This author is currently on hiatus for the ignoble cause of mugging. The public is advised to remain calm, as this routine protocol has been shown to have no effect on one's violent tendencies in 96% of cases.
| Sunday, April 08, 2007 |
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In a recent move, our math teacher pledged to lighten our homework load by shortening our assignments to no more than 5 or 6 questions each. Of course, ignoring the fact that we still get assignments almost every day, that's still about half the work we do usually. And so we rejoice. Hurrah! The maths department seems to have followed such a policy too, in order to ensure a better quality of school life, with the utopian aims of minimal stress and to deprive the canteen uncle of money from canned coffee. So now, our online assignments only have 5 questions each. --orly?-- The presentation looks so deceptively appealing - after all, the questions are only numbered up to "5." and for once, there are no horrifying letters encased in double brackets! (Seriously, we once had a maths test with questions that had sub-sections all the way from (a) to (f). "Very easy, 4 questions only!" our then-maths teacher would say.") --no wai!-- ...And then you get down to reading the questions. Here's a sample: 1. If x + 1 and x - 2 are factors of x3 + ax2 - 5x + b, find the values of a, b and the remaining factor. Come on, if you want to give us 15 qns rather than 5, can you at least make it more blatant? Even separating it into (a)(b)(c) would let us distinguish our workings more clearly between each part. What's the use of cramming like, three questions into one? Maybe as maths teachers, you want to be economical on numbering - though i don't see why you would, since we're already going to cubic equations here. Or maybe someone finally realised the importance of environmental conservation and decided that making us print a few less characters would save the world sooner or later. But perhaps the better explanation would be that the teachers are just plain sadistic. And that's what school really is, a sadistic world beneath the guise of conjunctions. Hence, comparing the coefficients to the problems, this implies that nirvana will always be an asymptote, therefore, triple-pyramidal-dots, we are doomed AND caught in a self-perpetuating cycle OR a(mugger)=y(ou). [10] |
'Twas teh winnar at 11:31 pm.
