The Air Pollution Index (API) is a simple and generalized way to describe the air

quality in mainland China, Hong Kong and Malaysia. It is calculated from several sets of
air pollution data.

Malaysia
Similar to Hong Kong, the air quality in Malaysia is reported as the API or Air Pollution
Index. Four of the index's pollutant components (i.e., carbon monoxide, ozone, nitrogen
dioxide and sulfur dioxide) are reported in ppmv but PM10 particulate matter is reported
in μg/m3.

This scale below shows the Health classifications used by the Malaysian government.

   0-50  Good
  51-100 Moderate
 101-200 Unhealthy
 201-300 Very unhealthy
 301- Hazardous

If the API exceeds 500, a state of emergency is declared in the reporting area. Usually,
this means that non-essential government services are suspended, and all ports in the
affected area are closed. There may also be a prohibition on private sector commercial
and industrial activities in the reporting area excluding the food sector.

Mainland China
China's State Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) is responsible for measuring the
level of air pollution in China. As of 28 August 2008, SEPA monitors daily pollution
level in 86 of its major cities. The API level is based on the level of 5 atmospheric
pollutants, namely sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), suspended particulates
(PM10), carbon monoxide (CO), and ozone (O3) measured at the monitoring stations
throughout each city. [1]

API Mechanics
An individual score is assigned to the level of each pollutant and the final API is the
highest of those 5 scores. The pollutants can be measured quite differently. SO2, NO2 and
PM10 concentration are measured as average per day. CO and O3 are more harmful and
are measured as average per hour. The final API value is calculated per day.

The scale for each pollutant is non-linear, as is the final API score. Thus an API of 100
does not mean twice the pollution of API at 50, nor does it mean twice as harmful. While
an API of 50 from day 1 to 182 and API of 100 from day 183 to 365 does provide an
annual average of 75, it does not mean the pollution is acceptable even if the benchmark
of 100 is deemed safe. This is because the benchmark is a 24 hour target. The annual
average must match against the annual target. It is entirely possible to have safe air every
day of the year but still fail the annual pollution benchmark.[1]

API and Health Implications (Daily Targets)[1]

Air Pollution
API Health Implications
Level
0 - 50 Excellent No health implications
51 -100 Good No health implications
Slight irrations may occur, individuals with
101-150 Slightly Polluted breathing or heart problems should reduce outdoor
exercise.
Slight irrations may occur, individuals with
151-200 Lightly Polluted breathing or heart problems should reduce outdoor
exercise.
Healthy people will be noticeably affected. People
with breathing or heart problems will experience
201-250 Moderately Polluted reduced endurance in activities. These individuals
and elders should remain indoors and restrict
activities.
Healthy people will be noticeably affected. People
with breathing or heart problems will experience
251-300 Heavily Polluted reduced endurance in activities. These individuals
and elders should remain indoors and restrict
activities.
Healthy people will experience reduced endurance
in activities. There may be strong irritations and
symptoms and may trigger other illnesses. Elders
300+ Severely Polluted
and the sick should remain indoors and avoid
exercise. Healthy individuals should avoid out
door activities.

Hong Kong
The API has been in use in Hong Kong since June 1995. It is measured and updated
hourly by the Environmental Protection Department (EPD). Moreover, the EPD makes
forecast on the API for the following day everyday.

The API is based on the level of 6 atmospheric pollutants, namely sulfur dioxide (SO2),
nitrogen dioxide (NO2), suspended particulates, carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O3), lead
(Pb), measured at all the monitoring stations throughout the territory.[2]

There are 11 General Stations and 3 Roadside Stations. The former includes Central /
Western, Eastern, Kwai Chung, Kwun Tong, Sha Tin, Sham Shui Po, Tai Po, Tap Mun,
Tsuen Wan, Tung Chung, and Yuen Long; the later Causeway Bay, Central, and Mong
Kok. [3]

In Hong Kong, there are two types of API: General API and Roadside API. The EPD
reports the latest APIs hourly.

The index and the air quality objectives were set in 1987; and pollutant levels are
measured over varying periods, in μg/m3. There are hourly, 24 hour and annual targets for
sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, and 24 hour and annual targets for particulates.

The table below shows the official Health Implications of the respective API levels in
Hong Kong.

Air Pollution
API Health Implications;
Level
0 - 25 Low Not expected.
26 - 50 Medium Not expected for the general population.
Acute health effects are not expected but chronic
51 - 100 High effects may be observed if one is persistently
exposed to such levels.
People with existing heart or respiratory illnesses
may notice mild aggravation of their health
100 - 200 Very High
conditions. Generally healthy individuals may also
notice some discomfort.
People with existing heart or respiratory illnesses
may experience significant aggravation of their
symptoms. There may also be widespread
201 - 500 Severe
symptoms in the healthy population (e.g. eye
irritation, wheezing, coughing, phlegm and sore
throats).

In 1998, the Education Bureau's recommended schools to curtail outdoor activities when
the index reached 200, whereas leading healthcare advocates are urging that the level be
revised to 100.[4] The World Health Organisation revised its air quality guideline levels of
sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and ozone in 2006 in light of new scientific evidence.
The WHO also introduced new measurement guidelines for very small particulates which
are more dangerous to pulmonary function. At the '200' level, Hong Kong levels of SO2
(800μg/m3) and NO2 (1,130μg/m3) are 40 times and 5½ times WHO guidelines
respectively; the equivalent for particulates (350μg/m3) is 7 times WHO guidelines.[2]

A stock market index is a method of measuring a section of the stock market. Many
indices are cited by news or financial services firms and are used as benchmarks, to
measure the performance of portfolios such as mutual funds.
Types of indices
Stock market indices may be classed in many ways. A 'world' or 'global' stock market
index includes (typically large) companies without regard for where they are domiciled or
traded. Two examples are MSCI World and S&P Global 100.

A national index represents the performance of the stock market of a given nation—and
by proxy, reflects investor sentiment on the state of its economy. The most regularly
quoted market indices are national indices composed of the stocks of large companies
listed on a nation's largest stock exchanges, such as the American S&P 500, the Japanese
Nikkei 225, and the British FTSE 100.

The concept may be extended well beyond an exchange. The Wilshire 5000 Index, the
original total market index, represents the stocks of nearly every publicly traded company
in the United States, including all U.S. stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange
(but not ADRs or Limited Partnerships), NASDAQ and American Stock Exchange.
Russell Investment Group added to the family of indices by launching the Russell Global
Index.

More specialised indices exist tracking the performance of specific sectors of the market.
Some examples include the Wilshire US REIT which tracks more than 80 American Real
Estate Investment Trusts and the Morgan Stanley Biotech Index which consists of 36
American firms in the biotechnology industry. Other indices may track companies of a
certain size, a certain type of management, or even more specialized criteria — one index
published by Linux Weekly News tracks stocks of companies that sell products and
services based on the Linux operating environment.

Index versions
Some indices, such as the S&P 500, have multiple versions.[1] These versions can differ
based on how the index components are weighted and on how dividends are accounted
for. For example, there are three versions of the S&P 500 index: price return, which only
considers the price of the components, total return, which accounts for dividend
reinvestment, and net total return, which accounts for dividend reinvestment after the
deduction of a withholding tax.[2] As another example, the Wilshire 4500 and Wilshire
5000 indices have five versions each: full capitalization total return, full capitalization
price, float-adjusted total return, float-adjusted price, and equal weight. The difference
between the full capitalization, float-adjusted, and equal weight versions is in how index
components are weighted.[3][4]

Weighting
An index may also be classified according to the method used to determine its price. In a
price-weighted index such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Amex Major Market
Index, and the NYSE ARCA Tech 100 Index, the price of each component stock is the
only consideration when determining the value of the index. Thus, price movement of
even a single security will heavily influence the value of the index even though the dollar
shift is less significant in a relatively highly valued issue, and moreover ignoring the
relative size of the company as a whole. In contrast, a market-value weighted or
capitalization-weighted index such as the Hang Seng Index factors in the size of the
company. Thus, a relatively small shift in the price of a large company will heavily
influence the value of the index. In a market-share weighted index, price is weighted
relative to the number of shares, rather than their total value.

Traditionally, capitalization- or share-weighted indices all had a full weighting, i.e. all
outstanding shares were included. Recently, many of them have changed to a float-
adjusted weighting which helps indexing.

A modified capitalization-weighted index is a hybrid between capitalization weighting

and equal weighting. It is similar to a capitalization weighting with one main difference:
the largest stocks are capped to a percent of the weight of the total stock index and the
excess weight will be redistributed equally amongst the stocks under that cap. Moreover,
in 2005, Standard & Poor's introduced the S&P Pure Growth Style Index and S&P Pure
Value Style Index which was attribute-weighted. That is, a stock's weight in the index is
decided by the score it gets relative to the value attributes that define the criteria of a
specific index, the same measure used to select the stocks in the first place. For these two
stocks, a score is calculated for every stock, be it their growth score or the value score (a
stock can't be both) and accordingly they are weighted for the index.[5]

Criticism of capitalization-weighting
The use of capitalization-weighted indices is often justified by the central conclusion of
modern portfolio theory that the optimal investment strategy for any investor is to hold
the market portfolio, the capitalization-weighted portfolio of all assets. However,
empirical tests conclude that market indices are not efficient.[citation needed] This can be
explained by the fact that these indices do not include all assets or by the fact that the
theory does not hold. The practical conclusion is that using capitalization-weighted
portfolios is not necessarily the optimal method.

As a consequence, capitalization-weighting has been subject to severe criticism (see e.g.

Haugen and Baker 1991, Amenc, Goltz, and Le Sourd 2006, or Hsu 2006), pointing out
that the mechanics of capitalization-weighting lead to trend-following strategies that
provide an inefficient risk-return trade-off.

Also, while capitalization-weighting is the standard in equity index construction, different

weighting schemes exist. First, while most indices use capitalization-weighting,
additional criteria are often taken into account, such as sales/revenue and net income (see
the “Guide to the Dow Jones Global Titan 50 Index”, January 2006). Second, as an
answer to the critiques of capitalization-weighting, equity indices with different
weighting schemes have emerged, such as "wealth"-weighted (Morris, 1996),
“fundamental”-weighted (Arnott, Hsu and Moore 2005), “diversity”-weighted (Fernholz,
Garvy, and Hannon 1998) or equal-weighted indices.

Indices and passive investment management

There has been an accelerating trend in recent decades to create passively managed
mutual funds that are based on market indices, known as index funds. Advocates claim
that index funds routinely beat a large majority of actively managed mutual funds; one
study[citation needed] claimed that over time, the average actively managed fund has returned
1.8% less than the S&P 500 index - a result nearly equal to the average expense ratio of
mutual funds (fund expenses are a drag on the funds' return by exactly that ratio). Since
index funds attempt to replicate the holdings of an index, they obviate the need for — and
thus many costs of — the research entailed in active management, and have a lower
"churn" rate (the turnover of securities which lose fund managers' favor and are sold,
with the attendant cost of commissions and capital gains taxes).

Indices are also a common basis for a related type of investment, the exchange-traded
fund or ETF. Unlike an index fund, which is priced daily, an ETF is priced continuously,
is optionable, and can be sold short.

Ethical stock market indices

A notable specialised index type is those for ethical investing indices that include only
those companies satisfying ecological or social criteria, e.g. those of The Calvert Group,
KLD, FTSE4Good Index, Dow Jones Sustainability Index and Wilderhill Clean Energy
Index.

Another important trend is strict mechanical criteria for inclusion and exclusion to
prevent market manipulation, e.g. in Canada when Nortel was permitted to rise to over
30% of the TSE 300 index value. Ethical indices have a particular interest in mechanical
criteria, seeking to avoid accusations of ideological bias in selection, and have pioneered
techniques for inclusion and exclusion of stocks based on complex criteria. Another
means of mechanical selection is mark-to-future methods that exploit scenarios produced
by multiple analysts weighted according to probability, to determine which stocks have
become too risky to hold in the index of concern.

Critics of such initiatives argue that many firms satisfy mechanical "ethical criteria", e.g.
regarding board composition or hiring practices, but fail to perform ethically with respect
to shareholders, e.g. Enron. Indeed, the seeming "seal of approval" of an ethical index
may put investors more at ease, enabling scams. One response to these criticisms is that
trust in the corporate management, index criteria, fund or index manager, and securities
regulator, can never be replaced by mechanical means, so "market transparency" and
"disclosure" are the only long-term-effective paths to fair markets.
Environmental stock market indices
An environmental stock market index aims to provide a quantitative measure of the
environmental damage caused by the companies in an index. Indices of this nature face
much of the same criticism as Ethical indices do — that the 'score' given is partially
subjective.

However, whereas 'ethical' issues (for example, does a company use a sweatshop) are
largely subjective and difficult to score, an environmental impact is often quantifiable
through scientific methods. So it is broadly possible to assign a 'score' to (say) the
damage caused by a tonne of mercury dumped into a local river. It is harder to develop a
scoring method that can compare different types of pollutant — for example does one
hundred tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted to the air cause more or less damage (via
climate change) than one tonne of mercury dumped in a river (and poisoning all the fish).

Generally, most environmental economists attempting to create an environmental index

would attempt to quantify damage in monetary terms. So one tonne of carbon dioxide
might cause $100 worth of damage, whereas one tonne of mercury might cause $50,000
(as it is highly toxic). Companies can therefore be given an 'environmental impact' score,
based on the cost they impose on the environment. Quantification of damage in this
nature is extremely difficult, as pollutants tend to be market externalities and so have no
easily measurable cost by definition.

Conclusion .......
Index is a numerical scale used to compare variables with one another or with some
reference number After doing research,answering questions,drawing graphs and some
problem solving, I saw that the usage of index is important in daily life.It is not just
widely used in markets but
also in interpreting the condition of the surrounding like the air or
the water.Especially in conducting an air-pollution survey.In
coclusion,index is a daily life nessecities.Without it,surveys
can’t be conducted,the stock market can’t be interpret and many
more.So,we should be thankful of the people who contribute in
the idea of index.

Uses and importance of air pollution index and stock market index

As everyone can see,the air pollution index is use by

the government to measure the air quality index and to
detect any pollutants in our country’s air.This is to
ensure the air is clean and safe for us to inhale.Besides
that,an early warning can be given to us if the air
pollution is to high for us to get out of our homes. This
warning is given based upon readings and
interpretations of the air pollution index.
As for the stock market index, it is mainly for the
business entrepreneurs. This type of index is used to
determine the outcome of a stock market and also the
conclusion of a stock market. The stock market index is
important because a country’s economical state
sometimes depend on it.

Reflection

After completing this program, I found out that mathematics is very important to
us. Upon completion of this program, I learned to be patient to do anything in
particular this program. I also really enjoy the process of doing this project. What I can say is

…..i love u add maths ^^