Tag Archives: statistics

Statistics & Salvation

Where would your bills go to as your days become numbered? What are the chances that for most folks their pills would fill up a large part of their bill?

Cartoon by Mike Seddon

For some folks, their will might allocate more fund in anticipation of their loved ones’ soaring bills due to their consuming more dearer or designer pills.

Whatever the case, pills are seldom a positive sign in someone’s health regardless of their age.

Healing Is Free

A zero-pills lifestyle is (only) achievable by the Great Healer, who numbers our days, and whose death and resurrection on the cross had made it possible for any (willing) soul to live a quasi-pills-free way of life.

Isn’t it true that the best things in life are free? Yet, why would millions of people rather spend their savings on their poor health, when a touch from Him could graciously or freely heal them (completely)?

It’s not too late to apply what we know is oft-unspokenly true, yet out of pride or disinformation or falsehoods from other faiths, we’re too afraid to seek healing and deliverance from Him, who freely frees those who’re sick of being sick of all kinds of emotional and physical illnesses or sicknesses, age-related or not.

Healthily & wisely yours

© Yan Kow Cheong, September 6, 2024.

Covid-19, Halloween, and Hell

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

Thou shalt not dabble in numerology!

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?

 

 

 

A poster outside a Singapore bookstore

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

The Power of the Cross

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.

Happy Math-O-Ween! from @MrHonner

 

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.

 

A “ghost distribution” from @wilderlab

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 problemshttps://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24724635

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

© Yan Kow Cheong, October 31, 2020.

© Photo by Gemma Correl

Some Fun with Stewart Francis’s Puns

20140319-171119.jpg
www.cafepress.com

In my formative years, I don’t recall any elementary school teachers sharing some mathematical puns with us. I suppose that the arithmetic of yesteryear was often taught in the most uninteresting way by many who probably didn’t look forward to teaching it to a bunch of noisy kids.

Recently, while reading Stewart Francis’s Pun direction: Over 500 of his greatest gags…and four crap ones!,  I came across a number of numerical puns that might even be appreciated by some nerdy seven-year-olds. Stewart Francis is considered to be the best Canadian comedian from Southern Ontario. Here are two dozen odd math-related puns I’ve stolen from his punny book. Hope you enjoy them!

The number of twins being born has doubled.

They also stole my calculator,
which doesn’t add up.

Four out of ten people are used in surveys. Six are not.

Crime in lifts is on the rise.

20140319-171211.jpg
“QED Gravestone Small Poster” www.cafepress.com

I recently overcame my fear of calculators
It was a twelve-step program.

Women are attracted to foreign men. I’ve heard that at least uno, dos, tres times.

All seventeen of my doctors say I have an addictive personality.

There’s a slim chance my sister’s anorexic.

Truthfully, we met at a chess match, where she made the first move.

Is my wife dissatisfied with my body? A tiny part of me says yes.

I read that ten out of two people are dyslexic.

20140319-171135.jpg
From: wherethepunis.com

They now have a website for stutterers, it’s
wwwdotwwwdotwwwdotwwwdotdotdot.

I have mixed race parents, my father prefers the 100 metres.

I’m the youngest of three, my parents are both older.

Clichés are a dime a dozen.

I’m an underachiever 24-6.

I used to recycle calendars.
Those were the days.

20140319-171153.jpg
www.cafepress.com

I’ve learned two things in life.
The second, is to never cut corners.

‘Any man who lives his life in accordance to a book is a fool.’
Luke 317

I can say ‘No one likes a show off’ in forty-three languages.

I was once late because of
high-fiving a centipede.

Of the twenty-seven
students in my maths class,
I was the only one who failed.
What are the odds of that, one
in a million?

I’ve met some cynical people
in my twenty-eight years.

I was good at history.
Wait a minute, no, no I wasn’t.

I was terrible at school. I failed
maths so many times, I can’t even
count.

Reference
Francis, S. (2913). Pun direction: Over 500 of his greatest gags…and four crap ones! London: Headline Publishing Group.

© Yan Kow Cheong, March 19, 2014.

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