Friday, May 21, 2021

Data Quality is not a Concept Now

Data Quality is not a Concept Now
 
I used to say during my research days,
 
If.you put garbage in to a computer garbage out invariably happens.

I used to detest meta analysts.

They are the ones who takes sets of  data from others and create a new set of data and assume that the new set is their own creation.

Assumption is a dangerous preoccupation.

It is like religious beliefs.

In reality they have not contributed a single bit of data.

So I collected each piece of data myself and double checked every piece.

No secretary was involved.

I was the secretary.
I was the data collector.
I was the data analyst.

It takes time but reliability stands out.

In big business these three are done by three different guys or girls and a single error is multiplied by three.

Multiple errors leads to multiplex of no validity.

This is where I am against the AI or artificial intelligence.

If you feed inaccurate and inadequate data the outcome is a singularly of nonsense.

Really I was against the medical data formats.
 
An accurately kept Bed Head Ticket with a ongoing problems and outgoing problems summarised, ideally on weekly basis and if not monthly basis is adequate.
 
A database is only good enough for retrieving and sorting out two or three cases with identical names.
 
Nothing more.

The rest becomes redundant statistics.

This does not underscore a simple database kept by a GP with regular contacts of subjects.

Unfortunately most GPS become data collectors and referral agents of substandard quality.

I was obsessed about a database from birth  in my research work but my attempt at extending beyond was futile since the responsibility of tying the knot  was delegated to midwives (mind you, there were a few good ones) who were poorly trained about accuracy, globally, as regards to the biodata collected and recorded on BHTS and the nurses are busy with birth certificates and the rest and the final record book had simple but many errors including the sex of the baby.

Mind you, I cracked the NUT that of the global belief that male babies are bigger and healthy, but in reality the womb of the mother is non discriminatory to the sex of the baby, if
BMII are compared with the lengthy  and weight (a bit  heavier  male babies) of the baby irrespective of the sex .

There was no SEX difference except the slight excess of death of male babies of small mothers, who.worked until the onset of parturition.

Especially so of mothers who were essentially labourers.

The remedy is simple no work after 35 weeks, plenty of sleep and good food.

Iron treatment had no relationship and one or two mothers were anaemic (excluded from the main database).

But B vitamins especially soluble ones are important and until.6 months after stopping  breast feeding.

The lactating mother is often neglected and baby is the center of attraction globally.

Regarding Biodata

No immediate cross checks and sometime with inordinate delays due to frequent shift changes.

Palming the buck to next shift is the name of the game.

Whenever I found discrepancy I used to correct them and mothers are really a patient lot in Ceylon but not the fathers.

Instead of a huge database  with errors multiplied but never knowing at which particular point of entry or contact that has happened, a lots of tiny databases with inbuilt validation algorithms are more effective and functional.

It is interesting to know that, a few guys are calling for data quality at entry point.

Like in purifying water by using filters the data pipeline at every point should be narrowed so that very little pass through to the next level.

Less data means easier is to validate and interpret and understand the clinical consequences.

The checking of data quality is a very good step in the right direction.

Like diplomats who lie for a living every day of the week and develop fake news for human consumption, media also take the baton forward in the relay cycle but inappropriately magnified.

I am fully with Donald Trump (he with a different objective) attacking the established system which need a total revamp.

For me single voter fraud is big enough and in Ceylon it is systemic and built into the system.

My dead father in law and mother in law voted, probably from heaven, ballot papers taken there, in their luggage to heaven, if not Kamma Compendium.

The above concept is alien to politicians.

They thrive on lies.

Of course people in general love lies in Ceylon especially if magnified by the media.

It is like our 550 Jathaka Katas.

Princess Diana's case in the past and currently "now not royal" Harry's case highlights this scenario in real life.

Unfortunately the medical media also has fallen into this trap deeply and the Coronavirus is a classic example.

Can we believe the data coming from China?

That was my first question when the pandemic begun.

Can we believe WHO?

Can we believe data from Ceylon.

I never believed in our doctored (by the army) data.

The current level of infection is the unfortunate end result.

Do not blame others.

Blame thyself.

Olympics in Japan 2021

Big thank you to Chairperson of Olympic Committee for holding fast.and beating the Japanese popular protest and holding it with due care given to the safety of the participants.

I think CNN should ban the Japanese Train Advertisement as a form of protest to the Japanese who are grumpy to the Olympics.

All athletes should participate BUT if they show any signs of mild illness they should withdrew giving written excuse and sort medical opinion immediately.

Any death, even.coincidential may be a big blow to Olympics especially.and sports in general.

Do not let your Dutch courage overtake your common sense and responsibility your   officials and fellow athletes safety.
The competition spirit should not deter the responsibility to the country you represent.

You are a sporting ambassador.

You.should love that image at trying.times.

They have trained for four years and waited another year.

It is a massive blow to moral of argyles and.sports in general.
Unlike team games athletics is a solitary game and toil.

With Coranavirus curtailing sports, I think 4 year gap is a non starter for many.
They should have more at least in yearly basis locally and internationally every two years.

By fiddling with regional politics and having a game at each.continent one can have 5 events.

This will allow athletes to have more opportunities.

Most burn will out they best will remain in good shape.

Now few words about R.J.K.Karunananda, who represented Olympics in 1964 in Japan.

He competed in marathon, 5000 and 10000 but became famous for the 5000.
He was lapped several times but completed  one before last lap with jeers and thunderous applauds.

He kept the Olympic Moto.

Participation not winning that matters.
He added a new proviso,.finishing what one started is also important.

Then we had S.L.B. Rosa who was looked after by two adopting mothers who were better than biological mothers.

Our officials ruined his participation in Montreal 1968.

Mind you both of them come from Roman Catholic Schools in Ampitiya where I schooled in the primary.

I went to Dharmaraja later and it was pleasing to see him winning the Dharmaraja cross country race.

He beat Karunananda and that is how he went to Montreal.
I was never good at long distance and I know why.
Genetically my glycogen stores are enough for 180 meters and nothing more.
These athletes have different long lasting glycogen in the heart and calf muscles.

Taking glucose at the beginning of.the race has no physiological value.

I remember that was the only incentive we had as kids.

My father was a big hindrance to sports and I.used to hide my running shorts.

All tailored by our next door Christian aunty. Finally, when I brought the under 12 and under 14 championship cup.
He began to understand bit of sports.

He hated us listening to BBC cricket commentary.
He rudely switched it off hating English accent.
His English accent was very poor and luckily my teachers at Roman.Catholic School put me on the correct track including sports.
I hated the Christian Bible reading and I was thrown out of the class.
I.conspired with my Buddhist friends soon they joined me.
While our Christian friends toiled with the Bible we played games in the.school grounds.
Mind you the above famous athletes trained in bare foot on the one and only road and mile posts were their targets.

We used to make yearly balloon and kites with adult help and also Wesak lanterns.
The bamboo blasters were our new year tools that were cut to pieces to male lanterns of various shapes and sizes.

With Coronavirus rampaging I do not see the kids even making kites.

I hope they  will at least.make lanterns come this Poya.


Lack of Scientific Strategic Point of Convergence

 Lack of Scientific Strategic Point of Convergence

This piece is.written with empathy.

I started  with skepticism bit mingled with sarcasm, especially, for all politicians of a large spectrum, globally spread.

I am gearing for equanimity but no where near it.

There are basically four fears.

Loss of one's belongings or greed of possessing more and more (it is called Americanism and Trumpism is its latest mutant) including power spectrum.

Anger or hate that has no limits (currently Israel but it shifts its location globally).

The worst of it is the idealism that come as various form of religions, now wanting women not to wear underwear but males excluded.

The worst is the fear of death and finding no space to bury the death, in India is escalating.

I think all humans deserve a final resting place, if not in place but in our memory.

They are our fellow beings irrespective of their birth or origin (I mean cultures).

They are not simple statistics but a product of two, a mother and a putative father.

We are sure of our mother but never the father according to Abraham T Kouvoor, an Indian skeptic or a rationalist, long gone with his establishment.

I simply believe  one can be a skeptic but but never a fully accomplished rationalist.

As a medical man every death recorded  is a sting on our expertise challenged to the very core.

Every man or woman is counted and they are not "Vote Bank" to exploit.

Every leader in the developed and developing world is accountable and culpable and it is applied to current President Biden and blaming Trump or scapegoating him is not the scientific way around.

We all fallible human beings, it is part of our nature but that rule does not apply to guys and girls clamouring for power keg.

The political powder peg!

The Coronavirus has exposed us to the way we use ad hoc management strategy to any human crisis, let alone a communicable disease.

It all started in London with cholera epidemic  and it took a decade or more to trace the series of deaths to a common tap used by Londoners.

The primitive Public Health was born but now with tons of antiseptics condiments it has proved ineffective.

It is long before Simpson's forensic principles which I loved in total, that put the foundation of my Pathology Stint.

Realizing that I could add only 20%  after full postmortem examination to the already existing 40% which put breaks to the scientific medical  brain of mine was a welcome recipe.

It broaden my outlook and opened me to Linux and Free Software.

Medicine was a boring subject that I never said while in practice.

With Coronavirus that gut feeling of mine has resurfaced.

I am not saying it to put off anybody who wants to become a doctor or nurse.

But the Coronavirus will diminish the entry into this field for a very long time.

It has exposed the public sector's lack of commitment in UK and private sector's vulnerability in USA.

Insurance corporations will rewrite their small prints to exclude Coronavirus deaths, if not care.

Their premise majority will not fall ill and the premiums are good source for investments falls on the floor, if not the on the face.

I always discouraged psychology and psychiatry not because their is significant lack of pathological footprints but the shear number of the population.

There are more than 7 billion living psychologies on this planet and their should be billions of psychiatrists.

Only Buddha who could read minds of others but that is also one at a time, with rebirth and it's consequences examined in.detail but ordinary psychology guy generally projects his perspective to the gullible subjects.

It has many inherent risks.

The psychiatrists commits suicide  more often than a pathologists.

That is why I always discourage somebody wanting to do psychology.

Now a bit of intermission.

Guys and Girls do not be in a rush to buy an Apple device or Google's Chrome device.

They are all bloatware padded with bubbling new icons and touch finger pads.

It is a waste of money and my version 8 and 9 if not 10 is sufficient for my work with fancy typefaces that takes the strain on my fingers and finger tips.

But if you want hard work performed it is the PC not your Laptop  that takes  you to the winning post, with Grammerly Typeface ruling with grammar.

Apart from my interest in Linux, I took the trouble to improve my English (especially after my retirement).

During my workdays, it was all about correct technical English and exact definition that mattered.

It is now more of both since I have broaden it to Ultra Science and Physics of mine.

I may have to coin new words to add the 4th dimensional view and perspective.

We are unfortunately trapped in 3 dimensions and there is more to this Universe than three dimensions.

It is a big mathematical puzzle.

Universe does neither stop at pictures and video conferences nor the speed of light.

It is much more.

One has to get rid of all religious beliefs and tendencies.

We have to drop political conventions that all men and women are equal.

We have enormous potentials that are suppressed by political, religious and broadly speaking scientific views.

I have already said we may be able to unravel the 20%.

I am not trying to be philosophical here.

The philosophers  are good at posing good questions and not expecting a ready made answer.

Quite the opposite here in my expansive projections.

Those projections are applied  to Coronavirus spread.

My current view is 50% blame goes to the politicians who govern and the other 50% who believe them as gospel truths.

We must make people less believing the plausible government side of the argument and find big holes in that argument.

I think there is a big hole in the big bucket of lies spread by paranoid doctors.

The big bucket cannot hold the current fluidity of the argument, since the virus is finding new ways explore the human predicaments.

Its fluidity in existence is existential.

There is no tailor made answers.

The answers have to be evolving with the trends and statistics.

I have a few points for argument.

The population is fast expanding and WHO has no population policy to begin with.

UNO is a Big Failure.

The nature's answer is Coronavirus to control the over population.

But a successful virus never exterminate it's host.

Less than 0.001% is it's normal strategy.

The Coronavirus far exceeds the limit of nature's tolerance.

That is my argument for human made or laboratory made virus argument.

It is also of 20 to 30 nanometer size very easy to spill out of the unregulated genomic laboratories all over the world.

Craig Ventor may have made millions, if not billions but that genomic cat has gone savagely wild now.

I do not fancy the argument that the virus was present and incubating in USA, well before 2014.

The Chart's extrapolation is in error.

Extrapolating without real data but imaginary data is totally  unscientific!

That is the Chinese side of the argument.

But nobody talks about Singapore planes taking the virus all over the world from China and its lack in house plans to spread inside the cabins.

I have no sympathy for few airlines going bust.

The current trends in technology and video conferences put lead weight on airlines trying to open up logistically again.

The priorities are changing fast and I have no grouse about Air Ambulances which was a part of my work in New Zealand.

This industry is only for the super flyers.

Not for an average Indian who does not have a regular place for logging and share a room or dormitory.

Lack of housing is a global problem, especially for migrant workers.
I need to expand on global housing and how architects have no inspiration as regards to human predicament in a global pandemic.
Their esthetics may have high value for rich customers but majority in this world does not have a proper roof above them.

Sharing toilets is a common problem.

A house with 4 should have at least three toilets if we are to avoid domestic transmission of any infection.

They should not be on the same level but at different levels, at least four with a rooftop garden to support robust plants that cool the house and capture at least minute amount that was released during construction.

I do not believe in Premadasa type of "Block Cement" compartments with common toilets.

I hate high rising buildings.

If a high rising building.catchers fire it is catastrophe.

See the film Towering Inferno.
I was once incarcerated overnight in Singapore due to mishandling of the flight schedule by Sri-Lankans Airline

I.was in the  21 or 23rd floor and I could not sleep having explored the fire exit twice.
I caught up with my sleep inflight to London.

Those days airfares were cheap and only a few traveled.

Middle seats were empty and space was enough to spread out.

Coming to ground level, in my neighbourhood there is a common toilet which is an eyesore.

There is a house built on Premadasa style near it without a toilet.

Our Grama Niladhari's office is nearby.
 

He has no toilet.

There was a public water tap like in London, there.

I was instrumental in closing it to save water.

Why somebody get free water while I pay the water bill? 

Mind you, our last water bill was over Rs.5000/=.

So this joint is a ideal breeding or spreading ground for the Coronavirus and the quarantine site or the teacher training college is nearby.

No wonder three wheeler drivers were the first to catch the virus.

Little beyond is the University.

Thank God,  it is closed to students and would have been  an epicenter.

We have mismanaged this crisis from the very beginning.

There were big holes to plug but they.plugged the easy ones.

It is our Navy who started it.

Of course army helped it spreading.

I finish with a sore point.

I have nothing against LGBT people but homosexuals spread this virus globally.

It is simply a Enterovirus that slips the gear to respiratory mode  having switched to Adenovirus methodology (this supports my original argument that it is a laboratory virus which escaped from China).

AIDS was a classic example.

It was tree monkey virus to begin with.

The German  Nazis had a base in Western Africa before Second World War.

They used poor tree moneys for experimenting.

Gods only know for what?

May be for biological weapons.

They picked up the virus from the monkeys.

They were homosexuals whereas Africans were not.

Poor Africans were subjects of vaccination program without sterilizing needles and instruments and not by sexual route.

They passed the Mutant AIDS virus to all Africans.

History repeats and this time, it is in Communist  China.

The bat was the source if not civets.