why do you think our Malaysian education system does not encourage speaking up? Few years back during foundation: Few years later after foundation: <no video found because I got no time to make a video anymore> But if I gonna make a video later, the title of the video will be: YTLE - Why I can do public speaking Before completing my class participation assignment, whenever I listened to a lecture or presentation, I always keep my questions or opinions for myself. People do not know my thought and I don't know what people is thinking. I do not know what is my performance when doing presentation. But after completing my class participation assignment, I was able to more focus and...

One day, you feel so lonely and dry ( or maybe you are just feel like want to try this technology because why not?), therefore you download an dating apps. This dating apps use matchmaking algorithm to find you a "perfect" partner. This is the result: (Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert!) Will you trust this result? Before this, we need to know how dating apps with matchmaking algorithm work. In a nutshell, matching algorithm use a tons of codes and formulas to convert data input by user into vectors, and measure two closest or similar vectors.  Immediately we found the weakness: Life is not just math and formulas, life is full of possibility and can hardly described by math equation! How about if we make  copies  of our self and other people in a simulation, and see if they will be together or not. The result might be much more accurate than math algorithm.  In black mirror, after user key in all the data that asked by the apps, the dating apps not ju...

What is crime-fighting robot? Wow, what an interesting design! Wait, is this our crime-fighting robot? It looks heavy and huge! Will it helps to defend us and fight back when we are facing a criminal? No actually... Huh? Then why do we call it a fighting robot when it can't help to defend us? I bet it can't defend itself too! Well, it helps us to fight back the criminal in another way. According to the presentation from Zheng Jia Jie and Tan Jing Wen, this crime-fighting robot consist of many component that help us to detect criminal activities. These components include thermal imaging, infrared, 360-degree high definition video capture camera and many other sensor options that help us to detect suspicious activities and keep our environment safe. Crime-fighting robot can moves around and help us to detect social problem such as vandalism and robbery. After detect a crime activity, it will record and sent the warning to guardhouse, and therefore the guard able to ...

First of all, I really enjoyed the presentation by Tan Jia Yi and Cheng Xin Ying. Before I listened to their presentation, I do not have deep knowledge about Bitcoin. This is the reason why I quite excited about their presentation, I wish to know more about this "mysterious" currency. Their presentation never disappoint me. Their presentation are clear and full of information. From their presentation, I was able to understand how to mine the bitcoin, how bitcoin treat as a commodity or a currency, and advantage or disadvantage of bitcoin. Secondly, they were able to handle the Q&A session very well. They are able to answer most of the audience's questions with confidence. Even if they do not sure about their answer, they will discuss with each other and provide an answer. Their Q&A session show their deep knowledge about this topic. They even checked the price of the bitcoin before they present their research, this shows that they were well-prepared for this pre...

Me and my partner Leo had an presentation in class for one hour. Our topic is AI in courts or the legal system. First of all, I am glad to have Leo as my partner. He was very good in presenting, he is the one who came out with the idea to make this presentation much more interesting. I learned a lot of presentation skill from him. I am glad to have this opportunity to stand in front of classmate and presenting + Q&A for 1 hour. This experience helped me to figure out my weakness during presentation, and also increase my encourage to talk in front of people. Secondly, the moment we got this topic, we were quite worry because AI in courts was something we don't usually think about or heard about. However, through research and study, we able to understand more about this technology and what is its effect towards the society. AI system in court is still a new field that need a lot human capital to investigate and study about it. In US, AI in court mainly used as a risk assessme...

On 28 March 2018, Chun Hiung and Benedict presented about Self-driving Trucks. From their presentation, I was able to understand more about the technology of self-driving trucks and the limitation of this technology. They also link the topic with the recent news which is a self-driving UBER car hit a pedestrian to dead. You can read more about this news by clicking this link . Their presentation reminds me an episode from Black Mirror -- Crocodile . There was a scene shows that a self-driving vehicle hits a pedestrian. This scene shows a potential problem that might rises from this technology: when a self-driving vehicle hits a person, who to blame? How can we prove that it was the carelessness of the pedestrian that cause this accident, or it was the system error of the self-driving vehicle that cause this accident? In this story, an insurance investigator use a device known as a Recaller to solve this case. Let us think further. If all the vehicles in this world are self-driving ...

Oh No! Year 2 Sem 3 is the semester where students are most likely preparing their final year projects and focus their study. However, I found myself do not have time to focus in study. Let me list down the reasonssss. First of all, at the beginning of the semester, I have 3 events needed to handle. I am the Head of Editorial department from LOL camp (which happened on Week 2), Community Project from Engineering Science Fiesta (which happened on Week 3) and Program department from Maths Runner 2.0 (which happened on Week 4). My first few weeks of the semester are consumed by all these events. Secondly, I need to take actuarial paper Financial Mathematics on Week 6. For this paper, I sacrificed my CNY holidays just to pass this exam. Finally I managed to pass this exam, in exchange, I do not have enough time to prepare my test for the rest of the subjects. Thirdly, I am preparing 5 events. Sales and Marketing of UTAR BALL, which is the most time consuming position because my te...

On 21 March 2018, Andy and Woon presented about CRISPR and gene editing. From their presentation, I was able to know more about CRISPR, gene editing and GMO products. they did a deep analysis about gene, the objective of gene editing, and the effect of CRISPR to the environment. They able to present us the knowledge they learned from this topic and use their critical thinking skill to answer the questions from the audience. Not only their presentation provided many information about this topic, but also they able to grab the audience's attention. In the presentation, Woon act like a lecturer and Andy act like a students. Their presentation was funny enough to make everyone focus on their presentation. This is a very powerful and efficient way to do a presentation. I did some research about GMO products few months ago. GMO is an animal or plant whose genetic material has been changed in order to incorporate new genes, which potentially cause serious health issues if consumed b...

In UALL1053 Critical Reading and Thinking course, one of the main assignment is Class Participation Assignment. This assignment required students to participate class discussions either by asking questions, giving comments related to the topic or presentation, or identifying a fallacy in the presenters' argument(s). I believe that this assignment can help students to train their critical thinking skills. Here are a few reasons why I say so. Listen is one of the first stage to receive information. After listened to people, only we start to interpret the message. But listen is not the same as hear. Based on Luna (2015), the art of listening included active listening, listen without judgement, listen to non-verbal communication and observe other people. All these listening skill only can learned by practicing. Class participation assignment is a good way to practice the listening skill. In order to understand what the presenter say, we must first learn how to listen. Analyze the...

Recently, Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz, who is a Malaysian politician from United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), challenged Robert Kuok, the richest person in Malaysia, to contest in the coming polls. This was due to the rumors said that Kuok was funding DAP to oust the government. He used some insulting words like 'pondan' (pansy) and 'ayam betina' (hen) to described Kuok. For more information and the video footage, please visit https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/413501 . His saying cause some arguments among community. Soon, he made his remarks that he will not apologies for what he said. In this blog, I will choose 2 websites to that talk about this news, and investigate which source is more credible. Article 1: Nazri will not apologise to Kuok, but welcomes his denial https://www.themalaysianinsight.com/s/40128/ Article 2: NAZRI: I WILL NOT APOLOGISE TO ROBERT KUOK https://theworldnews.net/my-news/nazri-i-will-not-apologise-to-robert-kuok 1) What Website publi...

1. Describe the difference between problem finding and problem solving. Before we solve a problem, we need to find out what is the problem we need to solve. Solving a problem without finding the problem is a waste of time, this might end up delay the progress of the team and eventually slow down the productivity. For an example, a business man tend to improve his sales, without finding the problem of lack of sales, he invest his money on an equipment that cost him a lot. He ended up improve his supply but not his sales. The correct way to solve the problem is to find out what is the reason his sales is not as good as expected, the cause might be the the trend of customers' taste is changing, or the products need some publicize so that customers know what kind of product they are selling. Problem finding focus on find out the reason the problem occurs, and problem solving focus on come out with a solution after find out what is the cause of the problem. 2. How is prototyping ...

The person that influence me the most in my thinking. Hermm, this is an interesting topic, but since this is my first blog so why not I introduce myself first before we get into this topic? Hello everybody, my name is Yap Zi Jian, currently studying actuarial science in UTAR SgLong.  I will call myself an introvert(and a lot of people agree with this), a person that like to think a lot but not speak much, this can be an disadvantage when I need to communicate with people. A communication that involve one or more introvert is like an invisible wall between the listener and speaker, because I found myself usually listen to other but don't really like to give feedback to the speaker. Everything happens for a reason. I believe there is a main reason why I become the person who I am now.  Although there are quite a number of people that have a huge impact to my thinking, my father play the main role to "structure" my way of thinking. How he influence me? 1. His ...