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2009
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GCE O-Level Oct/Nov 2008 E-Maths Paper 1 Suggested Answers & Solutions

(1)
Posted at 12:55 am by Miss Loi in Miss Loi the Tutor

Better late than never.

Most of the thousands of you who are burning the midnight joss sticks right now should have already practiced the 2008 O Level Oct/Nov E-Maths paper to the death.

But in case, just in case, some of you still have not seen the suggested worked solutions to the above (at least it seems from the calls she’s been getting), Miss Loi took advantage of a break in her tuition schedule, and burnt a couple of midnight sticks herself to try to forget about her blotched eyebrows to scribble this out:

O-Level Oct/Nov 2008 EMaths 4016 Paper I Solutions
O-Level October/November 2008 EMaths 4016 Solutions Paper I Solutions – click to download

Hope this little piece of LMBFH work will be beneficial to at least some of the LMBFH brothers and sisters.

Otherwise, at least it’ll serve to make the list of solutions on the top-left of this website more complete =P

Meanwhile, がんばって everyone!!!

Once again, please pardon Miss Loi’s handwriting :P

がんばって!!!
Miss Loi
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The Perils Of Plucking Eyebrows At An Unfamiliar Place

(5)
Posted at 11:30 pm by Miss Loi in E-Maths Questions

It’s four more days to the O-Level maths papers, and the joss sticks sessions, phone calls, and the churning of customized notes, worksheets and 小李飞刀 questions continue unabated.

All these wholesome activities have, unfortunately, combined to take an unwholesome toll on Miss Loi’s well-being, as evident from the occasional misaligned fake eyelashes eyelash extensions and the sometimes uneven patches of foundation on her face.

What cannot be forgiven though, was that pair of bushy, Susan Boyle-lookalike eyebrows she chanced upon in the washroom mirror this evening, which meant that she couldn’t wait for her last joss sticks session to end so that she could visit her beautician to restore those eyebrows to their Cindy Crawford glory again.

Unfortunately, her regular beautician had long closed for the night and she was left scouring a nearby mall for a professional who could perform this emergency corrective procedure.

Imagine her joy when she found a shop that was still open, where she gleefully ran inside to be its last customer of the day (and consequently delaying its closing time by another 10 mins).

Browsing through the glowing catalogue of eyebrow celebs that included Angelina Jolie, Ayumi Hamasaki, Sonija Kwok, and countless other unknown models, Miss Loi decided that she wanted to be Athena Chu and proceeded to lean back, close her eyes and handed over her pair of eyebrows to the ‘eyebrow stylist’ for that value-for-money $10 Athena job.

And so the stylist proceeded to pluck … pluck … pluck … in earnest. So rhythmic and therapeutic was her pluck … pluck … plucking … that Miss Loi began to slowly fall asleep, but not before seeing a familiar figure floating out of the corner of her eye … and then …

BOOMZ!!!

Sorry Miss! Something hit me on the head and my contact lenses fell off! Now I can’t see!

Huh? Is there anyone who can take over?

Sorry Miss! The shop is closing and I’m the only one left. You need to guide me to finish up the job!

Miss Loi then realized, to her dismay, that there were no mirrors in the shop …

With her intimate self-knowledge, however, Miss Loi knows that her eyebrow is represented by the curve y = −x2 + 3x + 5, beginning where it cuts the y-axis at y = a and has its arch at x = b where the maximum value of y is c.

As the eyebrow stylist had never studied nor understood calculus before, help her determine the coordinates of the arch and the starting point of Miss Loi’s eyebrow via factorising y = −x2 + 3x + 5 using the completing the square method to find the values of a, b and c.

The stylist had this to add

If you can’t guide me then I’ll have to call for the only eyebrow plucker who’s available at this hour!

Steven Lim
がんばって!!!
Miss Loi
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日
曜
日
2009
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18
Oct
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The Prettiest Girl At Miss Loi’s Temple

(8)
Posted at 11:45 pm by Miss Loi in E-Maths Questions

In this critical part of the year, The Temple resembles a ‘United Nations’ of sorts – a mass gathering of chatty students representing the many schools of Singapore, coming together for a common cause as one united people, regardless of race, language or religion, so as to achieve their A1s and happiness and avoid scoldings by teachers and parents.

It’s also the period when the number of extra lessons increases, along with the probability of students from one class meeting those from another.

Take Student J and Student T for example, two conscientious, single & available, hot-blooded boys who had been diligently attending Miss Loi’s joss sticks sessions since time immemorial, who were eagerly anticipating their next class – one that was rumoured to have many chio girls in attendance.

Imagine their dismay when it turned out to be an all-boys’ class, with Miss Loi being the chio-est girl in the class.

Sailor Moon
Kawaii isn’t she?

As they swallowed their bitter disappointment and resigned themselves to the mundane maths questions on their desk, a crumpled piece of paper flew out suddenly from nowhere to hit them on the head.

Startled, they turned towards the direction of the missile, only to find their jaws dropping simultaneously at the sight of an absolute stunner of a girl, dressed in the most kawaii Sailormoon uniform, seated at the far corner of the room.

The long, flowing Pantene hair, an impish smile, and a wink from the almond-shaped eye of this suspected Japanese exchange student were all it took to divert their attention firmly away from the quadratic curves on the board to the curves of her slender body.

They were desperate to stem the bleeding from their noses now, as she pointed her finger teasingly to the crumpled pieces of paper on the floor, which they hastily picked up to discover the following message scribbled inside:

Hello Handsome!

Maths is soooo boring! I’m falling asleep! Can you please pass me some Sour Sweets from the jars on your desk?

The one who passes me the most Sour sweets will get a date with me tonight *wink*

And thus, as hot-blooded males in heat tend to do in these situations, they promptly discarded their BFF status and began grabbing sweets frantically from the jars, totally oblivious to the fact that, to the rest of the people in the class who couldn’t see this girl, Miss Loi was still the chio-est girl in the room.

Two jars containing a mixture of Sour and Cola sweets lie before Students J and T respectively.

As of now, both of them had made three failed attempts to pass sweets to the girl, for they were caught by Miss Loi each time they grabbed a handful of sweets from the jars (students at The Temple are allowed one sweet at a time for their own consumption only). All sweets taken from the jars were confiscated and never placed back into the jars.

The tables below show the number of sweets in each jar at the beginning, and the number of sweets taken out and confiscated by Miss Loi on each attempt.

Student J Student T
Sweet Flavour Sour Cola Sour Cola
Total in jar at the start 40 25 24 48
1st Attempt 14 18 4 10
2nd Attempt 10 0 12 22
3rd Attempt 4 2 6 6

Given that the number of sweets Student J has taken out on his three attempts is represented by the matrix M = (matrix{3}{2}{14 18 10 0 4 2}), and that the same information for Student T is represented by a matrix N.

  1. Write down the matrix N.
  2. Given that L = (matrix{1}{3}{1 1 1}), calculate J=LM and T=LN. Describe what is represented by the elements of J and T.
  3. Calculate K=L(M+N), and describe what is represented by the elements of K.
  4. Calculate (matrix{1}{2}{64 73}) − K, and describe what is represented by the elements of (matrix{1}{2}{64 73}) − K.
  5. If they both managed to take out all the remaining sweets from the jars and pass them all to the girl on the 4th attempt (due to Miss Loi being in the toilet), by comparing the relevant elements of two suitable matrices, determine who gets to ‘date’ the girl.
  6. A Sour Sweet costs $0.60 and a Cola Sweet costs $0.40. Write down two matrices such that the elements of their product under matrix multiplication will give the total cost of the sweets in each jar. Hence, find the total cost of the sweets in each jar.

Hope this cheong hei (ala long-winded) question will provide some practice on Matrix Addition/Subtraction/Multiplication in an Application of Matrices in Solving Everyday Life Problems for those of you studying for your O-Level EMaths now, though it’s not everyday you get the chance to go on a date with Sadako a pretty girl!

がんばって!!!
Miss Loi
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2009
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17
Oct
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Don’t Just Read Your Notes, You Must Practise Too!

(1)
Posted at 4:17 pm by Miss Loi in Miss Loi the Tutor

Found this gem of a video from this Facebook page (thanks to this tweet).

Though it’s created for A-Level JC students, it sums up some of the things Miss Loi has been saying time and time and time again.

Whoever said Singapore’s education is stressful? Woohoo!

がんばって!!!
Miss Loi
火
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2009
Tue
13
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Revenge Of The Fallen

(7)
Posted at 10:23 pm by Miss Loi in Miss Loi the Tutor

The gates to The Great Hall of Salvation has long been closed, but she managed to enter unseen.

The aircon was powerful, and so no one noticed the faint ruffle of foolscap paper that hinted of her presence.

The Tutor of the class was as stately and elegant in her poise as ever, but those koyoks on her back, plus her packets of Panadol, betrayed to the intruder the intense punishment her frail, lithe body was subjected to.

The atmosphere in the room was intense, as The Tutor launched wave after wave of 殺人不眨眼的 TYS/exam papers/school exam/customized worksheet questions, like flying daggers, battering her students to the point of

Arrrrrgh! Miss Loi! My principal says “When you’re tired you should take a short break”. Right now I’m going to take his advice and sleep!

Sensing the opportunity, the uninvited guest weaved her way among the students like a wraith, disrupting their concentration one by one with whispers of blasphemous anti-mathematical identities like a2+b2 = (a+b)(a−b) and lg(x+y) = lg x+lg y into their ears.

Alerted by the disturbance in the metaphysical mathematical fields flowing through the room, the Tutor stopped throwing her flying daggers and snapped:

Miss Loi Sadako! Leave them alone! We have already found the solution to your Plane Geometry question!

‘Screamed’ Miss Loi as she began her telepathic conversation with the intruder.

Sadako Loi Oh really? But as I recall, the answer only appeared well after the 7 days have passed.

Miss Loi It was the school holidays!

Sadako Loi I waited and waited. Because of this, I am now trapped here as a 幽魂野鬼. Moreover, some even laughed at me!

Sadako Loi And now all of you shall pay. ALL of you – from the hundreds who have watched my video to the thousands taking your ‘O’ Level exams in two weeks’ time. For I shall possess the minds of your examiners who will in turn torment you! MUAHAHAHAHA!

With that, the psychic conversation ended. A gust of cold wind swept through the chamber as Sadako’s spirit left the room, messing up Miss Loi’s hair and sending stacks of foolscap paper flying in its wake (and revealing all the naughty cartoons the students have been drawing for the past hour :? ) …

Yes. These are turbulent times – a time when the dreaded Week of Mathematical Armageddon is less than two weeks away, a time to Teach Less, DO More, and a time when wandering spirits can anyhow fly in and out of The Temple :?

As the storm clouds gathered rapidly in the skies above, Miss Loi silently hopes that, in addition to the stuff she had said in the past (like this, this and this) students should by now be …

  1. Spending 2-3 hours (YMMV, depending on whether you’re taking single or double maths) daily to practice selected questions from a variety of topics, NOT just your favourite topic. You should be polishing up your timing and consistency now.
  2. Refraining from focussing your energy in just a couple of topics or question types that are supposedly ‘sure to come out‘, because you will have nothing to fall back on if they didn’t appear as you expected, or ‘it came out but it was too difficult’.
  3. Recognizing that it’s TYS FTW (!!!), and that the ‘top school’ prelim papers you have painstakingly gotten from your friend may be too difficult for O-Level standards and/or may not have adequately covered all topics.
  4. Acknowledging that there aren’t enough questions in the TYS (not in the latest edition anyway) for new syllabus topics like Curves & Circles, R-formula, Partial Fractions etc., and that you’ll need to re-visit the questions in your teacher’s notes, exercises, old TYS, and perhaps websites like this for comprehensive practice.
  5. Wise enough to get your teacher/tutor/friend to pick questions for you to practice if you’re short of time.
  6. Knowing that there are other subjects to revise for your O-Levels, though it’s tempting to spend all your time on Maths since it’s all Maths on the opening week but please, please take care of your L1R5 (hence the relatively short revision duration suggested in Point 1 above). Don’t study your maths till 走火入魔!

Last but not least, every year, there will be those who, by virtue of taking a romance a step too far, playing a Facebook game too many, or procrastinating a day too long, will inevitably leave it a little late.

And it’s this group, the last of the Last-Minute Buddha Foot Huggers, they who are most vulnerable to Sadako-controlled examiners, they who are still pounding on the Temple Gates, that’s foremost on Miss Loi’s mind as she created her O Level 2009 LMBFH Support Group on Facebook, in the little hope that this shall be a place for mutual support, where all may find solace and comfort in one another, and to clasp each other’s (virtual) hand tightly in the face of the looming storm.

Join the official Last-Minute Buddha Foot Huggers Facebook Group!
がんばって!!!
Miss Loi