Happy 21st Omar!

He's the man. We work together, have fun together and improve together! Glad to have known you.

Ok, a new place to recommend all of you. That place is Cafe Domus. Its a SUPER ULU cafe hidden at one corner of Owen's road. The ambience is good. Best place to have some affair going on. Haha. No one can find you.

Bellini Boys!

Beat her at it !

Oh yes Angela, this post is just for YOU. For me to tell you how talented you are in using your trackpad to draw that picture. Not bad, I could identify you from all those stickgirls which looked very much alike. Haha.

Please don't get too high and cannot sleep after reading this. LOL

You should have joined that special talent competition during Convocation!

Math PSLE

Oh yes, i know this year's PSLE is tough. Especially the math paper. Most of you people reading my blog took that paper like donkey years ago??? Ok lets have a look at what some people have to say

Question

My daughter had problem with this Maths question, and from details given, may not be solvable. Anyone can help solve? I remember a couple of years back, there was an unsolvable question too.

From what she can recall, something like:

6/14 of chairs in hall are in rows of 13.

1/2 of chairs are in rows of 7.

There are 112 more chairs in rows of 7

Balance of chairs are stacked up.

What is total number of chairs?

1st Response:

This forum is indeed crawling with retards who failed their PSLE exams. I have been solving such easy questions which you morons termed as difficult since my PAP Kindergarten days.

2 rows of 7 makes 14 which is 1 more than 13.

So, 112 more in rows of 7 than rows of 13 means 112x2=224 rows of 7 and 112 rows of 13. (224x7=1568)-(112x13=1456)=112

Obviously you daughter can't remember he fractions correctly which rendered this question unsolvable.

2nd Response:

uncle say there are many ways to solve a problem although there are many adults not able to solve this problem.. including university professors.. do you call them retards???.. but we are paying the professors more, you know why??..and the adults may be earning more than the primary school teachers...

not to mention those so-called foreign=talents... can they solve it??

these kind of questions look more like quizzes ...should not even appear in a school exam to squash a child's confidence.. because there are many ways to solve the same problem..

3rd Response:

The answer is 114 x 14.

if you put it in equation form

(7/14 - 6/14 ) x total = 114.

total = 114 x 14

today I very free mark PSLE paper

4th Response:

ok.. since you are probably sleeping.. uncle will tell you... using algebra method.. i guess this is what those learned university professors will do..

let x be the total number of chairs, then 1/2 of x minus 6/14 of x equals 112 which gives x=1568 as the total number of chairs... see??? your answer blow up by 112.. which may be the ''standard'' primary school answer... so you call that smart answer or good answer or the only answer???

5th response:

This problem is correctly deemed unsolvable because one of the rows would not turn out to be a whole number when these figures are represented and solved using simultaneous algebraic equations. One possibility for this is that '6/14' is a typo, since students are always taught to write fractions in the most reduced form - in this case 3/7.

Your answer only satisfies the third requirement (112 more chairs are in rows of 7). Using the total number of chairs in your solution (1568 + 1456 = 3048), the number 3048 does not satisfy requirements 1 & 2: (6/14 of all chairs in 13s and 1/2 of of chairs in 7s)

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<

6/14 of chairs in hall are in rows of 13.

1/2 of chairs are in rows of 7.

There are 112 more chairs in rows of 7

Balance of chairs are stacked up.

What is total number of chairs?>>

This forum is indeed crawling with retards who failed their PSLE exams. I have been solving such easy questions which you morons termed as difficult since my PAP Kindergarten days.

2 rows of 7 makes 14 which is 1 more than 13.

So, 112 more in rows of 7 than rows of 13 means 112x2=224 rows of 7 and 112 rows of 13. (224x7=1568)-(112x13=1456)=112

Obviously you daughter can't remember he fractions correctly which rendered this question unsolvable.

6th Response:

why so complicated??

Use Model- drawing!!

1 unit = 112 (7-6)

14 units = 112X 14

that's all!!!

7th Response

I don't know the syllabus, but Simultaneous Equations were taught in Sec.2 for 14 yr olds more than 20 years ago. Not really surprising if they now want 12 yr olds to learn this for PSLE, although I can't imagine the damage on pri. 6 students minds, particularly those who can't think math.

Also, the question here was provided by someone's daughter, who might not have remembered all the figures correctly. We don't really know if this is what appeared in the exam paper.

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woahlau.. primary school where got so complicated.. anyway.. my compliment to you ...

My Verdict:

This is really crap. I cannot believe primary school PSLE math question can be so debatable. Believe it then. You need tonnes of brainpower to come up with proper reasoning skills to solve these question without the ALMIGHTY ALGEBRA. Worse still, as a tuition teacher, I need to EXPLAIN all these weird logic to my primary school tutee. Tell me. How can they ever understand? Just look at all the responses above. Some even wrote their simultaneous equation wrongly. You have to account for the 13s and 7s! Response 5 is correct.

Thursday Night and You're all Alone

Alone and hungry on a silent Thursday night. Its time to find some delights and make a simple meal. Cheese, Bread, Tuna and Pork floss. Simple addition will tell you that the answer is cheesy tuna pork floss sandwich.

Biz law + Sandwich + Carrot Fruit Juice. Wonderful! Haha

Mid Term

I eat well, sleep well and yet I am falling ill at this critical period. Yucks. I hate runny nose.

I am super pissed off with printing all the articles and notes from school. My ink printer is too slow for the job. I am going to get a laser printer to sort out this problem.

Stats Mid term down. 2 more to go

Homework

BGS project
Academic Essay 2
Mark's Holiday Assignment and Presentation. (Yes handsome boy, you SUCK!)

Sports Fiesta and Cookies

Once again the Transformers have proven why they are the better teams around. We don't have a lot of skillful players. We only know how to enjoy ourselves on the pitch. This chill and slack attitude unleashed the potential in everyone. Somehow, we look formidable on the field. Amidst all the competitive floorball players, we emerged a respectable Fourth.

Evil Decepticons held the fort before the good old people from Autobots came to sweep up the final glory.

The best part of the sports fiesta was when I wrestled with that bull for a good 22 seconds.

Plus we've got a chocolate cookies treat from Pris. I hope all my friends goes on baking spree everyday. Twinny, if you are reading this. I am still WAITING. That way, I'll have an unlimited supply of delicious cookies. Haha. Pris had to leave early to keep up with her baking momentum. She's on a baking high. Expectedly, her excuse to leave was to bake more cookies. I know most of you couldn't appreciate this 'excuse'.

Wait till you all try her cornflake cookies.

Arhh...I should have walked you to bus stop and slowly makan them. =P Quite shameless, but its worth it. LOL

I want! I want!

Hi All,

For the first time in my teaching career, I have to beg each and everyone of you to help me by:

1. Providing a descriptive subject header with keywords

2. Indicating your BGS section

3. Indicating your TA, and where necessary, send CC to him/her

4. Practicing a bit of courtesy. It's not important to remember my name, but at least have a salutation such as "Dear Instructor"

5. Signing off with your name (it is only courtesy).

I know you are all very busy people with no time for trivial stuff listed above. Once again, I am BEGGING everyone to help me manage my emails efficiently. I have 160 students (plus assorted former students), it takes time to go to SMUVista to look for your photo or ID or my C folder to know who you are. Sometimes, I need to alert my TA who may be able to help you.

I apologize for having to send this message to all of you because too many of you are too busy, so I thought that if I BEG you would spare a moment to help me.

I don't know what else to say.

Sincerely,

Raj Komaran

I cannot help but laugh at the idiocies of some people. We know that technology is advance. But how do you expect people to know who you are when you don't even type your name properly. You're not chatting on msn. You are writing a letter in a digital format. This is just like what I told my tutee. Who is going know what this number is going to represent when you don't even write down your units? 65 monkey? 65 donkey? 65 jeslene? or 65 cm?

This only reflects one thing. A lot of students have been spamming the profs email asking him tonnes of questions/tips whatsoever. It has reached a stage whereby he needs to beg students... A SMU prof has been overwhelmed by competitive students.

These people simply took him for granted. Please stop wasting his time.