October, 2020 | Yan's One Minute Math Blog

Halloween in Singapore: To Spook or Not to Spook

For math-anxious or mathophobic folks, mathematics is more terrifying than being attacked by an army of vampires, werewolves, and zombies. For the health-conscious, Covid-19 is a thousand times deadlier than Halloween and Donald J. Trump combined. And for those on the far-left of the political spectrum, Trumpvirus is a googol times more lethal than the product of the coronavirus and Halloween. So, it looks like it depends what really matters to you to rationalize which is more frightening: Halloween, Covid-19, or Trump-45.

For conservatives or evangelicals, who recognize the dangers posed by the dark spiritual forces, Halloween is a festival of the devil, because ghosts or evil spirits are real and dangerous. How do math educators navigate through the occultic maze to leverage on a spookacular festival to promote numeracy and creative problem solving?

When Halloween is a multi-million-dollar fear-and-fun business in secular societies like China, Japan, and Singapore, math educators regardless of their religious affiliations have to recognize that Halloween is here to stay.

Yellow Halloween

When Asians too feel like celebrating a Western fright-wear festival like Halloween—the spooky business worth millions of dollars is too good to give it a miss.

The yellow Halloween provides an opportunity for rich Chinese and Japanese participants to show off their creative elaborate costumes, bringing much joy to organizers and dozens of tailors cashing in on the event.

by MathPlus November 03, 2016

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Yellow+Halloween

Let's look at a sample of Halloween math questions.

1. A Horror Movie

The screening of Covid-19 v. Trump-45 ended at 1:19 AM. If the horror movie lasted for 1 hour 31 minutes, what time did it start?

2. The Ghostly Time

What is the acute angle measure between the hands of a clock at 10:31 p.m. on Halloween?

3. Horror-scope & Bat-man

#PumpkinSpice from Edel Rodriguez (@edelstudio on 19/10/17)

Today is Friday, and Trump’s numerologist tells him that he will have to drink the blood of a bat 666 days from today to continue to lead a “normal life” after he leaves the White House. What day of the week is Donald expected to do that task?

4. TrumpMath, Anyone?

5. A Grave Calculation

*Not all sins or bad habits are treated equal!*

Assuming that most people would live up to three scores and ten years, how long will it take before the whole world is covered in gravestones?

6. Operation Vampire

If a vampire were to feed once a day and turn each of his victims into a vampire, show that the entire human population of the planet would become vampires in just over a month.

**The Ghost Month and Halloween**

Long before the East imported Halloween from the West, superstitious Asians have been celebrating their one-month-long version of Halloween, known as the “Ghost (or Seventh) Month”—a far more scarier festival than a mere evening of horror fun.

My hypothesis is: Halloween is no more than one-seventh as frightening as the Ghost Month, a festival celebrated in many parts of Asia every August or September, depending when those spiritual vagabonds from hell decided to descend on earth.

The coronavirus pandemic and the Seventh Month provide math teachers with new math terms to coin, and allow them to pose a number of deadly guesstimation problems. Below are a few of these Covid-math terms.

On August 8, 2020, @SingaporeLite tweeted the following:

Covid-👿

Corona Math: What are the odds that hungry ghosts from Hell who’d roam Earth during the Ghost or Seventh Month—Aug 19–Sep 16—are corona-proof? Besides instilling fear on superstitious folks, aren’t they also a source of infection? todayonline.com/node/8269421 #Singapore #Covid-19 👿🦠

The Deities & the Deceased The Math of Hell: A politically correct explanation of the burning of hell money: Why the deities like odd numbers, and the deceased like even numbers. https://www.facebook.com/MothershipSG/videos/experts-explain-burning-offerings-in-singapore/336558850793421/ #Singapore #Taoism #hell #Buddhism #ghost #evil #spirit #Chinese #culture #tradition #fear #math #number (@SingaporeLite on 20/9/20)

On July 1, 2020, @SakamotoMath tweeted the following picture and text.

Corona Math: Given that the coronavirus is empowered to infect both earthlings and celestial beings, guesstimate the no. of infections among the fallen angels that colluded with Lucifer to challenge the Throne of God in the heavenlies. #Covid-19 #heaven #hell #angel #math #humor

Halloween vs. Coronavirus

Which is scarier to you: Halloween or Covid-19? How are you remembering those who would still be around if not because of the coronavirus? Is fake political leadership responsible for their premature departure to the other side of eternity? #Halloween #Covid-19 #death #leadership (@SakamotoMath on 30/10/20)

Covid-19 Goes Green

The coronavirus doesn’t discriminate against believers, nonbelievers, or agnostics—it infects or kills people of all religions or philosophies with the same intensity.

**From Paranormal to Trumpnormal Distribution**

Q: What do you get when you cross Covid-19 and Statistics? 

A: The Trumpnormal distribution.

Political Engineering: Stop flattening and start trumpifying the curve to open up more businesses across the US—more testings and tracings don’t win an election! #statistics #coronavirus #Covid-19 #business #lockdown #distribution #Singapore #math #infection #death #curve #humor

Coronavirus’s Nineteen Names

Just as President Trump has been conferred so many notorious titles, the coronavirus has been given all kinds of racist labels.

7. Not All Corona Prayers Are the Same!

A Shaolin Buddhist abbot can pray for a Covid-19 patient to be healed in 8 days and a Baptist bishop in 2 days. How long would it take them to get a patient who is twice as sick to fully recover, if both leaders prayed together?

Selected Answers: 1. 11:48 PM 2. 129.5° 3. Saturday 5. Over a million years 7. 3.2 days

References

Correl, G. (2015). The worrier’s guide to life. Missouri: Andrews McMeel Publishing.

Lloyd, J., Mitchinson, J. & Harkin, J. (2012). 1,227 QI facts to blow your socks off. London: Faber and Faber.

Santos, A. (2009). How many licks? Philadelphia: Running Press.

Singh, S. (2013). Homer Simpson’s scary maths problems. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24724635

Yan, K.C. (2012). Halloween Math. https://www.singaporemathplus.com/2012/10/halloween-math.html

Based on feedback from dozens of school teachers, editors, authors, tutors, and parents, below are ten local publishers that are known to sell thick and cheap Singapore math books, and most of them are also notorious for being indifferent or allergic to editorial, conceptual, and linguistic ills. Don’t say you haven’t been warned!

A common sight at Popular bookstores: The first three shelves are stacked with EPH math titles.

BookOne

Casco Publications Pte Ltd

EPH (Educational Publishing House Pte Ltd)

Examaid Book Publishers Pte Ltd

FBP (Fairfield Book Publishers)

Penman (Penman Publishing House Pte Ltd)

Raffles Publications

SAP Education

teachers@work (an imprint of SAP)

Success Publications Pte Ltd

Even in educational publishing, it would be naive for us to think that we could get “good, cheap, and updated” math titles. Undiscerning potential buyers continually think that most local publishers are nonprofit, which offer decent Singapore math titles with a wallet-friendly price tag, except perhaps for a few odd balls, who publish books out of passion for the subject.

Cheap Singapore math assessment books are notoriously littered with mistakes and out-of-syllabus topics, because most of these titles are ghostwritten, if not, written by reluctant editors on a payroll. And yet, undiscerning parents never fail to go for those thick, cheap (hopefully, not “cheat”) supplementary math titles, thinking that they’re getting a pretty good deal.

Bargain Hunters

It always tickles me to witness mothers flip through so many assessment books in Popular bookstores, and after that, they still opt for the thick, cheap ones.

In the early days, parents used to buy math books that were “authored” by those with a PhD, but as consumers become more educated and informed, the percentage of buyers who are still title-conscious seem to have gone down exponentially.

A publishing hypothesis based on feedback from sales and marketing personnel from publishing houses is that the sales figures of Singapore math titles by writers in academia are disappointingly low. Consumers are no longer lured by thick titles, “authored” or “consulted” by those with big academic titles.

Consultant or Con-sultant

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, it’s an open secret that a disturbing number of National Institute of Education (NIE) lecturers, and a few moonlighters from the National University of Singapore (NUS), who had served as profs-turned-consultants for local and foreign publishers, had their ghostwritten or consulted manuscripts rejected by the Ministry of Education (MOE), Singapore.

Just because they have a PhD or are a tenured faculty staff is no guarantee that they‘ve the knowhow or make-up to add value to a manuscript. Or, just because they’ve been supervising trainee teachers for years or decades, or they’d published a dozen-odd papers in reputable journals doesn’t necessarily make them a suitable math consultant or general editor for a set of textbooks, which need to be MOE-approved before they’re allowed to be used in local schools.

Under-deliver and Over-promise

At best, their cosmetic suggestions are worth less than a dime a dozen. At worst, their “inputs” had led publishers to lose millions of dollars’ worth of potential revenue due to their MOE-unapproved consulted manuscripts, not to say, missed overseas sales, in the light of growing global interest on Singapore math.

A check with textbook editors who have been in the industry for decades reveals that more often than not, local lecturers from both the NIE and NUS are “under-qualified” and “over-rated” to review manuscripts from teachers-writers, compared to their counterparts from overseas, who generally treat consulting a textbook more as an honor or a privilege rather than a quick way to boost their ego and income.

Zero Sign of Decline

The publication rate of cheap (or “cheat”) and thick supplementary math titles shows no signs of abating, nor is the number of university lecturers who secretly long to be textbook consultants or general editors going to dwindle any time soon, albeit they’ve been “warned” by the university management that they’re not encouraged to freelance or moonlight for both local and foreign math publishers. When ethics often gives in to economics, how many of them would prevent a fat royalty from obstructing an early retirement?

Ethically yours

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Monthly Archives: October 2020

Covid-19, Halloween, and Hell