JANUARY 30 — The nation’s mathematics curriculum at the secondary school should be restructured by incorporating the application of mathematical modelling, as this is crucial to support Malaysia’s initiative on Smart City, Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), Financial Technology (FinTech) and Big Data Analytics (BDA).
Moreover, in the case of Smart City, experts say mathematical modelling is required at the parametric level to control economic, environmental and budgetary effects.
Meanwhile, the application of advanced technology in FinTech would make it possible for the implementation of programmes that compute mathematical models for understanding and forecasting financial data in order to provide a better insight on future decision-making.
Thus, the government should therefore introduce more programmes or trainings for Malaysians to develop the skills needed in mathematics such as data, programming, methodologies, quantitative reasoning and analytical thinking.
The application of mathematics among Malaysians should be highlighted as we move towards a fully developed country.
Mathematics is defined as the science of numbers, forms, amount and their relationships. Stefan Banach, one of the world's most important and influential 20th-century mathematicians, stated that mathematics is the most beautiful and mostpowerful creation of the human spirit. It is also part of our daily life as the application of mathematics can be closely linked to science, technology and engineering.
But do you realise that mathematics is not just numbers?
Mathematics works at two levels: a language and a tool which show that the core value in mathematics is not only defined by number. In reality, it is more likely to solve the real-world problems in particular, such as computing the orbits of the planets in the solar system or perhaps decreasing the poverty rate.
Khadijah Aqilah Sallehuddin, one of the alumni in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and now working as an engineer in a Japan manufacturing company, said: “When we talk about mathematics, it is not only about subtraction and division, but more to solving real-world problems.”
In short, the application of mathematics can be specified with the term of mathematical modelling which represents the art of defining problems into numerical analysis that provides insight, answers, recommendations and solutions to the practitioners.
While some people do not notice the secret of mathematics, it is actually a boon because of its capability to generate a meaningful insight in the form of quantitative reasoning, apart from providing the qualitative solution.
In Malaysia, there is a research made on a proposed mathematical model of Influenza A, H1N1 for Malaysia which helps to understand the dynamics of an epidemic, to design treatment and develop the control strategies such as a vaccination programme or quarantine policy.
In 2015, the Malaysia Institute of Micro-Electronics System (Mimos) has launched the Big Data Analytics Digital Government Lab to support the implementation of BDA in the government.
Since it is a good initiative by Mimos to encourage the implementation of BDA in Malaysia, other authorities should be following it as well.
According to IBM, BDA is the utilisation of advanced analytic techniques against very big and various data sets including structure, semi-structured and also unstructured data, from different sources and different sizes from terabytes until zettabytes.
Some applications of BDA are useful to the government, the healthcare industry, education industry and business industry for example.
In the US, the government has been using BDA to analyse the large amounts of social disability claims made to the Social Security Administration in order to process medical information rapidly and efficiently and detect suspicious claims for decision-making.
As for Malaysia, the introduction of BDA should be introduced to graduates and students besides coaching and training programmes for the public sector agencies.
Most Malaysians should indeed be trained in this booming sector.
Besides training, the technical skills should be provided to people who are interested in BDA as the theories alone would not be enough to implement it.
Most graduates in Mathematics, Data Science and Statistics did not have enough exposure on the technical skills in BDA during their studies resulting in difficulties to find suitable jobs in Malaysia.
The number of unemployed Sciences, Mathematics and Computing graduates is quite substantial in Malaysia — 11.3 per cent in 2019 and the third highest among other courses.
Why is this so?
Some companies practising BDA would not only require someone with a good experience in BDA but also having the technical skills in machine learning such as Python and R programming, as it would be hard for them to achieve any role in BDA without any experiences or certificates, at least.
Now, the initiative seems to have been forgotten because of fewer training provided compared with previous years. The cost of the training is also high and if there is no clear indication on this, people would not be spending their money for the training.
As discussed above, mathematics is the foundation of the frontier technology development in Malaysia and our hope is that the government will emphasise the importance of mathematics for Malaysia.
More importantly, Malaysians should also contribute to the initiative in order for our country to be fully developed.
* Farhan Kamarulzaman is a research assistant at EMIR Research, an independent think tank focused on strategic policy recommendations based on rigorous research.
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
