"Jason, you're famous"

My department manager said this to me about 2 days ago when she bumped into me on the Ground floor of the Menzies building and i happened to ask why.

"Oh! The news of your scholarship award night has been reported on the Monash Memo."

True enough, the Monash Memo was emailed to ALL Monash Uni students and it was reported that me and 2 other awardees were awarded a scholarship for our PhD...=)there was a nice photo of us as well..^_^

Later that afternoon, the department manager sent an email to all the staff in the department congratulating me and Alex (the other awardee winner) with some really blown up pictures of us during the ceremony night...

then soon later, some of my frens who saw me around in uni said 'congrats for your scholarship'

so here's just a screen shot of the website that reported the news...you will see a photo of 3 guys at the bottom left hand corner..i m the guy on the extreme left...with black hair (yes..it's still black and it wun change until when i reach 60 and all becomes white)




If you want the website....here it is..
http://www.monash.edu.au/students/

but i dont think it will be there for that long since monash updates the site quite regularly..=)

Sowing and Reaping

Sow a thought, reap an act.
Sow an act, reap a habit.
Sow a habit, reap a character.
Sow a character, reap a destiny.

Reciprocate

Zepeng said something tonight that really struck me a lot. It is very sad when someone whom you love dont reciprocate that love towards you.....

Painful it is indeed....

Take Me In

An encouraging video with an encouraging song with encouraging verses....

In There

Have been pretty much in thought this past week (yea...as always). (And by the way, i've come to realise that sitting down and just stoning is kinda stressful for me...i prefer to think about something....)anyway, back to the topic....

i'm 22 years old and there are so many people around me that are at least 2 years younger than me. yet, what is the difference between them and me?
frankly speaking, not much....(lets not talk about the wisdom ok....i know one of you THINK you're smarter than me..i'm fine by tt too..^_^ just dont get deceived for too long...MUAHAHAHAHHAA!!!, yes mr. woon aka baboon, tt's you...^_^)

why do i say not much difference between me and them? cause if you look deep into your heart, in there, we go through the same thing....

We desire to be loved.
We desire to be accepted.
We desire to grow and mature.
We desire to build strong friendships.
We desire to have someone close to share with and rely on.

We are afraid of loneliness.
We are afraid of letting people down.
We are afraid of losing friends.
We are afraid that close friends begin to feel distant from us.
We are afraid that the memories that are in the making will cease to no longer exist.
We are afraid of discouragement.

We get disappointed when people let us down.
We get disappointed when people dont understand us.
We get disappointed when all our hard work pays no reward.
We get disappointed when we fail to be proactive in working on a relationship.


At the end of it all, in there, i know we face almost the same things....
The question is, how will we respond?

Speech

Ok..to those who were very curious as to what I said in my speech when I was awarded the Donald Cochrane Scholarship..here's the video to satisfy your curiosity...^_^

Enjoy!

Programming

To let you have a feel what i've been doing for the past 3 weeks in programming..here's a program that i've written so far....and it's not yet complete..coz something's wrong at the end......=(



/*Estimation of a simple linear regression model using Gibbs Sampling
***** Error variance (sighat2) unknown*****/

library pgraph;
graphset;
gausset;

fonts("simplex complex microb simgrma");

pqgwin many;

seed = 123456.0;
print "seed =" seed;

numb = 200;

lsig = 0.1;
usig = 0.8;
nums = ((usig-lsig)/0.01)+1;
cbeta2 = zeros(numb,1);
csig = zeros (nums, 1);

/************************1. Generating data = y x1 x2 x3 x4 x5**********************************/

nobs = 1000;

y = rndns (nobs, 1, seed);
x1 = ones (nobs,1);
x2 = rndns (nobs, 1,seed);
x3 = rndns (nobs, 1, seed);
x4 = rndns (nobs, 1, seed);
x5 = rndns (nobs, 1, seed);
u = rndns (nobs, 1, seed).*.0.3;

y = 5.0*x1 + 0.2*x2 + 0.3*x3 + 0.4*x4 + 0.5*x5 + u;

/****************Regressor matrix used in the estimation****************/
x = x1~x2~x3~x4~x5;

__output = 0;
_olsres = 1;

{z1,z2,bdt,z4,z5,stderrph,sighat,z8,z9,resid,z11} = ols(0,x,y);

/******Specification of sample statistics*****/
df = nobs - 5;
invxx = inv(x'x);
x22 = invxx[2,2];
x33 = invxx[3,3];
x44 = invxx[4,4];
x55 = invxx[5,5];
b2= bdt[2];
b3=bdt[3];
b4=bdt[4];
b5=bdt[5];

/***2. Specification of the exact marginal posterior UNIVARIATE Student t density
******** for beta 2 and 3 based on the noninformative Jeffreys prior
******** with df = nobs-5 degrees of freedom
*****/
proc margb2 (beta2);
local t,intcon,studt;

t = (beta2 - b2)/(sighat*sqrt(x22));
intcon = gamma((df+1)/2)/((sighat*sqrt(x22))*sqrt(df*pi)*gamma(df/2));
studt = intcon*(1 + (1/df)*t.^2).^(-(df+1)/2);

retp(studt);
endp;

beta2 = seqa(-0.1,0.01, numb);
exactb2 = margb2(beta2);
/*xy(beta2,exactb2);*/

proc margb3 (beta3);
local t1, intcon1, studt1;

t1 = (beta3-b3)/(sighat*sqrt(x33));
intcon1 = gamma((df+1)/2)/((sighat*sqrt(x33))*sqrt(df*pi)*gamma(df/2));
studt1 = intcon1*(1 + (1/df)*t1.^2).^(-(df+1)/2);

retp (studt1);
endp;

beta3 = seqa(-0.8,0.01,numb);
exactb3 = margb3(beta3);
/*xy(beta3,exactb3);*/

/***** 3.
**** Specification of the exact marginal posterior
**** INverted Gamma density for sigma based on the noninformative Jeffreys prior
**** with df = nobs-5 degrees of freedom
****/
proc margsig(sig);
local intcon, invgamma;

intcon = (2/(gamma(df/2)))*(df*(sighat.^2)/2)^(df/2);
invgamma = intcon * (1/sig.^(1+df)).*exp(-(df*sighat.^2)/(2*sig.^2));

retp (invgamma);
endp;

sig = seqa(lsig,0.01,nums);
exactsig = margsig(sig);
/*xy(sig,exactsig);*/

/***** 4.
****** Generation of values of beta and sigma via Gibbs sampling
*******/

/***burn in sample = 100; further 100 iterations****/

bur = 100;
repl = bur +100;
it = 10;

print " ";
print "Initial No. of Gibbs values = " repl;
print "No. of iterations per repl. = " it;
print " ";

bev = zeros (201,5);
sigv = zeros (201,1);

/*****4a Starting Values for Gibbs Algorithm, burn in sample = 100; further 100
iterations***/

sigv[1] = 0.2;
stnbe = rndns(200,5,seed);
meanb = (invxx)*x'y;
varb = (sigv[1])^2 * inv(x'x);
bgen = chol(varb)*stnbe[1,.]'+ meanb;
bev[2,.]=bgen';

a = (y-x*bev[2,.]')'(y-x*bev[2,.]');
zvec = rndns (200,1,seed);
chisq = zvec'zvec;
sigv[2]=sqrt(a/chisq);

j = 2;
do while j<=repl;
varb = (sigv[j])^2 * inv(x'x);
bgen = chol(varb)*stnbe[j,.]'+ meanb;
bev[j+1,.]=bgen';
a = (y-x*bev[j+1,.]')'(y-x*bev[j+1,.]');
sigv[j+1]=sqrt(a/chisq);

j = j+1;
endo;

print "bev" bev;
print "";
print "sigv" sigv;


/*******Formation of Beta2 and Beta3 conditional (analytically normalized)****/
meanb2 = meanb[2];
meanb3 = meanb[3];

j=102;
do while j<=repl;

varb = (sigv[j])^2 * inv(x'x);
varb2 = varb[2,2];
varb3 = varb[3,3];

proc condb2(beta2);
local z, cpdf;


z = (beta2 - b2)./sqrt(varb2);
cpdf = ((2*pi*varb2)^(-1/2))*exp(-0.5*(z.^2));

retp (cpdf);
endp;

beta2 = seqa(-0.1,0.01, numb);
cpdfbeta2 = condb2(beta2);

cbeta2 = cbeta2 + cpdfbeta2;

j= j+1;

endo;

densb2 = (1/100)*cbeta2;
xy(beta2, densb2~exactb2);






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*
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I LOVE GAUSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Waiting For YOu

Ok...tonight is one of those rare nights whereby i feel quite free and actually have time to listen to my favourite Singapore radio station, UFM1003 (it's a pop chinese radio station)..then they played one of my fav songs tt i liked when i was in JC....Waiting For You....

so many images flashed in my head...haiz...made me feel so melancholic....

well, here's a youtube video of the song...enjoy

Assignment Joke

Am currently marking my students 2nd assignment and will be marking assignments till about the end of the semester...well, because their 3rd assignment is due next Mon and i'm less than halfway through in the marking of their 2nd assignment..sigh...

anwyayz, it's definitely funny to read some answers.

one question says to estimate a new model by leaving out the variable "landlock" and replace it with "onell" and "bothll". It then asks, what variable has been deliberately left out...some students wrote... "landlock"....

-_-'''

i mean, would we be so dumb to ask such a question whereby that's the answer?