Growing Sour With KPIs: Case of Mathematical Sciences

I'm very much well aware that I am not a prolific researcher (producing large quantities of papers is totally unheard of in my area) and certainly administrative matters is not really my cup of tea. But I do care about the development of science particularly theoretical sciences in our university and the country. However it seems that I have been classed unconditionally as a non-performing academic, which is pretty depressing.

As far as I know, I have never stayed idle with respect to research. I believe I have contributed in putting a theoretical physics group in place from being virtually nonexistent in the university. I have ventured into areas that many fear of doing so and tried to open opportunities in such areas. Some of these are quantization, quantum theory on punctured surfaces, hyperbolic geometry, quantum foundations, mathematical aspects of cosmology, complex networks, symplectic geometry in quantum information. Many times I have been asked to examine thesis and review papers on difficult  theoretical subjects. With potential oversea partners, I have tried my best to make things work and show others that we are doing some form of respectable theoretical sciences. I have also contributed in the progress made in Malaysian Journal of Mathematical Sciences by adopting LaTeX platform, an online submission system and a better international outlook. But I guess all these did not matter much. I don't like to make excuses and I know there is a need to improve. I try to stay above politics and have avoided rubbing shoulders with those highly ranked so that things are more favourable to us. Being classed as a non-performer and believing in leadership by example, it is perhaps better to consider that I be relieved of my current position as deputy director and chief editor of a journal and leave these to more deserving persons.

Being in administration for some time, I understand the tendency to follow KPIs by numbers as an easy way to monitor progress. Wisdom would however will tell us to be cautious about this and consider the details of research culture in different sciences. Even within mathematical sciences itself, there are variations. Mathematicians worldwide have been concerned with the blanket use of metrics to assess research and there have already been a few statements issued about this:

• From American Mathematical Society, https://www.ams.org/profession/leaders/culture/CultureStatement09.pdf 
• From International Mathematical Union, https://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/CEIC/ICM_2014_panels/Evaluation_of_individuals__FINAL.pdf 

On citation statistics, there are a few publications on the variations in different sciences:

• Robert Adler, John Ewing & Peter Taylor, Citation Statistics,  https://arxiv.org/abs/0910.3529
• Gregory Patience, Christian Patience, Bruno Blais & Francois Bertrand, Citation Analysis of Scientific Categories, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844016322800 

On making publication measures as a target, we have to remember Goodhart's Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Recently there is a study that shows that Goodhart's Law are already in action for academic publishing metrics:

• Michael Fire & Carlos Guestrin, Over-Optimization of Academic Publishing Metrics: Observing Goodhart's Law in Action

I believe the management and decision makers are perhaps aware of the issues I have mentioned above, and my wishes for them to be highly wise in their decision and policy making.

For me, I hope the current incident will not kill my passion for science and my wish to continue to contribute in wherever I can (in a natural way).

Goodbye Puteh

Today, our cat Puteh died sometime early in the morning. My other half being more attached to the cat was really sad about it. For me, I had a mixture of sadness and sense of relief given that she had suffered a lot. Puteh was diagnosed with kidney failure about two weeks ago after which we bought her an imported medication (which we need to get from Bandar Enstek and if we need more, we need to get it from Singapore).

Before that, we saw her eating less and less with some weight loss but we soon realise that she began to be less active and brought her to the clinic. She became weaker sometime early last week and almost unable to walk. It was only two days ago, she became almost immobile and began to ooze out blood when sleeping. My other half did all the nursing and cleaning her up until last night.

We actually got Puteh sometime end of 2008 from someone else. So she was with us for almost ten years and probably she was three to four years with the original owner. Thus they say if Puteh was human, she would be about 98 years old (multiply by seven, what I was told). So she was pretty old and had lost some teeth beforehand.

Here are some pics when we got her.

Puteh unlike others, is very timid and is not too active. She will often sleep with us in our room and around 6.30 pm would actually go down and wait for my other half to come back from work. Here are more pics when she was healthy.

A more recent picture with the other cats is the following (probably about one or two months back):

These pics are when she began to fall sick:

These are some pics from last night when my other half nursed and cleaned her up:

This video was taken a few nights ago:

It was a coincidence that all my children were back during last weekend, in time to see Puteh before she goes. This is a pic during Saturday's lunch.

This morning, we buried her in our backyard. She will certainly be missed.

Growing (Old) Pains

Apart from a series of long weekends last few weeks or so, I have been taking extra leaves due to my physical ageing conditions. Probably much due to highly stressed situations (which I will blog in future posts), my blood pressure has been high for the last several weeks, particularly diastolic pressure is typically 90 and easily gets into the 100+ range. Usually, such rise in pressure is accompanied by headaches and even chest pains (which is worrying for me due to diseased heart). In a bad spell, I would just need to lie down and occasionally my body simply shuts down in the form of drowsiness or unattentiveness. In such situations, I prefer not to come to work at all and prefer to rest or work at home at my own pace. I don't put up these stories for pride or need of sympathy but more for my own cautionary awareness of my state of health and others to understand if needed.

So last Monday, I decided to go to a private hospital to check-up on my health conditions. The weekend before I had abdominal pains and occasionally some chest pains. I could not do any work simply because I was too tired trying to bear the pain. My other half had suggested to me to go to the hospital a few times then but I knew then that I would simply be warded on Sunday only to receive doctor's advice on the next day. So we decided to go on the Monday instead. By then, the pain had subsided but we still decided to go for the check-up. The specialist we saw is my senior during school and university days and he specialised in gastroenterology, He advised me to go for endoscopy but since I had some chest pains and have history of diseased heart, he had to consult his colleague cardiologist before doing the procedure. I was then warded and did immediately some tests; the MRI scan was done during the night - I guess it was too busy during the day. The next day, I met the cardiologist and he explained that there were some minor blockage in three veins on the left part of my heart but it was only 30-50%. I knew this before from my last check-up and there was nothing new. He advised me to simply continue with medication and there is no need for invasive procedures. The other test I was waiting for was endoscopy. However since the abdominal pain has gone, my specialist friend gave me two options, to simply continue some prescribed medication and be discharged or wait for another day to do the scope. Worried that the hospital charges are already high, I opted for the former. Indeed when discharged, the bill had already gone beyond RM6500. This was more than I expected and had to use partially the credit card. Why I did not use insurance? I have given up on medical coverage when an insurance company decided not to cover my back pain hospital admission years ago and gave excuses on me not declaring the problems I had. So whatever policies I have now are for other purposes. Why not use public hospital? Well the private hospital was the closest to my house and they had already medical records of mine. In addition, I was prepared to pay to a certain extent but was surprised to get the amount stated above. Regrets? Maybe. The supposedly endoscopy that I wish I have did not happen and the cardiac tests simply gave reports that I have already known before.

With the above now made known, I hope to dispel any ideas of me trying to take more long weekends off. If last week's leave was indeed my attempt for a longer weekend, then it is certainly very expensive one for me. When I take leaves, normally either I'm really not well or I have something personal to do urgently, and this can be near the weekend or even in the middle of the week (my record of leaves should show). As much as I like to stay at home, I do love to do (academic) work in a stimulating and harmonious environment (unfortunately, not readily available sometimes at office). By the way I was anxious to come to work today (Monday) to discuss directions of the institute with respect to possible restructuring.

Am I making up all the pains for my convenience? I wish I can easily say no (or even yes) but there may be subtle psychological influences that make the situation as such. All this while I am trying to understand my bodily functions. The chest pains that I am feeling could be attributable to two different ailments: diseased heart and my gerd (gastroesophageal reflux disease). Essentially I can't tell which is which. Some people tell me that pain of a heart attack are pressuring or squeezing pain and not of sharp pain. I have experienced both, most of which are sharp pains but occasionally pressurizing pain. Whether I have suffered a heart attack, blood tests have not shown this. So I do not really know what it is. Are they all symptoms of my abdominal problem? Statistically, it seems strange to have more than 95% of the sharp pains coming from the left side of the chest. I would have expected naively, they are a bit less biased to which side of the chest. So I don't know what is really happening and whether I should be worried.

What I do know for sure is these pains I'm having are getting more frequent and I'm a bit concerned. I don't wish for me to depart so soon or unexpectedly. I wish I could live till the age of 90+ (like our prime minister) and still considered be useful. I have many dreams that I wish to pursue but old age has made me realise that some of these are statistically impossible.

Should I attribute these pains to work stress? Again, I have no clear answer yes or no. Certainly over the years, work has become more stressful and less enjoyable. Note that I don't long for those years back in the 80s and 90s where things are more laidback, nor do I want the current situation of chasing KPIs regardless of what is considered natural or not. I do know that I prefer to work within an environment where we are allowed to be creative on what we are passionate about. I hope whatever future we design allows for these things to happen. Otherwise, we may just be misleading ourselves in conforming to numbers (KPIs).

That brings me to a nice paper I saw yesterday about Goodhart's Law. I think admin  should read them.