The Isaw Vendor Slash Mathematician
Most of you perfectly know that I love Math. Back in my final year in High School, I was able to aced two out of my three Math-related subjects and consequently, I bagged the Best in Math and Best in Physics awards. Math has been my favorite subject since fifth grade. Math was my best friend since then. I’m not sure if I’ve already posted here that before I’ve reached Grade 5, Math has been my biggest waterloo. I hated numbers. I used to get red marks in Math. I thougt Math would be my problem every school year.
Don’t ask me what I did to work harmoniously with numbers because I don’t even know what happened to me. Haha. My skills in Math just came out from nowhere! I’m so thankful that I don’t have any problems with numbers nowadays. Ironically, until now, I still haven’t memorized the multiplication table. If you would ask me what is eight multiplied by seven, I would not be able to answer you instantly. Lol. Yes, that’s a fact… and it’s weird.
Yes, I know, we would not be able to apply most of what we have learned in Math. An isaw1 vendor (Yeah, I’m quoting the joke that spread through SMS a year ago) wouldn’t answer you “It’s tan452 times 5 per stick.” when you would ask him how much are the isaws. A knowledge in simple Math plus knowledge in integers and decimals is enough3. But will you believe me that I have classmates that don’t even know how to round-off to the nearest hundredths? Eek. They’ve reached college, and still, they don’t even know simple Math. The thing is, these have been taught to us since grade school… and until now, they haven’t learned how to perform these simple and basic Math skills.
It’s so sad that after this semester, I wouldn’t encounter numbers as often as now. Basic Statistics is the last Math-related subject that I would take (unless I would shift to another course). Even though I don’t have any background knowledge about Statistics (since we didn’t have it back in high school), I can still get how to solve this and that even though our professor does not know how to clearly discuss whatever she has to teach us. Actually, from what we have already discussed, I can say that Statistics is a lot easier than Algebra. Besides, we are allowed to use calculators. Haha.
Finally, I also want to rant about our prelims in Statistics. I wasn’t able to finish it, thanks to the very limited time. Even the Math geniuses who can solve with their eyes closed would not be able to finish it in ninety minutes because there were so much to answer. We had to make an array composed of 50 raw data. And according to my unreliable Statistics book, the process is tedious especially if raw data are numerous. And then, we had to do a frequency distribution table of it, then, graph the data in various graphical forms. There were other types of tests, but this was a shocker, despite the fact that my professor perfectly knows that our examination was tedious and very time-consuming, there was also a find-a-word puzzle included in our exams.
What the hell?!
