data ..
My line of work involved a lot of data processing from tons of daily alarms (indicator of faults in a system) or performance measurements (network KPI) either from BSC, RNC or MSC etc etc . Data from those network elements were collected and stored in a centralized database and later processed by few applications for fault management and kpi reportings. Sounds boring? Tell me about it .. I have worked with all this stuffs for more than a decade !
Until recently, this boring data reading work had somehow become an interest - after pursuing the MIS course in Competitive Intelligence +attending classes by Dr. Henri Dou also in DataMining by Dr Rasimah – I began to have a different view when looking at data as my mind started to explore new ways of looking at data after learning new statistical terms like decision trees, logic regression, market basket bla bla bla.. digging more into it later I found it just started getting more and more interesting –not that I am “that” very curious — it just that I need to prepare myself to write a thesis for my final project submission and I was thinking of writing something related to data analysis in patents in telco industry. Researching at Amazon.com also lead me to several important books with the likes of Prof Edward Tufte , Jonathan G Koomey and Stephen Few.
Below are all the books that I bought to understand “analytics” better :-
I just found a new term “Data Scientist” which sound cool for a geek like me .
Hal Varian the Google Chief Economist was quoted
I keep saying the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians. People think I’m joking, but who would’ve guessed that computer engineers would’ve been the sexy job of the 1990s?
What is a data scientist?
A general title for someone who is able to extract information from large datasets and then present something of use to non-data experts
You can read more about it from the following article Rise of Data Scientist .
Also one important fact – according to Dr Jonathan Koomey in his book Turning Numbers into Knowledge (now my personal favourite!) – data should be treated with skepticism! Some reports came with their own agenda – so whenever data is presented to us (graphs can be deceiving too!) we should read and understand how data collection was done – the methodologies , sources, footnotes else we should regard them with extreme suspicion ..
p/s Talk about methodologies it remind me of this video entitled “A Brief History of Hadith Collection and Criticism” of how hadith are transmitted from the source – our beloved Prophet Muhammad PBUH to the ummah now.
Read MoreInstructions of the Student
Abu Bakrah reported , I heard Prophet (pbuh) saying:
“You should be a scholar, or a student , or a listener, or a lover of ’ilm and you should not be the fifth which makes you perish.
’Ata said Mis’ar said to me:You added a fifth point which we do not have.
The fifth point is: To hate ’Ilm and its people” -(at Tabarani;Al-Bazzar)
Just completed reading this book Instruction of the Student:The Method of Learning which has been in my watch list for some time, but due to the unavailability at Amazon, I placed an order from another online bookstore and received it last week .The book where the original Arabic version known as Ta’lim al-Muta’allim-Tariq at-Ta’allum was written by Imam Zarnuji and translated to English by G.E Von Grunebaum .
The book was divided into 13 chapters started with a foreword from the famous American Islamic scholar Hamza Yusuf .Full of beautiful poetry (OK I am NO expert in poetry but I imagined it would be beautiful IF I can read the original Arabic transcript + I understood Arabic!) about knowledge , Imam Zarnuji compiled the wisdom of Muslim scholars during his travel in many Islamic countries during the glorious day.Though the length of 64 pages can considered as a short book, the contents covered is enormous touched a wide subjects of seeking ilm — from adab, perserverance , the “real purpose” , relying to God, finding best time , improving memory and others.
Looking back, now I understand why at times I failed in striving to attain knowledge – a mental block? maybe barred in my understanding subjects learnt due to missing the [proper] methods of learning.
An article in SeekingIlm had a brief review about this book in a subject of improving brain function in seeking knowledge.Interesting!
Read MoreAbout being ignorant
Upon reading a book on a flight back to Riyadh recently, I stopped to ponder the following quote from a Neil Postman book Technopoly.
Based on old adage (some attributed this to Mark Twain)
To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail
And Neil Postman in his book extended it to :-
To a man with a pencil, everything looks like a list .
To a man with a camera everything looks like an image.
To a man with a computer everything looks like data and to a man with a grade sheet, everything looks like a number.
A good friend of mine used to say .. to his manager he was just a name in Excel sheet!
Read MoreLeo Lionni’s Book
One of Imran’s weekly homework is book reading -so 2 times a week ( I think!) he would come to one of us with a book and read it loud. For his age, the teacher always give an easy to read book with simple vocabularies. Its really amazing to see my son can actually “read” on his own now – I told him that one day I will start buying some comics on his favourite hero Spiderman comics if he continues to improve his reading skills.
One day he brought this thin book “A Colour of His Own” and ummi was impressed by the illustration and the story line. Ummi showed me and found out later that the author Leo Lionni also wrote other books which was given impressive recommendation at Amazon and won some awards too. So, I did my “usual” research and found out where to get it cheap (Ebay lah!!) and later ordered 10 of Leo Lionni for just USD9.99+ shipping.
Parents .. Check it out — the graphics was amazing , colourful but simple and the storyline always came with good morals.
Read MoreEssays of Paul Graham
Have you heard about Paul Graham before?
You should!
Go visit his website and read his essays .
also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham
Quote
In 1995 Graham and Robert Morris founded Viaweb, the first Application service provider. Viaweb’s software (written largely in Common Lisp) let users make their own Internet stores. In the summer of 1998 Viaweb was sold to Yahoo! for 455,000 shares of Yahoo! stock, valued at $49.6 million. [1] At Yahoo! the product became Yahoo! Store.Graham has an A.B. from Cornell and a Ph.D. in computer science from Harvard, and studied painting at Rhode Island School of Design and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence.
He is the author of the book Hackers and Painters:Big Ideas of the Computers Age – you can read most of the contents (for free!) from the link above.
After reading some of his essays I am having a second thought about few things in my life:-
1. I should read/learn about history, philosophy other things that can enrich life. Darn! I used to memorised name of inventors (Baird, Newton, Wright&Co) and read Mohandas Karamchand Mahatma Gandhi (see I can write his full name without using Google!) , Nehru, when I was 9!
2. How I should love problems?.
3. Haha I am reading Freakonomics
now, the first ever book that I have ever bought with the title ended with “nomics” – Very freaky!
4. Start a startup? Wow! What a start!—berapa banyak start daa..
5. Find out why I screwed up at the university ?
6. I want to learn to write-my writing sucks!
Read MoreTime Management for System Administrator
Being a big fan of O’Reilly’s books, I visited the website regularly looking for anything from open source articles,news and of course new titles.
I came across the above title and thinking of getting it from the recent International Book Fair at PWTC but sadly; to no avail—I couldn’t even find the distributor’s booth there! .
So, I placed an online order at MPH but was informed the very next day that it was out of stock and it will take 2-3 months if I were to pre-order the book. Not wanting to give up (yet), I went to Kinokuniya” and maybe it was my day, there was 1 copy of the book at the bookshelf.(I received the book later on Friday)
What so interesting about this time management book?
I have been a system/network engineer for almost 10 years (darn! Did I say 10?) now included was a 1 year fulltime system/network administrator work at Fibrecomm.
For those years, I have to admit what concerned me most (until recently) were purely technical —most of the books on my book shelves ranges from protocols, Cisco boxes, UNIX/Linux,certification, automations and securities. None of them were about time/project management (though I just bought Scott Berkun’s Art of Project Management today)—not that I totally neglected/ignored the importance of it, but there was NO book on the topic that could possibily relate (well enough and worth buying!) to the job that I am currently doing .
In this book Limoncelli shared ideas based on his years of experiences at Bell Labs as system administrator—things like how to handle interruptions, simple routines that helps, to-do lists, tools , documentations and my current favourite topic—Automation!
The more I know, the less I understand
All the things I thought I knew, I'm learning again..
