Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Rely on Maths lecturer? Think twice!

I was disappointed with my Maths lecturer...... If a student did this mistake, i would hav forgiven the person but this is a maths lecturer! The test question that she discussed with us goes like this:(not exactly but the idea is the same)
Line 1 & line 2 intersect at point B. Point A is on line 1 while point C is on line 2. ABCD is a parallelogram.(also the numerical info is given but there's no need to mention it since we wont use it here)
(i) Show that AB=BC.
(ii) Find the coordinate of point D.

After doing the 1st part of the question, my lecturer suggested the following diagram for part (ii).
She said, 'there r 4 possibilities of how u could draw point D but we'll just draw one as a guide.'

My goodness! Nearly fainted when she proposed that diagram. But i thought, maybe she just was just careless. So i kept quiet n let it be... However, it was noticed by charles who then pointed it out(say loud loud some more), "teacher, point D is supposed to be at the other side!(he meant solution 1)". But to my surprise, she said, "as i've told u just now, there r 4 possibilities of how u could draw point D n this is one of them. of course u can draw that way too. but we'll discuss this diagram according to my diagram."

YES, THERE R 4 DIAGRAM OF SOLUTIONS TO POINT D BUT THE ABOVE ONE IS DEFINITELY NOT ONE OF THEM! The solutions r as the following:



I kept quiet for the second time. I know she wasn't gonna admit that she was wrong. But Sze Chiang n Charles just couldn't get over it n they argued with her AGAIN. My jaw dropped when she said, "It is not necessary to follow the order of ABCD when u label a polygon." This STUPID statement came out from a Maths lecturer! She meant the diagram below is absolutely correct!Hell, it is altogether WRONG! and a HUGE MISTAKE to be made by a lecturer! A person good in Maths will never draw it this way, simply because it is WRONG! In the question part (i), it's already mentioned that AB and BC r the sides of the parallelogram, so how on earth could we obtain the above diagram? Another argument point: if she had proposed point D to be as in her diagram, ABCD should be this:
Let me remind u the definition of a parallelogram. According to Oxford dictionary, parallelogram is a flat shape with 4 straight sides, the opposite sides being parallel and equal to each other. And this is what the dictionary showed for parallelogram(the middle one):That z-shaped thing was not even close to a polygon, let alone a parallelogram!
At the end of the day, we went back late, thanks to Charles n Sze Chiang who never gav up(gav up in the end too) explaining to the lecturer. It dawned on me that she was not careless; she didn't even know that she was wrong, and the worse is she insisted she was right. All the while i've been keeping quiet cos i certainly don't want to catch the bus late!
This is the forever only correct way to label a polygon:
Well, the conclusion is, she was wrong, n point D can't be there as she proposed. But i could not tolerate with such mistake. How could a lecturer teach her student to label a parallelogram that way? Ugh.... U may think that i'm too emo, but i refuse to let ppl insult my beloved Mathematics!

German Week

Hullo! Sorry for not updating for a long time. Not havin a laptop n a good internet connection at akasia makes regular updates impossible! Anyway, I went for the German Week organised by ALG students n here r some photos:
Before going to INTEC:
Look at our depressed faces! What happen? We hav been waiting for more than 45 minutes for the bus! It was awfully long n we din hav anything to do, so we just played around with my digicam. Well, we ended up hailing taxi to go there... what a pity!
But i managed to capture a good pic of Joanne(can b used as her singing album cover d, lol!)>>>
At last, we reached INTEC, already sweating due to the hot weather. Of course i know the venue of this supposedly grand event, but when i look at these:
What? Did they expect the visitors to possess superhuman eyesight? u can only see it because i zoomed my digicam to the maximum! what i had expected was a proper n noticeable signboard... Never mind, i thought, maybe they were in a rush n just simply put it on.
So we continued until we reach the german block.
Still ok, I thought. At least they did something to beautify the place. But when I see this>>>
I nearly fainted! THIS ugly thing(sorry that i've to say it n i know who did it), was not supposed to show up in a grand event! It was so horrible. Even if they hav to write it, they could hav asked william to write, at least his writing is way better than this!
Moving on to the inside,
Pat posing for my camera. She was so happy to see us here(we were the only non-ALG there)!
The German Week T-shirt. Not bad!
William busy with presentation thingy.
We had fun eating the german snacks.

sausages

salad(i think)

After that we listened to a presentation by german exchange student.
Took some pics of nice photos in his presentation, hehe.

The next day i went alone(as the others couldn't wake up early n also the one that could wake up early wanna study) to INTEC to watch barfuss, which is a nice movie. I wanna watch all the other movies, but couldn't afford to waste too much of my time; trial was just around the corner. Ich denke das ist alles for my german week visit. Overall it's just so-so, probably due to the insufficient fund INTEC provided.