Blue Capriccio

       Abraham Wald (1902-1950) was born in a Jewish family in a town in Austria – Hungarian empire.   He was home- schooled by his parents until college.   He studied mathematics in university, and graduated from University of Vienna with a PHD in mathematics. In 1938, he had to immigrated to the United States due to the discrimination and prosecution to Jews by the Nazi government. During World War II, Wald was a member of the Statistical Research Group (SRG) at Columbia University, where he applied his statistical skills to various wartime problems. The SGR was most high powered and most influential for the wartime military decisions, it had a handful of most extraordinary statisticians, and the smartest person in the group was Abraham Wald.   One of the problems that the SRG worked on was to examine the damage distribution on aircraft returning after their flying missions from Europe and to provide advice on how to minimize crew los...

In my daughter’s high school graduation day, the program included a 5-10 minutes “Thanks Mum and Dad!” video clips, with all the Year 12 students in groups or individually saying: “Thanks, Mum and Dad!”.   It was very heartfelt and nice feeling to see that the young people acknowledge their parents’ hard work for raising them up. Raising a grateful child is the greatest blessing for parents and the whole family. In our lives, more or less, we own favors from others.   When we are young, we receive the kindness and love from our parents, families, friends, teachers, classmates and others; when we become older we accept the support and care of the younger generation who work and care for us. Gratitude education is not about expecting children to give back but to let our children know that they are enjoying the efforts of others and that their lives are happy because of the works of the others.   From the moment a child was born, he/she is surrounded by hi...