Knowledge is Priceless..

This Miss Google-manic found this beautiful poem by Mr. Bertrand Russell, the 1950 Nobel Prize Winner in Literature, "in recognition of his varied and significant writings, in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought": -

Three passions have governed my life

The longings for love

The search for knowledge

And unbearable pity for the suffering of humankind

Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness

In the union of love, I have seen

In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision

Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined

With equal passion I have sought knowledge

I have wished to understand the hearts of people

I have wished to know why the stars shine

Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens

But always pity brought me back to earth

Cries of pain reverberated in my heart

Of children in famine, of victims tortured

And of old people left helpless

I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot

And I too suffer

This has been my life; I found it worth living...

Mr. Russell, who died at the age of 97 in 1972, was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, social reformer, socialist and pacifist. What an all-rounder gentleman with a 'living', empathic heart.

He reminds me of the owner of "The Rembau Times" (under a non de plume, which i openly detest for putting together my Mr. Arsene Wenger and YB KJ - they are "Macam langit dengan Bumi") and how timely that he wrote something similar to one of Mr. Russell's passions in life - Knowledge - as without learning, there will be no knowledge.

This must-read "Best E-learning Site and Citizens of the World" is reproduced here with permission from him. Thank you for sharing Mr. Wenger J Khairy.

Enjoy this new way of knowledge sharing and learning experience, all!

p.s. No, the editor of "The Rembau Times" does not read my blog.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Check these two guys out

Bio : Salman Khan (Sal) founded the Khan Academy with the hope of using technology to foster new learning models.

He is currently the portfolio manager of a fund based in Menlo Park, CA. Prior to this, Sal was one of the initial employees at MVC Venture Capital. He has also worked as a Technical Architect at Scient Corporation and as a Senior Product Manager at Oracle Corporation.

Sal received his MBA from Harvard Business School where he was president of the student body. He also holds a Masters in electrical engineering and computer science, a BS in electrical engineering and computer science, and a BS in mathematics from MIT where he was president of the the Class of 1998. While at MIT, Sal was the recipient of the Eloranta Fellowship which he used to develop web-based math software for children with ADHD.

He was also an MCAT instructor for the Princeton Review and volunteered teaching gifted 4th and 7th graders at the Devotion School in Brookline, MA.

Bio : Jonathan Goldman is an Analytics Scientist at Linkedin.com where he uses mathematical models to help improve user experience. He has always loved learning math and applying these skills to interesting problems.

He has taught courses at Stanford in the physics department and has been tutoring students at different levels (middle school through university) since high school. He sees great opportunity in improving the learning tools available to students of all ages.Jonathan received a PhD in physics from Stanford University in 2005 and a BS in physics from MIT in 1998.

Sal Khan is an American "pendatang" (of course they don't use that term over there) who runs the Khan Academy. I was starting on my Level II course when looking at pages 257 of volume 1 was a bit stumped by the following assertions on the assumptions of the Linear Regression Model.3. The expected value of the error term is 04. The variance of the error term is the same for all observations.

Some quick flicks of the Lebai Google lead me to this video Expected Value E(x)

(B4 any of you snigger - I did get >70% for Quants Level I. )

So well explained - actually you can find tonnes of videos which is for SPM to University level at the Khan Academy. And I have to salute Sal Khan - he made it free of charge.

This is what he had to say on the issue of money, adapted from the FAQs: -

Are you interested in turning this into a business? Maybe with some VC funding?

I've been approached several times, but it just didn't feel right. When I'm 80, I want to feel that I helped give access to a world-class education to billions of students around the world. Sounds a lot better than starting a business that educates some subset of the developed world that can pay $19.95/month and eventually selling it to some text book company or something.

I already have a beautiful wife, a hilarious son, two hondas and a decent house. What else does a man need? With that said, if you are a social venture capitalist and are looking to deploy capital with the highest possible social return per dollar invested, we should talk. I think you'll find that there is no more measurable, scalable and high impact way to educate the world.

Wenger comments : So if any of you guys are struggling to make ends meet and cant afford the RM 500/month for tuition, I suggest you get your children on this course. After all thats how I mastered a lot of my work inclusive of Corporate Finance, where I sat hours on end listening to the lectures of Prof. Aswanth Damodaran from NYU Stern University. (Of course Corporate Finance above 70% lah ...)

This is what I call a citizen of the world. They use the power of technology for the good of mankind, not like some people who abuse American technology for their own purposes ( which by the way does not respect the Declarations of the Rights of Men as enshrined in the United States Constitution) in order to spread hate and discourse.

Thats why people say, Malaysians can have 1st world infrastructure, but 3rd world mentality. Hopefully, the same cannot be said of I, Wenger J Khairy.