For Senior Lecturer Tan Hong Ming from the Department of Analytics & Operations, life has always been driven by his dream of becoming a scientist. From a young age, he was captivated by mathematics and physics, a passion inspired by famed mathematicians and physicists such as Carl Friedrich Gauss, Albert Einstein, and John von Neumann. Despite his academic aspirations, basketball held a special place in his life as a cherished hobby.
Hong Ming admired Michael Jordan, widely regarded as the greatest basketball player of all time, and learned valuable lessons about resilience and perseverance from his idol. He trained rigorously, hoping to join the university basketball team. Despite his dedication, he faced setbacks, including not making the team and suffering an ACL tear, which further underscored the importance of resilience.
“I realised I should just focus on becoming better and accept failure as a stepping stone,” said Hong Ming. This realisation prompted him to pivot fully towards his scientific ambitions.
Hong Ming in basketball action
During his PhD, Hong Ming faced numerous rejections of his research papers. “I may work on a paper for months, but it could still end up being rejected by my peer reviewers,” he said. “There will be times when the going gets tough, but we just need to put our heads down and work through them. Sometimes we won’t succeed no matter how much effort we make, and that is okay,” he added.
He finally got his big break when a conversation during a car journey with his institute director led to a research paper on an ice hockey strategy called “pulling the goalie.” Hong Ming built a mathematical model calibrated on NHL data to determine the best times for ice hockey teams to change their goalie during a game.
Today, as a senior lecturer, Hong Ming’s approach is to make teaching analytics, data science, and machine learning engaging for his students. “These subjects can be complex, so I use humor to lighten the learning atmosphere,” he said, using real-world examples to make the subjects more relevant. “The recommendations you see in your apps from Grab to Netflix are based on machine learning algorithms,” he explained. Hong Ming hopes that through real-life examples, he can inspire students to love these fields as he did.
Looking ahead, Hong Ming hopes to revisit his love of basketball through an analytics-based study of the game. “Who knows? I might be able to change the game like Michael Jordan once did,” he said, hinting at the potential for ground-breaking research in the sport he cherishes.
