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I refer to the article “Straits Times! Why you edit until like that?” (theonlinecitizen, Mar 24). In my view, the Straits Times Forum Editor was not wrong to edit the letter.

From a statistical pespective, the forum letter writer, Mr Samuel Wee, was quoting the wrong statistics.

For example, the Education Minister said “How children from the bottom one-third by socio-economic background fare: One in two scores in the top two-thirds at PSLE” - But, Mr Samuel Wee wrote “His statement is backed up with the statistic that 50% of children from the bottom third of the socio-economic ladder score in the bottom third of the Primary School Leaving Examination”. Another example is Mr Wee’s: “it is indeed heartwarming to learn that only 90% of children from one-to-three-room flats do not make it to university”, when the Straits Times article “New chapter in the Singapore Story”http://pdfcast.org/pdf/new-chapter-in-singapore-story of 8 March, on the Minister’s speech in Parliament, clearly showed in the graph “Progression to Unis and Polys” (Source: MOE  (Ministry of Eduction)), that the “percentage of P1 pupils who lived in 1- to 3-room HDB flats and subsequently progressed to tertiary education”, was about 50 per cent, and not the ’90 per cent who do not make it’ cited by Mr Samuel Wee.

The Straits Times Forum editor Yap Koon Hong has told opposition politician Chee Soon Juan that he would be denied space in the Forum pages until he withdrew his “serious and unfounded aspersions” on the integrity of the newspaper. He was responding to previous reports on the SDP website which implied that The Straits Times had unfairly edited certain portions of Chee’s letters before publishing them.

Chee took issue with the fact that the title of his second letter had been changed to "PAP just as confrontational, replies Chee", which implied that he was indeed confrontational. In fact, newspapers rarely use the headlines suggested by writers and most readers know that headlines, together with picture selection and captions, are the work of sub-editors and not writers.

The SDP website shows that almost half of Chee's letter was deleted before publication. The original text was 635 words long. Forum page letters are generally less than 400 words long. The published version of Chee's letter was 348 words long.

Letter sent by by my good friend Samuel C. Wee to ST on the 8th of March, quoting statistics from their Page One infographic: (Read this closely!) I read with keen interest the news that social mobility in Singapore’s education system is still alive and well (“School system still ‘best way to move up’”; Monday). It is indeed heartwarming to learn that only 90% of children from one-to-three-room flats do not make it to university. I firmly agree with our Education Minister Dr Ng Eng Hen, who declared that “education remains the great social leveller in Singaporean society”. His statement is backed up with the statistic that 50% of children from the bottom third of the socio-economic ladder score in the bottom third of the Primary School Leaving Examination. In recent years, there has been much debate about elitism and the impact that a family’s financial background has on a child’s educational prospects. Therefore, it was greatly reassuring to read about Dr Ng’s great faith in our “unique, meritocratic Singapore system”, which ensures that good, able students from the middle-and-high income groups are not circumscribed or restricted in any way in the name of helping financially disadvantaged students. I would like to commend Ms Rachel Chang on her outstanding article. On behalf of the financially disadvantaged students of Singapore, I thank the fine journalists of the Straits Times for their tireless work in bringing to Singaporeans accurate and objective reporting.

What was actually published last Friday, March 18th 2011 A reassuring experience of meritocratic system I READ with keen interest the news that social mobility in Singapore’s education system is still alive and well (‘School system still ‘best way to move up”; March 8). It is indeed heartwarming to learn that almost 50 per cent of children from one- to three-room flats make it to university and polytechnics. I firmly agree with Education Minister Ng Eng Hen, who said that education remains the great social leveller in Singapore society. His statement is backed by the statistic that about 50 per cent of children from the bottom third of the socio-economic bracket score within the top two-thirds of their Primary School Leaving Examination cohort. There has been much debate about elitism and the impact that a family’s financial background has on a child’s educational prospects. Therefore, it was reassuring to read about Dr Ng’s own experience of the ‘unique, meritocratic Singapore system’: he grew up in a three-room flat with five other siblings, and his medical studies at the National University of Singapore were heavily subsidised; later, he trained as a cancer surgeon in the United States using a government scholarship. The system also ensures that good, able students from the middle- and high-income groups are not circumscribed or restricted in any way in the name of helping financially disadvantaged students.

To give me the byline would be an outrageous flattery and a gross injustice to the forum editors of ST, who took the liberty of taking my observations about the statistics and subtly replacing them with more politically correct (but significantly and essentially different) statistics.

1. You stated we wrongly replaced the statistic you cited with another from Ms Rachel Chang’s article on March 8 (“School system still the ‘best way to move up’). Your original letter “It is indeed heartwarming to learn that 90% of children from one-to-three-room flats do not make it to university.” Reasons we edited it: Factual error, sense. There were two problems with your sentence. First, it was contradictory and didn’t make sense.Your original sentence cannot mean what it says unless you were elated over the fact that nine in 10 children from less well-off homes failed to qualify for university. So we edited it for sense, i.e., underscoring a positive feeling (heartwarming) with a positive fact; rather than the self-penned irony of a positive feeling (heartwarming) backed by a negative fact (90% failure rate to university admission by less well off children). That was why we replaced the original statistic with the only one in Ms Chang’s March 8 report that matched your elation, that is, that 50 percent of less well off children found tertiary success.

(Visa: Firstly, I find it hard to believe that nobody in the Straits Times office understands the meaning of sarcasm. Secondly, there was NO FACTUAL ERROR. Allow me to present to you the statistics, direct from The Straits Times themselves: http://www.straitstimes.com/STI/STIMEDIA/pdf/20110308/a10.pdf )

Second, we replaced your original statistic because it did not exist in Ms Chang’s March 8 front-page report. Ms Chang quoted that statistic in a later article (“Poor kids need aspiration: March 18; paragraph 5), which appeared after your letter was published. (Visa: It did not exist? Pay careful attention to the URL: http://www.straitstimes.com/STI/STIMEDIA/pdf/20110308/a10.pdf . Look at the number. 20110308. 2011 03 08. 8th March 2011.)

rather than being forced to wait for parliament to meet to air their dissent, now opposition parties are able to post pre-emptively their criticisms online, shifting the time and space of Singapore's political debate

Singapore's People's Action Party (PAP)-dominated politics are increasingly being contested online and over social media like blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Pushed by the perceived pro-PAP bias of the mainstream media, Singapore's opposition parties are using various new media to communicate with voters and express dissenting views. Alternative news websites, including The Online Citizen and Temasek Review, have won strong followings by presenting more opposition views in their news mix.

Despite its democratic veneer, Singapore rates poorly in global press freedom rankings due to a deeply entrenched culture of self-censorship and a pro-state bias in the mainstream media. Reporters Without Borders, a France-based press freedom advocacy group, recently ranked Singapore 136th in its global press freedom rankings, scoring below repressive countries like Iraq and Zimbabwe. The country's main media publishing house, Singapore Press Holdings, is owned by the state and its board of directors is made up largely of PAP members or other government-linked executives. Senior newspaper editors, including at the Straits Times, must be vetted and approved by the PAP-led government.

In your article, you make the argument that “Straits Times Forum Editor, was merely amending his (my) letter to cite the correct statistics. “For example, the Education Minister said “How children from the bottom one-third by socio-economic background fare: One in two scores in the top two-thirds at PSLE” - But, Mr Samuel Wee wrote “His statement is backed up with the statistic that 50% of children from the bottom third of the socio-economic ladder score in the bottom third of the Primary School Leaving Examination”.” Kind sir, the statistics state that 1 in 2 are in the top 66.6% (Which, incidentally, includes the top fifth of the bottom 50%!) Does it not stand to reason, then, that if 50% are in the top 66.6%, the remaining 50% are in the bottom 33.3%, as I stated in my letter?

Also, perhaps you were not aware of the existence of this resource, but here is a graph from the Straits Times illustrating the fact that only 10% of children from one-to-three room flats make it to university–which is to say, 90% of them don’t. http://www.straitstimes.com/STI/STIMEDIA/pdf/20110308/a10.pdf I look forward to your reply, Mr Leong. Thank you for taking the time to read this message.

we should, wherever possible, try to agree to disagree, as it is healthy to have and to encourage different viewpoints.

n the present era with the ubiquitous cellphone camera and rapid distribution channels that are well beyond blogs, such as twittering and Facebook, the old editorial policy is no longer viable. Even Straits Times’ journalists have said as much. If the newspaper does not publish such pictures, others will, and its credibility can only suffer.

Here is the front page for Friday 29 April 2011:

Yes, you will notice that there is a wide-angle photo of the crowd at the Workers’ Party rally the previous night that was held at exactly the same location as the iconic rally in 2006.

A BRAVE new media world where personalised newspapers cater to readers' individual preferences was sketched out by a leading media expert yesterday. Professor Vin Crosbie from Syracuse University in the United States held out the prospect of newspapers landing on doorsteps - or on mobile devices like iPads - with editorial and advertising to suit the reader, in a talk yesterday at the Drama Centre.

Statistics that are quoted, by themselves, may be quite meaningless, unless they are on a comparative basis. To illustrate this, if we want to say that Group A (poorer kids) is not significantly worse off than Group B (richer kids), then it may be pointless to just cite the statistics for Group A, without Group B’s.

“How children from the bottom one-third by socio-economic background fare: One in two scores in the top two-thirds at PSLE” “One in six scores in the top one-third at PSLE” What we need to know for comparative purposes, is the percentage of richer kids who scores in the top two-thirds too.

“… one in five scores in the top 30% at O and A levels… One in five goes to university and polys” What’s the data for richer kids? Since the proportion of the entire population going to university and polys has increased substantially, this clearly shows that poorer kids are worse off!

Singapore’s film censors had restricted the showing of a lesbian-themed, Oscar-nominated film, in a move that shocked the local cinema scene, a media report said today

The Board of Film Censors rated The Kids Are All Right as category R21, applying to “films that may contain adult issues, themes and more explicit scenes”, and limited its release to one single print, the Straits Times newspaper reported.

The US comedy drama directed by Lisa Cholodenko about a lesbian couple that meets the man who fathered their children received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Motion Picture and Best Leading Actress for Annette Bening.According to the board’s film classification guidelines, “films should not promote or normalise a homosexual lifestyle”.

WOMEN'S advocacy group Aware's plan to distribute a set of DVDs of its dramatic extraordinary general meeting (EGM), held in May 2009, has hit a snag.

The Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware) has not been able to distribute the DVDs, as it is appealing against a requirement that it needs a government licence to do so.

The MDA has, in the meantime, given the DVD an M18 rating - meaning it should be seen only by those aged 18 and above.

Last summer NCAR issued a dramatic press release announcing that oil from the Gulf spill would soon be appearing on the beaches of the Atlantic ocean.  I discussed it here. Here are the first four paragraphs of that press release: BOULDER—A detailed computer modeling study released today indicates that oil from the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico might soon extend along thousands of miles of the Atlantic coast and open ocean as early as this summer. The modeling results are captured in a series of dramatic animations produced by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and collaborators. he research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, NCAR’s sponsor. The results were reviewed by scientists at NCAR and elsewhere, although not yet submitted for peer-review publication. “I’ve had a lot of people ask me, ‘Will the oil reach Florida?’” says NCAR scientist Synte Peacock, who worked on the study. “Actually, our best knowledge says the scope of this environmental disaster is likely to reach far beyond Florida, with impacts that have yet to be understood.” The computer simulations indicate that, once the oil in the uppermost ocean has become entrained in the Gulf of Mexico’s fast-moving Loop Current, it is likely to reach Florida's Atlantic coast within weeks. It can then move north as far as about Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, with the Gulf Stream, before turning east. Whether the oil will be a thin film on the surface or mostly subsurface due to mixing in the uppermost region of the ocean is not known.

A few weeks ago NCAR's David Hosansky who presumably wrote that press release, asks whether NCAR got it wrong.  His answer?  No, not really: During last year’s crisis involving the massive release of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, NCAR issued a much-watched animation projecting that the oil could reach the Atlantic Ocean. But detectable amounts of oil never made it to the Atlantic, at least not in an easily visible form on the ocean surface. Not surprisingly, we’ve heard from a few people asking whether NCAR got it wrong. These events serve as a healthy reminder of a couple of things: *the difference between a projection and an actual forecast *the challenges of making short-term projections of natural processes that can act chaotically, such as ocean currents

What then went wrong? First, the projection. Scientists from NCAR, the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, and IFM-GEOMAR in Germany did not make a forecast of where the oil would go. Instead, they issued a projection. While there’s not always a clear distinction between the two, forecasts generally look only days or hours into the future and are built mostly on known elements (such as the current amount of humidity in the atmosphere). Projections tend to look further into the future and deal with a higher number of uncertainties (such as the rate at which oil degrades in open waters and the often chaotic movements of ocean currents). Aware of the uncertainties, the scientific team projected the likely path of the spill with a computer model of a liquid dye. They used dye rather than actual oil, which undergoes bacterial breakdown, because a reliable method to simulate that breakdown was not available. As it turned out, the oil in the Gulf broke down quickly due to exceptionally strong bacterial action and, to some extent, the use of chemical dispersants.