BUS 105

This module was taken as an additional module. Looking at all the written module that I have taken, I taught that having a module that involves maths would be a good. That and the reason that I could skip 1 module for my next semester if I were to pass this. Since this module only involves an exam, there is not much to be explained. Having only a blur image of my polytechnic days statistics, I tried to attempt what was supposed to be easy. Looking at the study guide, I instantly realised I need godly time management skills to pull off having 5 exams in that semester. What gave me another surprise was during the exams, there seems to be more theoretical questions than mathematical ones which only gave me less confidence in passing the paper. However, after attempting the said paper, I only got to realise that I would need guidance for this course.

CCO 107 (TMA)

For our lesson on the slave trade, we have learnt that one of the ways the British empire gained it's economic power was from the use of Africans as their slaves. Slavery would mean the act of treating a person as if the said person is a property than a living being. How the British used their slaves would be through the use of trade know and the Atlantic slave trade. The trade works in a uni-directional way where the Europeans would trade manufactured goods in return for slaves at Africa. With the slaves obtained in Africa, the slaves were then delivered to Americas by slave ships to be auctioned as plantation workers. With the proceeds obtained from the auctions, they were used to purchase several commodities such as sugar, coffee, and tobacco that is to be delivered back to Europe. During my study of this topic, the picture below aided me greatly to get a fuller picture of how the route works.

Another slavery act could also be seen in South-East Asia where Chinese immigrant from China travelled to Singapore to search of better opportunities to earn more money. As these migrants realised the harsh conditions they are working on, they had to resort to entertainment such as gambling and opium consumption to lessen their stress. Most of the times these entertainment was operated by the same people who transported these Chinese immigrants to Singapore in order to profit from their low revenue businesses. How the British are able to profit from such businesses is allowing these operators to operate their gambling and opium dens in exchange for tax gains. As the cycle goes, these Chinese workers found themselves succumbing to the endless debt they have to pay off and being forced to serve these operators forever, effectively becoming their slaves.

Although slavery has already been abolished in our current times, other forms of slavery are still present in modern times which are more commonly know as human trafficking. As such, our TMA was to identify a type of human trafficking and explain about the origins and why it is still continuing in our present times. The topic that I had chosen would be on organ harvesting in China. Looking at the present times, the purpose of the harvest was due to it's profitability of such a trade. Due to China laws allowing the organ harvest of prisoners upon consent, we can see the number of executions in China being topped across the world. This indicates that organ harvesting in China might be a coercive act rather than a willing one. 

After writing the report, what I have picked up from the feedback was that the case of corruption can be further discussed to show the reason of the high execution rate that might have linked to the organ harvesting activities in China. This is something I think I could have explained more extensively that could show a more detailed insight of the organ harvesting issue in China. 

Overall, through the lesson of slavery, we can see how countries has prospered at the expense of the lives of many. Thus, through history, it allows us to see how success of some might have come at the price of the conscience and morals of one. As an individuals who is entering the accounting sector, it allows me to understand the importance of transparency in a company and how companies are earning their profits. 

CCO 107 (GBA)

The module that brings up the past, world history. We started of with a brief overview of what an empire is and how the British empire was once the biggest empire in the world. To slowly let us adapt to history, we were tasked to find a historical landmark in Singapore and do up a short video and summary of it's history. For that, our group chose to do on Fullerton Hotel, which is also known as Fort Fullerton. As we are limited by time for our video, we have to meticulously sift out the vital information about the history of Fullerton hotel. In 5 minutes, we managed to explained the history from when this structure provided military protection to the hotel that we are lodging in today. During the filming, I really enjoyed being a tourist in my own homeland and getting to understand more about my own home and how it came to be. Without getting exposed to this project, I would not even have known that Fullerton Hotel was once a place for political rally that our minister mentor, Lee Kuan Yew, gave some of his powerful speech from. Well, I guess a more visual presentation would be clearer than just explaining so I guess the video should speak for itself.

After the results, the feedback that we received was the materials that was used for the construction of Fort Fullerton was not discussed extensively so some marks was deducted for the lack of such components. Aside from that, the feedback was mostly positive with the inclusion of even the rise and fall of the British empire in Singapore that could be seen in the our project that covered Fort Fullerton.

Well, I guess starting history with this GBA is really a good way to transition into understanding the module better. Using our project at Fort Fullerton, we can see how the presence of British empire could still be present even in Singapore today. By studying history, we can see how knowing the past could allow us to see opportunities and build on the success of the people from the past. One such example we could see is China reviving the Silk Road by building a railway that connects to various countries. Without knowing the importance of Silk Road during the past of how many countries depended on it for trade, China could not have seized the opportunity to build on the achievements from our past. Thus, we can see how important history is to our current times.

CCO 105 (GBA)

For our subsequent lessons, we were taught on how to construct a research proposal on a certain topic on a social issue. In this lessons, we were told that in a research proposal, there should be questions that should be answered. These would be finding out the 'thing' you are trying to observe, identifying the independent and dependent variables, how the independent and dependent variables varies, the respondents, the data that is to be collected, finding out the best data collection method, and how the research could contribute to the knowledge about the topic. At a closer look, you can see that most of the time, the 'thing' observed would usually be the independent variable and its variation is depending on either the quantifiable aspect or qualify-able aspect. How we seek to see the trends would usually be using indicators of this variables to ascertain our hypothesis by looking at their data.  Aside from these questions, the research proposal would also have to be relevant, feasible and measurable in order for the proposal to convince the readers of carrying out the proposal.

In our GBA group, we were asked to formulate such a proposal. The research topic we have came up with is 'To what extent does the type of familial values shared amongst Generations X and Y in Singapore shape their level of adherence to their dietary regime?' I guess the most difficult part of the project would be selecting the dependent variable (familial values) that we want to work on. Firstly, the reason being that there are many variable to choose from. Secondly, it took the most amount of time for our team to settle onto one that we think we are comfortable doing on. Finally, after half a day of brainstorming, the topic came to a conclusion and the data collection would be through the use of a questionnaire and an semi-structured interview as shown below.

Knowing the amount of effort we have put into the project as well as the tight chemistry forged between my team, the effort sure paid off which was reflected in our grades. Although our report was well-argued, it lacked the unique effect which hindered us from getting the 'A' for our project.

While the GBA has taught me much about writing a fluent research proposal, I guess this proposal writing is a good introduction for our Statistics (BUS 105) module which would expose us to the practical side of hypothesis testing. As a student who took the Challenge Exams for Statistics, understanding the purpose of this GBA has sure let me understood the reasons behind crafting a well-thought proposal as well as the purpose of looking at the purpose of understanding correlation and causation in statistics.

CCO 105 (TMA)

Ahhhhh~ the module that is simple yet complex, obvious yet hidden, and that would be social research. In this module, we are basically learning how to reveal the hidden intricacies of how society operates and how it is affects us. In our first two lessons, we were taught about the fathers of sociology; Karl Marx, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim. How they developed their theories gave new impetus to revealing social structures. As such, we were tasked to identify a social phenomenon in our TMA and integrate two or more theories created by Marx, Weber and Durkheim which are conflict theory, symbolic interactionism and structural functionalism, to our social phenomenon identified. To gain a better idea of what these 3 thinkers talked about, this would be a better aid.


For that, I have picked the topic on the Japanese culture of practising Inemuri which is the art of sleeping in public. As I have picked symbolic interactionism and structural functionalism, I have committed the mistake of using ideologies instead of ideas in my essay. Thus, this has caused me some marks as it has shown a lack of understanding and carelessness in my essay. If such a careless mistake has been avoided, I think I could have scored a grade higher for the TMA. The difficulty I have encountered when writing the essay would mostly be on the integrating of two thinkers. As all crafts requires practice, one factor for my struggle during the integrating would definitely be the lack of practice. This is again proven when I can see that I can easily integrate the three theories during exams.

After learning social research, it allowed me to understand the importance of sociology and how simple things we do in our everyday life is a result of what the society deems as appropriate. As a business student, gaining such knowledge is indeed vital due to our ever-changing environment and understanding it will allow us to seek opportunities that others might not have observed due to their lack of knowledge or expertise in this area.

CCO 103 (GBA and TMA)

In CCO 103, which is basically literature, we were tasked with understanding the various forms of literary arts such as satires, poems, stories and the likes.  Take our GBA for instance, which requires us to make a satire video of having the disabled in our workforce. It made us think of how the society sees having the disabled in the workforce would be. In our video, we have acted out various forms of disabilities from common ones such as disabled with crutches to even the most dramatic ones like nearsightedness. This would be as shown

The difficulty that was encountered in the making of the video would mainly be the lack of resources we have at our disposal such as the a location of shooting and inadequate props. I have really enjoyed doing this as my GBA as this is the first time I am doing filming as a project.

As for our TMA, we were supposed to write on a story review about a Greek legend called Oedipus. As a person whose forte isn't on expressive writing but more on report writing, my coherency factor pulled my marks down.For now, I can just say it would take a lot of practice for me to hone that skill and be better at it in the future.

What I can pick up from this subject would mainly be on the honing the skills of appreciating the beauty of art. It is also one of the subject where I have many internal debates on the usefulness how this subject could aid me for my future. From one side, it allows me to see how certain forms such as satires could provide thought-provoking controversies better than others at the cost of reliability. On the other hand, I could only see such skills being more usable to marketing students as their job revolves mainly towards attracting consumers. As an accountancy student, where our job scope requires us to follow a standard guideline such as report writing, having creative and expressive writing would mostly work against our favour. Though the lessons that I have learnt in the course is indeed interesting, I would find it more practical if such a topic is left in our electives; which allows us to have a choice in taking.

CCO 101 (Exam)

In our last three lessons, we were introduced to various thinkers. In lesson 4, we were taught about how the 2 thinkers; Edward Bernay and Noam Chomsky views propaganda. Propaganda, as negative sounding as it seems is just a medium to spread information. How it is determine to be good or bad should be dependent on the purpose of using these information.  From what I know, Bernay sees propaganda as a tool to educate the people since the average individual usually get their information from sources without verifying the authenticity and reliability of the source. Thus, by spreading propaganda, Bernay think of it as a way to education the public by making information controversial while Chomsky thinks that the government use propaganda as a way to control the thoughts of individual to mitigate any risk of having resistance to the current governmental control. The purpose of controlling the people's thought is just so to control the people's actions since Chomsky thinks that by controlling the thoughts of people, it would effectively mean to control the actions of people since all actions are a manifestation of thoughts. Using a more detailed argument map, this would be how it can be explained clearer.

In a fuller detail of the whole of lesson 4 which depicts how the 2 thinkers viewed on the idea of propaganda. What this lesson has thought us is to let us understand that we should question the information presented to us. Although some information might be presented as biased, one should think deeper to understand the purpose behind the information so we understand why such information is carried out in such a way.

For lesson 5, we were taught about hegemony and counter-hegemony. The thinker for this topic would mainly be Antonio Gramsci. What he think of hegemony would be the act of a superior group, known as the hegemon, having dominance over a inferior group through their consent of being dominated. Thus, by being dominated, these inferior group will either stand to gain incentive or avoid being disincentive to withhold their consent which resulted in them allowing these hegemon to dominate them. By agreeing to be dominated, these inferior groups has to spread the ideologies of the hegemon in order to create a successful hegemony. How these ideologies are spread would mainly be from the use of civil society or political society. As complicated as it sounds, civil society would plainly mean organisations without forceful control such as schools, churches, etc and political society would mainly be institutions that controls the groups using direct force such as the army, police, etc. As for counter-hegemony, it would mean the act of rebellion over the current hegemony system when inferior groups unite against the current hegemon to bring a new ideology that these inferior group think is better than the current one. How this is done would be through the use of a revolution. In this revolution, some of the tools used could either be cultural jamming or political jamming. To determine if a popular revolution is successful or not, 4 criteria must be met. These are the current hegemonic system having a crisis of authority, a hegemonic bloc, a conscious leadership and the need to transform the existing structure through the use of war of manoeuvre, war of position or both. I am going to skip the in depth details as all the more detailed explanation can be found in the argument map below. 

This lesson has taught me much about how the current leadership system works and why people follow such systems. I have learnt how and why some people would follow certain leaders can retain their control over these inferior groups even though their ideologies are not condone by most. For instance, the reason why the leader of North Korea, can still retain their control over their people was due to the strong political society to prevent their people from rebelling. 

For lesson 6, we have learnt about the theory of justice. The thinkers we have learnt would be John Rawls and Robert Nozick. I would say this lesson would be my favourite one amongst the three as it allowed me to develop a sense of empathy towards how different people think. Another key lesson that I have picked up was how these two thinkers would prioritise differently about what is important in their justice system. For Rawls, his theory would heavily emphasise about how liberty is important whereas Nozick would prioritise rights as vital component in justice. These respective thinkers would also have rules as to how a justice system is fair. However, both system would also present their flaws. In a more detailed explanation, a more comprehensive chart is shown below.

What I have picked up from this lesson not what justice is defined as what these thinkers defined but more about understanding that there is no definite right or wrong in every actions done by people. In a way, this lesson would be more on understanding the rationale of  why and how people are doing things as such rather than being a closed-minded individual being obsessed with a definite right or wrong.

In conclusion, each lesson present to us a different aspect of how we see and understand the world. 

CCO101 (Thinking and Reasoning) (TMA and GBA)

Thinking and Reasoning is a module that teaches us about how to write a well argued report. In the first two lessons, we were introduced to the terms 'claims', 'reason', and 'premise'(reasons for a single claim). To make a well structured sentence, one must first understand the content and requirement of the essay. Thus, in our TMA, we were given a passage to discuss about the good and bad of fighter drones and the consequences if such a destructive power lands into the wrong hands. We were tasked to identify the main point that the writer is trying to present and evaluate her claims in the passage if we agree with her reasoning. The below hyperlink is the content we were given to evaluate.

Drones are not all bad – but what if Isis starts using them?

In the initial phase of my writing, I had to develop an argument map which aided me in my development of my report. I first started out with what the author thought about her report and expanded into three points to write about her passage. From these three points, she stated her reasons about her thoughts on these claims which was used to convince her reader of her claims. 

The above image would be how I presented my argument map. A note to self would be not to take too much time on the argument map to prevent confusing yourself. Another point I to note during my time when writing was to not change the content too much that made the essay look illogical. In my essay, I have committed such a mistake when I tried to change the authors overall claim to much that it went out of point. What I wrote of the overall claim 'her overall claim is to convince the readers on the benefits of drones.' should rather be 'drones are beneficial' which could also made my points more reasonable and fluid.

And another mistake would be to write more succinctly than vaguely. Something that I commonly did throughout the passage which made me lose quite a sum of marks due to the incoherence of my writing. 

Next, would be on our third lesson which is pseudoscience (Science that can be falsified) and conspiracy theories. As some might be familiar with astrology, the vaccination-autism relations, these are all backed up by any science although it can be proven false. In other words, theories that can be interpreted in numerous ways that would lead to no conclusion. In our GBA, we were tasked to develop a conspiracy theory as well as a how these conspiracy theory shows similar traits. 

Our group has developed a conspiracy theory about Brexit being planned in order to achieve a hyperpower state. As history indicated that Britain was once the dominant power, we think that Brexit was done in order to achieve their past glory since most of the European Union state was leeching from their economy. For the development of the conspiracy, there is not much difficulties that we ran into but it was the second part where we were tasked to show similarities of the conspiracy theory being similar to pseudoscience that we had encountered problem. 

Firstly, our group was tasked to evaluate another group's conspiracy theory in order to identify traits of pseudoscience. However, we ran into the trouble of disagreeing with the logic of the said conspiracy theory. Thus, if we see a problem with their argument in the theory, we are unable to progress with our work. Thankfully, the feedback on our GBA was mostly on our definition of pseudoscience rather than our traits.

All in all, thinking and reasoning is basically philosophy which teaches us about how to write logically and being sceptical about the information that is presented to us. Through three lessons into the course, this module has already taught me how to write better and think deeper. Although there are more modules in the future that will be teaching us about such deeper thinking, I think having this module as an introductory course is beneficial to prepare us in the future when we are working as I can see myself writing reports after reports. 

BUS 100 (TMA 2)

Before the whole course comes to a conclusion, comes the final test to determine our progress from our previous TMA. In between TMA 1 and 2, the additional lessons we were taught is supposed to prepare us to deal with the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) environment that is in the near future. Thus, some of the function such as the rand and rand between functions are taught to us to simulate figures that are unknown to us. For example, in order to win a bid for a project, one must know the competitors bid in order to understand how low must the quotation be set for the business to win the bid but not low enough to lose money. Thus, when a company only knows a range of the competitors bid, he can only estimate the figures. The rand function could be used for such instances when guess work is needed. Another purpose for the rand function could also be used to calculate the probability. However, this is taught to us mainly for our future module such as statistics which we will also be using excel. Thus, necessary for us to learn.

Another lesson that was taught to us using excel would be based on the time value of money. Basically the functions relating to how the compounding works. In a nutshell, $1 today would be worth more tomorrow due to inflation. Thus, these functions (PV, FV, PMT, Rate, NPER) is taught to us so that we can make use of this to better manage our finances or investment assets (might be a module that will be taught to us in the future.)

And so, you can see that our TMA have been moulded around these lessons. Coupled with the feedback given in the first TMA lesson, we are supposed to work on developing a model that would act as a time value calculator and another model that would act as a simulation to calculate the probability of a event occurring through several trials. As such the two questions we were supposed to work on is stated below

As seen the first question requires us to develop a 'mortgage calculator' and the second question requires us to develop a simulation to tabulate the probability of a certain event occuring

How I developed my first question would be the first box being the input values. Users would first have to select what they want to find out under the drop down box at cell C4. In this screenshot, it would be payment per period. The black cell in F7 would indicate to users not to input anything in that cell. After all the input cells (cells with blue fonts) has been filled up in row 7, the answer will be provided at row 16 with additional details with the answers indicated with a green box. As for the header with the monthly payment, it is part b) of the question which is supposed to be a table to show the different figures when the rate and years varies. However, this part of the question can be further improved if the constraint of fitting my answer into an A4 sheet has been removed. Though there is no feedback given for this TMA, I suspect the reason behind why I scored worse for my question 1 compared to question 2 was because of the two rows for my time value calculator. Thus, I can only say that if there is more time given, I might have developed a more compact calculator. 

How I constructed my question 2 would be to develop 100 trials as stated. As one of the tip the lessons taught us is to develop for the unexpected, I added created the input section in cell B and C5 to account for more dices and more sides if such instances ever occur. Additional parts that warrant a highlight would be in Column C, D and E which uses the rand functions to simulate the rolling of dice in order to tabulate the probability of having a certain probability on a certain number. As shown in the table at column I, the tabulation of a certain number from the 100 trails are shown here. Thus, the graph is derived from the table in column I which shows a normal distribution. Same as question 1, the difficulty faced would be fitting the model into an A4 sized paper. Thus, how I overcome this difficulty would be to hide some of the more irrelevant trials (ie, trial 20-90) and showing a less complete table for simulations.

In essence, what TMA 2 taught us more about would mostly be how to handle situations of uncertainty. Secondly, some of these lessons are taught just so we are able to better handle ourselves for other modules such as statistics which probabilities are involved and finance related modules which enables us to appreciate about the time value of money. As this is the last post that I am about to write for this module, I would say learning all about excel allowed me to appreciate how such a program would help us immensely in our future at the workforce in order to make our life easier. 

BUS 100 (Business Skills and Management) (TMA 1)

In BUS 100, the course enabled us to learn more about how the tool of excel could aid us in our workplace. Unlike what I have learnt in polytechnic which I am tested mostly on my mastery of excel functions; BUS 100 has taught me about additional rules of the dos and don'ts of certain excel functions. One such rule which I have found exceptionally useful would be hard-coding. Hard-coding would practically be the rule of separating cells deriving from manual input being separated from cells that are embedded with formulas. The purpose of this rule would serve the functions mainly reducing mistakes from being generated in the answers by not disrupting the formula cells. Some other important rules would therefore consist of components such as switching off gridlines, inserting table headers for aesthetic reasons as well as worksheet protection to prevent users from unnecessary tempering.

The above image shows that cell F20 involves only reference cells without any manual numbers inserted to prevent mistakes and confusion to users. Cells like F20 should be protected to prevent unnecessary tempering for users. A further step to identify formula cells would be to give these cells a different set of colours. The above image shows that manual input cells are coded as blue, historical figures are coded as green and formulated cells are black.

For our first TMA (Tutor Marked Assignments), we are expected to formulate models AKA templates to aid and solve our problems. The TMA was presented with 2 questions. The former tasked us to develop a model to decide the cheaper alternative of an item through two different marketing strategies. The latter was a question about identifying the penalty of the speeding ticket depending on the amount of speed being exceeded.

Question

The main solution of how I attempted the first question would be as shown above. Some obstacle that I have encountered when attempting this TMA in general would mainly be formulating the formula cells to be as concise as possible in order to show a more comprehensive code since we are being marked for the elegance of our code. The purpose of making the code concise would also serve the function for future coders taking over your work to make out what each code represent in order to improve the current model. One main feedback would be to reduce the number of rows for the price table to just the relevant amount such as 1, 11, 23, and 24 donuts to show the change in the decision factors. 

This would be how I have attempted question 2. Although the I did not encounter much difficulty in like question one. However, I think I have added too much information in this question. The feedback given was to remove the original table and just leave the revised table. Another feedback given was to remove the query table. I agree to the former feedback as it might confuse the users of having 2 similar tables. However, I think that having the query table would present an easier navigation to the users in term of finding how much demerit points would be presented to them according to how much speed they exceed.

 All in all, the skills learnt in BUS 100 would be highly relevant to me as an individual working in the accounting sector since financial reports mainly revolves around tabulating figures deriving from different places. With the skills learnt in BUS100 along with those skills that has been thought in my polytechnic, I can see myself developing models to aid my calculations more effectively and efficiently.