entropy, process, outcome

Dr Rajesh was talking about entropy in Engineering Physics lecture yesterday. It is something to do with thermodynamics and the energy involved. So he was linking macrostates and microstates and the example he used kind of triggered me to ponder somewhere far...

The example is like this: you have 4 coins and you are to toss them. In order to get 4 heads/0 tail there is only 1 way; 4 ways for 3 heads/1 tail; 6 ways for 2 heads/2 tails; 4 ways for 1 head/ 3 tails; and 1 way for 0 head/ 4 tails. (it is something like combination... probability here) So in order to get to 2 heads/2 tails there are so many ways, and if you are talking about tossing 100 coins, the possible number of combinations will be astronomical.. that brings me to something that I was discussing with my brother the other day...

I was saying over lunch that some students sleep in lecture and skip lessons, kind of unbecoming of students. Then my brother said, it is not the process that matters, at the end of the day they sleep they skip they still get a first class honours, so why bother? Then I said, isn't that attitude a little not right? (I've never slept in a lecture, but my result doesn't seem to be superior to anyone...that kind of makes me feel disheartened)

Then yesterday at lunch time, my lecture clique was crapping and daydreaming. So Hong Jun was saying "give me money now", then I said "give me a degree now".... I realize, you want a degree cos you want to make money.. so if you have money, then why go through the pain of studying for a degree?

People are like talking about process is more important than outcome, but how many people truly accepts the notion? Meder has been saying it (yeah he reads too much on climbing books), Alex... ermm I think he should have said it somewhere... Is education really about outcome? I really feel like vomiting when people are like feeding themselves with past year papers and kids going for tuition like more often than they eat rice...

I still don't feel right about it. It is like, to finish a race you can run all the way, you can crawl all the way, or you can even hitchhike someone's car. Sheesh, you can count the number of freaks on earth using one finger.