India must be dreaming. It wants a free trade treaty with ASEAN (tag) but at the same time wants too many stuff excluded from the FTA. What was India thinking? Did they think they can bully us into it?
I’m glad to know that ASEAN, represented by Malaysian trade minister, gives India a solid no today. I think India hasn’t realized that ASEAN doesn’t take shit.
No FTA is better than one-sided FTA. ASEAN deserves a better deal.
So, Barisan Nasional won Pengkalan Pasir with a slim margin. A recount confirmed BN’s victory. But does this mean PAS in deep shit? More precisely, if this by-election acts as a signal for the next Malaysian general election, does this mean support for Barisan Nasional’s growing in Kelantan?
Quite hard to say. Let’s see some statistics to see how hard it is.
First of all, we know from the New Straits Times that the first count showed that BN received 7419 votes, PAS 7290, Ibrahim Ali 414 and there were 160 spoiled votes. In total, 15283 votes.
Now, let’s assume two things to make life simpler.
Kick Ibrahim Ali out of our equation, like how he was kicked from UMNO. And then, we shoved all the spoiled votes into Ibrahim Ali’s throat before we kick him. That leaves us a total of 14709.
Thanks to the two assumptions, now we have only BN and PAS to worry about. The assumptions help making things easier since it allows us to use bootstrapping method – the easiest way to get a standard error. Bootstrapping gives us a standard deviation of roughly 0.5 with 60.64 for SE.
Now, my hypothesis is that the difference between BN and PAS – a difference of 129 votes – is zero. That makes t = 129/60.64, which makes t about 2.13. t is as in the t-distribution.
Using t-test, the hypothesis at 25% significance level is rejected.
However, at 10% and lower significance levels, the hypothesis is significant. Doesn’t necessarily mean it must be accepted but it can’t be rejected.
So, did anybody win outright statistically? I don’t know. It’s likely the answer is no. More importantly, if this is a signal of things to come in 2008, Pengkalan Pasir is a crystal ball with industrial defect.
Anyway, given this entry is written at 2 AM, you might be reading crap with bad statistics. Hah!
Heh. I myself am not convinced with the statistics; the hypothesis testing in particular looks odd. I’ve done this before extensively but I haven’t touched real statistics in a long time. So, you are more than welcomed to check them up or even refined them to include Ibrahim Ali and the spoiled votes.
According to national TV, at 2120 Malaysian time, Barisan Nasional won Pengkalan Pasir by a small margin. Because of the small margin, a recount is due tomorrow – thanks to that, this win is unofficial. But somehow, I doubt there that there will be a different picture tomorrow.
Whatever it may be, I hope the Election Commission will publish the standard error for the by-election. Let’s see how uncertain the result really is.
For those who want to know about why a recount is due, statistically, read more about confidence interval at Wikipedia. Quite light, compared to what I had to suffer during my junior year at Michigan.
And heh. What did I tell you?
Pay up.
I wonder, how Ibrahim Ali did in the competition. Hmm…
A cat catching a not-so-catnap in a morning, on, of all places, my bed.
Knowing that this particular cat loves sleeping on my bed, now, I may have discovered a reason why I always find myself with little red scratches almost every morning.
The photo is obviously overexposed. Still, I like the details of his bosom. But now, it’s time to give the cat some scratches of his own.
p/s – haha. if everyone thinks like this, Barisan Nasional will have serious problem. It’s in Malay. If you don’t understand it, then you’ll have to learn Malay. =)
When limited members of a society benefit from restricted competition at others’ expense, it’s all too possible that a protectionist (tag) is lurking somewhere, menacingly. According to The Star yesterday:
Prepaid mobile phone users may no longer enjoy the convenience of buying their top-up cards at sundry shops and coffeeshops.
The Energy, Water and Communications Ministry is considering barring telecommunications companies from appointing such stores as retail agents for the cards.”
Minister Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik said the move was vital to protect the business of telecommunications distributors and dealers.
This is no doubt a protectionist’s wet dream.
Think about it.
If the government enacts the restriction, on one hand, the would be adversely affected business owners would lose legitimate future income – reduction in wealth – to the groups that are lobbying the government to restrict competition. In simpler term, it’s called stealing. Theives steal and those lobbyists are downright robbers.
We, the consumers on the other hand, would have to purchase these cards from few selected sellers. That means consumers have to put forth extra effort – another word for cost – in order to search and purchase a good.
Worse, these sellers would monopolize a market niche when they aren’t supposed to under efficient conditions. Meanwhile, it might be true that the consumers won’t have to fork extra cash to make a purchase with the new ruling, but a loss in convenience is a loss in consumers surplus.
The government mustn’t let this new, unfair ruling come into being. The telcos distributors and dealers are merely thinking about their profits and absolutely not about the market efficiency. Neither do they care for other individuals and groups with honest wants and needs.
For these reasons, that restriction mustn’t be imposed. Free market must reign supreme, for fairness’ sake, in the name of the people.
One more thing – if the lobbyists’ side can’t stand the heat, they should get out of the kitchen.
p/s – Ajax is currently in deep shit, again. But this win helps a lot.