Posts Tagged ‘Statistics’

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Samsu Report on Al-Jazeera

October 20th, 2009
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Got this from Saravanan’s FB entry.

Few interesting facts:

1. Samsu (rice wine) can have up to 50% alcohol content.

2. According to CAP’s Subbarow, the government banned sales of samsu in plastics about 20 years ago because it was becoming a social problem among the Malay youths.

3. MIC’s new Information Chief, P Kamalanathan says taxes on the samsu should be raised, similar to cigarettes, wine, beer etc.

4. The guy interviewed in the report says he won’t stop drinking until death. (Even pawned wife’s jewelery to buy liquor).

5. The reason given be the interviewee is that he drinks to forget his sorrows.

6. CAP estimates rural Indians spend US6 million (RM21 million) annually on alcohol.

7. In this example, drinking samsu leads to domestic violence, runaway children, disease and early death.

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Population imbalance worry

October 9th, 2009
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The PewForum report on Global Muslim population gave some interesting global statistics:

A comprehensive demographic study of more than 200 countries finds that there are 1.57 billion Muslims of all ages living in the world today, representing 23% of an estimated 2009 world population of 6.8 billion.

While Muslims are found on all five inhabited continents, more than 60% of the global Muslim population is in Asia and about 20% is in the Middle East and North Africa. However, the Middle East-North Africa region has the highest percentage of Muslim-majority countries. Indeed, more than half of the 20 countries and territories1 in that region have populations that are approximately 95% Muslim or greater.

More than 300 million Muslims, or one-fifth of the world’s Muslim population, live in countries where Islam is not the majority religion. These minority Muslim populations are often quite large. India, for example, has the third-largest population of Muslims worldwide. China has more Muslims than Syria, while Russia is home to more Muslims than Jordan and Libya combined.

Of the total Muslim population, 10-13% are Shia Muslims and 87-90% are Sunni Muslims. Most Shias (between 68% and 80%) live in just four countries: Iran, Pakistan, India and Iraq.

My focus is on Malaysia. The map below indicates current Muslim population in Malaysia to be about 17 million or 60.4%. The report says the Malaysian Muslim population is about 16,581,000 which is 1.1% of world Muslim population.

world-distribution-weightedClick to enlarge

Most likely this figure will grow, and coupled with lower growth rate of other communities, will lead towards a bigger gap between the majority Muslim and minority non-Muslims in the country. As I worried earlier, population imbalance may lead to various problems. Our political situation at the moment is not actually helping to bridge the gap, while the policies for last half decade have only served to widen the gap between the communities.  The constitution, which guarantees the rights of the non-Muslims, is often subject to interpretration that seems lop-sided.  So, its may well remain words on paper only since the realisation of the constitution is at the hands of politicians and administrators, and the separation between government, judiciary, and legistation is not very clear.

Would a Minorities Act help in this case? A review of the constitution? A check and balance mechanism for all the policies? Population control seems far-fetched of course, at the moment, but may be needed in future.

On hindsight, would an evenly balanced population trigger more social unrest and threat to national security? A minority “Minority” will be easy to subjugate and control.

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WHO scenarios estimates 5500 AH1N1 deaths in Malaysia

August 6th, 2009
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Frightening scenario indeed!

Imagine 5,500 deaths by 2010. That’s the scenario laid out by Dr Tee Ah Sian, director of communicable diseases of WHO:

At a recent briefing to the National Influenza Pandemic Task Force meeting (July 29, 2009), Dr Tee Ah Sian, director of communicable diseases of WHO, painted a possible scenario for the Malaysian A (H1N1) pandemic. While I do not wish to be alarmist, it is good to at least recognise the least impact scenario which has been projected.

For our 27.7 million population, if simply 20% are at risk and exposed, then some 5.5 million people will contract the A (H1N1) flu. Based on other serious influenza statistics, if 2% to 9% require hospitalisation then, some 110,000 to 500,000, respectively, would need hospital care.

From these numbers, if we estimate the case fatality rate to be from 0.1% to 0.5%, then some 5,500 to 28,000 of infected patients would die, respectively. In the latest updates of the most seriously ill patients identified and confirmed infections, the global case fatality rate has risen from the 0.4% to 0.66%. So, the hardnosed reality is that it is more than likely that the worse is yet to come. We can only hope that this is the worst case scenario.

Even if we reduce the risk percentage from 20% to 5%, and maintain the other ratios, there will still be between 27 and 623 deaths. As of today, there’s 14 deaths. But rumours are abound that the number of deaths is higher and not being disclosed (probably can’t be 100% attributed to AH1N1).

The problem is that many people are going to hospitals when having sore throats, flu,fever, cough, stomach ache, vomitting, body pain, breathing difficulties – symptoms that can be caused by a variety of ailments. The hospitals say that one must have been exposed to AH1N1 conditions (travelled overseas or in contact with a victim), and have fever about 38 degrees celcius, besides having the above symptoms. I’ve read the papers for last 3 days whereby readers write in and complain on being refused throat swabs for AH1N1.

Its a winless situation because the medicine is limited, and taking it as a preemptive step will render the medication useless when you actually get infected. There’s too many cases to test.

Should people who have such symptoms stay at home? I’m sure they won’t mind, but who’s going to pay their salary? Companies won’t simply accept the reason that you “may” have AH1N1 and thus are going to stay at home. Do you want to use your annual leave? Can doctors at clinic give a 5 day MC? Will it be unpaid leave? Knowing Malaysians, they rather go to work shivering in fever as long as can get salary.Such is the hardworking mentality (what to do..cost of living too high!).

So, what does the DG of Health Ministry mean when he says you should stay at home?

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Some quick stats on Mara

May 29th, 2009
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A quickie:

To date, Mara has financed 351,330 students for tertiary education locally and overseas since the start of the 1st Malaysia Plan until today.

Under its entrepreneur development programme, the agency has given out RM1.8 billion in assistance to more than 20,000 entrepreneurs since 2006.

source: NST

Note: Rancangan Malaysia Pertama (RMK1) was from 1966-1970. In 43 years, 351,330 students meaning on average of 8,170 students per year.

RM1.8 billion per year since 2006, means on average RM450 million per year (inclusive 2009). If 20,000 entrepreneurs as stated above, that works out to be RM90,000  per entrepreneur!

Do note that the similar statistics were provided in March 2008 – RM18 billion, 130,000 entrepreneurs, 4 years. If we divide 18 billion by 130,000 people = Rm138 thousand per entrepreneur.

Of course entrepreneur can refer to a company instead of one person, but very rare.

Now, of course, we can compare with RM430 million allocated to Indian community (that means the whole 2 million of us) over the last 5 years (9th MP) and the community should be grateful and thankful  for such big grants. 🙂

I mean “allocating” RM430 million to a community of 2 million trouble makers, hooligans, criminals, jokers, etc. is quite noble and is on par with allocating RM18 billion to 130,ooo people (or RM1.8 billion to 20,000 people).

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Economy contracts 6.2 percent

May 28th, 2009
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I remember reading our economy experts and politicians saying no recession, economy on recovery road, blah, blah, blah, blah..But today papers splash main news: Economic shrinks 6.2 percent, nearly double the expected 3.5%! Now I wonder if those “experts” were really experts or by-products of some top 50,000 colleges, and whether qualified people are making press statements and holding important positions in administration.

Next problem is whether we can still trust analysis and reports made after this because one trust is lost, difficult to win back. Will economy improve in the second half as mentioned below? Well, have to take it with a pinch of salt because these reports have political connotations attached.

The national economy contracted at 6.2% for the first three months this year compared to the same period last year, due to a global economic slump. Economists had expected only a 3.5% contraction.

Bank Negara Governor Tan Sri Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz said at a media briefing yesterday that the financial crisis, which peaked last September and led to a general slowdown in economic activity, had taken longer than expected to be resolved.

She said “the deterioration was greater than expected” and that the exports outlook “remained weak”, adding that the outlook for April to June would depend largely on external factors.

However, she expected the second half of the year to see a better economic performance.

According to statistics released by Bank Negara, the large inventory drawdown, particularly in manufacturing and commodity, also contributed to the decline in growth.

It said all sectors, except for construction, recorded contractions year-on-year. The manufacturing sector declined significantly by 17.6% led by a 23.1% contraction in export-oriented industries with the electrical and electronics subsector experiencing a steep 41.4% contraction.

Domestic-oriented industries also experienced a decline of 15.9% due to weakness in both consumer and construction-related subsectors.

The central bank said the services sector was flat following a 0.1% decline due to the impact from sub-sectors closely linked to the manufacturing sector.

It added that the trade surplus remained large at RM32.7bil as the contraction in imports was larger than in exports due to the lower imports of intermediate and capital goods.

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