Wednesday, January 16, 2019

Prioritization of the Allocation of Time


Prioritizing Time Allocation to Achieve Goals in Life [i]

Som Karamchetty

Overview:
     People usually complain that they did not or do not have time to do certain things. Older people, like me, complain that we were not taught certain things when we were children. We did not know what we did with all that time.
     The reality is that in most cases, people are not conscious of time as a resource that they have to control its use or prioritize how much time they would like to allocate to various tasks at hand. Time is not like flowing water that you could dam or other capture in buckets and store for later use. It is more like sunshine; it goes fast and cares little what you do.
     Before the prioritization exercise, people have to list the tasks way ahead of time. This means that a plan is needed that sets strategic goals for life, analyzing the knowledges and skills needed to achieve those goals, and setting priorities to executing those tasks at each stage of life. Lacking such a plan and discipline to execute it, we will waste our time by the minutes and hours in the days and the days and months in our lives.
     Specific skills are prerequisites to pursue certain pursuits. This requires sequencing of tasks. Therefore, it is best to schedule the accomplishment of some tasks in early life in order to gain skills and capabilities in a progressive manner. It means that certain tasks should be scheduled and performed during early life. Thus, identification of skills and capabilities needed and the correct timing in life for their acquisition, and then the scheduling of tasks to acquire those capabilities and skills are essential for a highly successful and enjoyable life. This leads to the prioritization of time allocation to tasks to achieve goals in life.  This sequence is explained in the following sections.

Time is a critical resource:
    Whether it is a small chore or a major objective in life, it takes time to accomplish it.  In daily life and in our professional careers, we allocate time either consciously or thoughtlessly. But, unfortunately, we do not pay due attention to time and pay a huge price for such disrespect for time. We treat it like we have all the time in the world.
     If we take an incisive look at the life spans of people, we realize that it is indefinite. We do not know when the supply of time we have will be switched of.  As stated before, it is not a resource that we can borrow from others or store for later use. Time can neither be bought from others for our use nor can it be sold or given away for use by others. Yes! One can donate blood and organs (even after death) but not time. Surely, we can waste time in a variety of meaningless pursuits.

Resources Critical to Life:
     Other resources, such as money, are also critical to life. But, these resources are both storable and exchangeable. Our lives can be divided roughly into three phases. During childhood and old age, we cannot accomplish any tasks to accumulate resources needed to live a successful life. We do all our efforts only during the middle span to earn resources to sustain life during that span and the latter part of our lives. Another characteristic is that we have to assume that we need resources for a long old age and a short span of life to earn and store those resources. This characteristic is imposed by the uncertainty of one’s life span.
      Since time is critical to accomplishing personal goals, prioritizing its allocation to tasks is critical to success in life. Hence, we need to plan the allocation of this very critical resource. We should set goals for the acquisition of these other resources so that the resources can be traded during our life time as necessary. Then, for executing the necessary tasks to the accomplishment of those goals, we can allocate time on a prioritized basis.

Set Goals at Each Stage of Life:
Inheritance of Genes:
     People inherit the genes from their parents and this process decides certain basic bodily attributes to start with. Genes play an important role in one’s life in terms of certain abilities and disabilities one is endowed with. If one has good abilities, one should thank the parents. It may be worthwhile compensating the parents through some means for their donation of good genes. If one has bad abilities, one should be nice to parents so that they may compensate in some other way. A person can perhaps do nothing about having been given bad genes. Hopefully, certain genomic treatments under current scientific research may help one in the future. The important point is to make sure that we do not give bad genes to our children if we know that they might get them from us.
Body growth from age minus 10 months to year one or two:
     From the time of conception to the time of birth, mothers take full charge of the growth of a child’s body. Thereafter during the first couple of years after birth, mother and others who nurse the baby help them in terms of bodily growth. This is also the time, when they can help the child in terms of their knowledge and skill acquisition foundations.
Brain growth:
     It is important to realize that brain growth is also in the hands of the parents, family, and the environment in these early months and years. In other words, these people help the child with strong and positive mental growth.
Early Childhood Development (from age two to five years):
     During this period, a child begins to develop likes and dislikes. Children might develop some attitudes that can be helpful or not to their positive growth. Parents, guardians, family, relatives, friends, and the society influence the growth of the child’s body and mind. Some children develop a strong interest in music, games, reading, inquisitiveness, and other positive and beneficial knowledges and skills.
     It is at this stage, some children develop naughty and behavioral problems. They may be asking for more of everything and exhibit a complete lack of discipline. If parents treat a child like a precious toy and surrender to their whims, they would create an expensive doll that is only good for the shelf for life.
Childhood through Adolescence and Teens:
     This is the period when children get an opportunity to gain basic knowledge through education and develop attitudes and a variety of life skills. But, it is also the period when they can go astray and acquire a variety of bad habits that inhibit their capabilities to play an acceptable, a respected, and a productive life in the society. Some children exhibit their gained attitudes, knowledges, and skills very soon and if they are negative, there is potential for quick correction. If, on the other hand, such negative skills are kept latent, (or ignored, excused, and hidden by parents) they could lead to a rough and dangerous life for the young person.
Youth:
     This is the period when people gain their educational qualifications that lead to good careers. They realize that 1. Money is needed to satisfy their needs and wants; 2. Money comes only by doing jobs, and 3. Jobs would require appropriate knowledges, skills, abilities, and attitude. Such realization leads to prioritizing the allocation of time to the right tasks on their list.
     Thus, in all these stages, a child has to learn and start practicing the allocation of time to various tasks they are pursuing. Unfortunately, in most cases, children as well as youth pay no attention to time and even think that they have a huge amount of time ahead of them to dispense with it as they like. In some instances, even parents encourage the acquisition of bad usage of time by saying, “He is still young and he has plenty of time to learn.”
     Good arborists know that the growth of a tree can be shaped when it is still a plantlet. They pay good attention to the growth of the tree from the time of selection of the seeds, the soil, the environment, the orientation, the use of fertilizers, application of pesticides, training the growth (as well as pruning) of the branches, and so on. Once the tree becomes mature, there is not much corrective action they can do even if the tree is deficient in some respects. In the worst case, the tree becomes used as firewood or mulch.
     To turn a tree into an espalier, its branches have to be properly restrained and guided while it is still tender. In a similar manner, if a child wants to be a gymnast, their muscles and tendons have to be trained while they are still young and pliable. For a future singer, the vocal chords need the training very early in life. For a future writer, the brain has to be conditioned in childhood for good reading, comprehension, and writing.
     Youth can learn from this analogy and focus on the right things that should be done at the right time and by prioritizing the allocation of time to critical tasks.
Good retirement life and savings:
     People like to retire at some point in time and lead or continue to lead a good life as seniors. But, if one waits till that time, it will be too late. There must be a plan and saving of funds necessary for that planned life. If there is neither a plan nor savings, one will drag oneself into retirement and life could be a real burden and no enjoyable retirement. Hence, planning for retirement should be made while one is pursuing an active career and earning income.
Paying back debts – supporting parents:
     It is obvious that one can pay off debts when one is earning income. It is likely that people have borrowed funds to pay for college in their youth when they had little income. These types of loans are obvious but not the unwritten ones. The funds spent by parents beyond their means are such unwritten debts. It is possible that some parents had forsaken saving funds for their own retirement but spent such sums on the education of their children. People may not consider such expenses by parents as debts that they should be obligated to pay back. In some cases, people may consider it their moral obligation to pay back to their parents in the time of need by the parents. In some countries, it is a legal requirement for people to support their old age parents if the latter need financial help.
Happy life – having a good family – supporting family:
     In the above sections, we discussed saving for the future, investing in children’s growth, and paying back the debts that one owes. Now comes, the present life – the middle stage. One likes a good family life once they take up a job, get married, and have a job or run a business. During this stage, one will have income and expenses and hence developing a budget is useful. Actually, a responsible person will consider a budget as a necessity. It is important to realize that a budget depends on the way one plans one’s lifestyle.
     As described in the earlier sections, income, expenses, and choice of lifestyle depend on the upbringing during childhood and the abilities gained during adulthood. Unfortunately, some people become addicted to the past lifestyle (e.g. children of rich parents) rather than reassess the lifestyle they can actually afford based on their own income, which itself is dictated by their capabilities. It is important to recognize that lifestyle determines the expenses. If income is greater than expenses plus forecasted savings for the future, that lifestyle is appropriate. On the other hand, when expenses are greater than the income, one gets into debt, assuming that some other source will lend funds. Such a situation will have bad consequences for later stages of life. Expecting miracles to happen and angels to deliver riches should be left to the dreams!
Paying back to society – paying taxes and charity:
     Most societies assist people who are driven to poverty. In that sense, the society acts as a shock absorber that gives funds to the dispossessed. Usually, such funds are barely sufficient to lead a minimal survival level existence and not a lavish lifestyle. In order to provide such assistance to poor people, the society collects taxes and runs charities. Consequently, people living in societies will be required to pay taxes and may be expected to support charities.
    Despite all the capabilities and strengths, people can run into rough times when their income is drastically disrupted for a variety of reasons including long term ill health or the death of an earning member of the family. Insurance schemes of various types are made available to assist people to overcome such situations and lead a reasonable (planned) lifestyle. To take advantage of such schemes, one has to opt in and pay insurance premiums while they are earning income.
    The idea is that people will have good times and bad times and by pooling their resources in some planned ways, those who are endowed with resources can help those deprived at the times of the latter’s need.
Good next life or next destination – good deeds in this life and religious activities:
     Some people believe that when their life on earth ends, they will be reborn in another life or that they go to heaven or hell. It is here that religions come in and make suggestions about the necessity to do good deeds in this life to either find a better next life or to book a prepaid ticket to heaven rather than be dropped into the hell. Of course, these deeds cost money and/or time.

Prioritization in the Allocation of Time to Accomplish Goals:
     In the previous sections, I listed various types of tasks that one has to do during each stage of their life. As tasks take the time available in a day, in a week, and a year. In this section, I will discuss prioritized allocation of time.
     Children are not able to earn the resources needed but their time is being expended. In other words, neither the choice of goals nor conscious allocation of time to accomplish the selected goals is within their current capability. It is done by the parents, teachers, and the society. Hence, it falls upon parents to allocate a part of their time to ensure that the activities necessary for the proper growth of the children are performed. As a mark of their love for children, parents should take responsibility to do prioritized allocation of time to the growth of children’s physical, mental, and spiritual growth.
     As children begin to express some independence, that is the best time for parents to teach them the lessons about the primacy of time and the need for prioritizing their time allocation. This exercise may be easier if examples of the activities that some highly successful people had undertaken in their childhood and the benefits they accrued are explained to them in the form of reading exercises or showing videos to the children.
     During adolescence, children are attracted by some activities that appear to be fun and enjoyable. They may be inclined to give undue priority to such activities and allocate time quite unconsciously or unintentionally. Very soon, addicted to such activities, adolescents forsake the ability to do prioritization of time allocation to necessary and useful activities. They move into activities like driftwood in a fast flowing stream of water. Parents, teachers, counselors, and coaches may be able to help the children to get back to becoming conscious of their ability and capability to control the prioritization.
     If they forget the concept of prioritization of allocation of time to tasks, young adults drift into doing whatever comes in their way rather than pursuing activities that are relevant and necessary to achieve the current and future goals. Hence, during this stage of life, youth have to put their tasks together and begin prioritizing them as they allocate time to doing the selected and ranked tasks.
     Once prioritized allocation of time becomes a habit in childhood, people will continue to do that during their youth and adult life and they will utilize time in the best manner. I observed many colleagues who had been very conscious of how they were utilizing their time and were specifically avoiding useless pursuits by minimizing the time periods they were involved in trivial pursuits.

Conclusion:
     Once the habit of recognizing the tasks pertinent to a particular stage of life, ranking them, and prioritizing time allocation to the tasks becomes natural, people will begin to identify and accomplish the goals. Such accomplishment is highly likely to make them feel happy and enjoy the tasks rather than see them as burden. They start visualizing a life’s journey that they actually planned, which in turn leads a highly positive outlook on life.
     During their sunset days, they will be very happy that they accomplished successfully all that they planned and will be looking forward to their ensuing journey.
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[i] The writer is not a specialist in the topical area. This write up is based on his thoughts and opinions. Comments are welcome. He plans to write the development of a Life Plan and details of Tasks for each stage of life at a later time. Obviously, that task is not in his priorities now!

Monday, January 14, 2019

Immigration Model to Evaluate Benefits


Immigration Modeling Method
By Som Karamchetty

Modeling Concept:

     Immigration is usually discussed and described as the number of people moving to a country. But, immigration is much more than people moving. People bring or take with them a number of attributes. They carry wealth, education, knowledge and skill capabilities, innovative abilities, behaviors, and so on. Therefore, it is important to consider them in a mathematical model.
     In engineering, thermal systems are modeled in terms of mass and energy balance. Mass transfer is accounted for in mass balance or the law of conservation of mass. Energy transfer is accounted for in energy balance or the First Law of Thermodynamics. It may further be noted that energy comes in many forms and various forms of energy are considered as applicable to a situation.
     In the case of immigration, we may account for people in a balance similar to mass balance. Wealth transfer may be considered in a manner similar to energy balance. Like energy, wealth also comes in many forms as explained in the formulation of the model in the following sections.
     In thermodynamic systems, when energy transfer takes place from one form to another, the conversion may not take place at one hundred percent efficiency. This is explained in terms of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In the case of wealth transfer from one form to another, certain conditions may prevent the one hundred percent conversion.
     Here is a suggested model of immigration patterned after the systems modeling approach normally used in thermal systems modeling. As in the case of the thermal systems models, we use a modeling approach that uses a system and surroundings.

Immigration Model:

     Following the thermal systems analogy, we take a country as the System and the rest of the world as Surroundings with immigrants and emigrants as shown in Figure 1.




Figure 1: System and Surroundings - with People Balance
                                       
    First, we apply a relationship similar to the law of conservation of mass or the mass balance. It is also called the mass flow equation in thermodynamic (or fluid flow) systems. In case of immigration, let us take into account the number of people in a country before and after a certain number of people enter as immigrants and another group of people leave as emigrants during a certain period.

    Suppose a country A has Nci number of citizens.  Now, if n1, number of people immigrate from the rest of the world to country A, and if n2, number of people emigrate from the country A to the rest of the world, country A will have Ncf number of citizens and residents, the following equation applies.

Nci + n1 - n= Ncf     (1)
  
Where,
Nci is the Number of Citizens or people in the country initially,
n1 is the number of immigrants that entered the country,
n2 is the number emigrants that left the country, and
Ncf is the number of citizens or people in the country finally.

    Suppose that the net wealth of each citizen (or resident) of country A is hi and the people immigrating (entering a country) have a net individual wealth of h1 and the people emigrating (leaving the country) A have a net individual wealth of h2, then the net wealth of each citizen of the country A changes to hf and the following equation applies to the wealth of the country.

Nci * hi + n1 * h1 - n2 * h2  = Ncf *  hf                            (2)

This equation is similar to the Energy Equation or the law of conservation of energy or the First Law of Thermodynamics.
     Country A may receive a certain amount of wealth from another country in the world or give some wealth away to other countries in the world without any people carrying that wealth.
     Suppose the country A receives an amount of wealth Win from the rest of the world, and gives away an amount of wealth, equal to Wout, to the rest of the world, then the following equation applies. This is shown in Figure 2.

Nci * hi + n1 * h1 - n2 * h2 + Win – Wout = Ncf *  hf                            (3)
Equation (3) has units of wealth, dollars.




Figure 2: Wealth Balance with Immigration and Emigration


    When people move across countries’ borders, they bring with them their capabilities like education, innovative capability, and so on. These capabilities are similar to chemical energy, catalytic capability, and so on in a material. In order to take these capabilities into consideration, we can apply various enhancements to this basic equation (3) showing wealth balance.
     Suppose the country A has an average individual education level ei and the arriving immigrants have an average education level of e1 and the emigrants have an average education level of e2, then the average education level of country A changes to ef and the following equation applies.

Nci * ei + n1 * e1 - n2 * e2 = Ncf *  ef                          (4)
Equation (4) has units of education.

     After immigrants arrive in the country A and a certain time lapses, they will use their educational qualifications to create wealth. It will be somewhat like a chemical reaction occurring and generating thermal or other energy. In that sense, education level will be like chemical energy in a material. Using such an analogy, we can use the wealth equivalent for education and write Equation 5, below.

Nci * hei + n1 * he1 - n2 * he2 = Ncf * hef                         (5)

     By combining the Equations 3 and 5, we get the combined wealth and education balance shown in Equation 6.

Nci * hi + Nci * hei + n1 * h1 + n1 * he1 n2 * h2 – n2 * he2 + Win – Wout  =
Ncf *   hf   + Ncf * hef                      (6)

By substituting the following relationships,
he1 = K * e1
he2= K * e2
hei = K * ei
hef = K * ef , using k as a constant to convert the average education level to average wealth equivalent, into Equation (6), we get

Nci * hi + Nci * K * ei + n1 * h1 + n1 * K * e1 n2 * h2 – n2 * K * e2 + Win – Wout  =
Ncf *   hf   + Ncf * K * ef                      (7)

     Some immigrants bring their capability to invent and innovate whether or not they possess wealth and education with them. Over time, their ability to innovate creates wealth. Let us say, I is the average innovative ability of a person. Innovative ability is similar to catalysts. (Catalysts may not possess energy but can help release thermal energy from other materials.) But, in a country where there is wealth (to finance enterprises), educated people to create and manufacture products, innovators can convert their ability to innovate into wealth over time. Now, we can add this ability to innovate and rewrite the equation 7 as follows.

     Ii is the innovative ability of existing citizens in the country A, I1 is the innovative ability of the immigrants, I2 is the innovative ability of emigrants, and If is the innovative ability of the final citizens of country A.
     We use hIi as the wealth equivalent of innovative ability of initial citizens, hI1 as the wealth equivalent of innovative ability of immigrating people, hI2 as the wealth equivalent of innovative ability of emigrating people, and hIf is the wealth equivalent of innovative ability of final citizens. We get

Nci * hi + Nci * K * ei + Nci * hIi + n1 * h1 + n1 * K * e1  + n1  * hI1    -  n2 * h2 – n2 * K * e2 - n2  * hI2     + Win – Wout  = Ncf *   hf   + Ncf * K * ef    + Ncf * hIf                 (8)

If q is a constant that denotes conversion of the ability to innovate in to wealth, we get  

hI1  = q * I1
hI2  = q * I2
hIi  = q * Ii
hIf  = q * If  , and substituting these equivalents into Equation 8, we get

Nci * hi + Nci * K * ei + Nci * q * Ii + n1 * h1 + n1 * K * e1  + n1  * q * I1    -  n2 * h2 – n2 * K * e2 - n2  * q * I2    + Win – Wout  = Ncf *   hf   + Ncf * K * ef    + Ncf * q * If                 (9)

     It may be noted that in the above equations, the average values for wealth of people, the education level, and the innovative ability are used. In order to get finer details, we can define the average values for each of these values for smaller segments and sum them up. Such modeling will follow the models used in multi-component, multiple types of energy systems in thermal modeling of chemical systems.

Conclusion:

     These simple equations allow us to calculate and quantify the merits and demerits of certain types of immigration to the wealth of a country. Such modeling and simulations would help countries as they develop immigration policies.

     If immigrants bring education level and/or wealth, and/or innovative ability greater than the average existing education level and/or wealth, and/or innovative ability in the country, the country’s wealth increases over time.

     On the other hand, if immigrants bring education level and/or wealth, and/or innovative ability less than the average existing education level and/or wealth, and/or innovative ability in the country, the country’s wealth decreases over time.

     More detailed analyses may show the linkage between the types of education and skills an immigrant brings to a country and helps in innovation using locally available resources.

     Adult immigrants that come with good education and skills gained in a low cost country would actually save educational costs as opposed to child immigrants as children normally do not have educational qualifications, or wealth, or innovative and catalytic abilities. However, children will contribute to future wealth as citizens and are likely to have little effect on the culture of the country A.

     Immigrants also consume products and services and thus create jobs and economic activity. It will be interesting to explore the effect of immigrants via their effect on the domestic market on the creation of wealth in a country.

     Immigrants’ behavioral characteristics would also have a strong effect on the wealth of a country; it can be captured in the equations (additional terms should be added).

     The equations actually formulate simple relationships but by looking at them in this way, one can be inspired to develop the relationships and assist the decision makers.

     For example, such a model would provide an answer to a question, such as, ‘is it better to give money to a country rather than allowing its poor citizens and illiterate people to immigrate’ from the perspective of country A.

Tailpiece:
     Since I talked about the Thermodynamic system model in the analogy, one might be justified to ask if the Second Law of Thermodynamics can also be applied. The answer is a resounding ‘Yes.’ If a person with high educational and/or innovative ability is not allowed to excel, (by giving such a person a menial job as opposed to a deserving position), the inherent capability is not utilized by the country A.



Saturday, January 12, 2019

Cooperating AI/Robotic Agents

The need to Develop Cooperative AI Agents and Robots

     When human professionals undertake a program or project and execute it, several experts, specialists, and generalists do various tasks as a team. Each of them knows what they can do what they need to delegate to other professionals. They know who those other persons are or know how to find them and do so. Work is assigned along with terms of reference and expectations. People communicate during the performance of the tasks to get clarifications, to issue changes, to report status, and so on. They evaluate progress and re-plan as needed.
     It is too much to expect one AI system (or AI agent) to have the capability (currently) to do all these distinct tasks in multitudinous disciplines. Therefore, what we need to develop are hierarchical AI systems with attributes similar to those that humans possess as described above. We may call them Cooperative AI Agents, which know how to work as a team and accomplish a task.
     Here is a presentation describing the concept briefly.