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Singapore Math

Thursday, October 15, 2015

Gross Singapore Math



© S. Mockus, & T. Millard, (2010)

Estimation (or guesstimation as it is more commonly known in the U.S.) is a creative mathematical activity that is seldom given enough curriculum attention and time in Singapore. For the lay public, and probably for a disturbingly large proportion of local math teachers, tutors, and parents, estimation is often confused with approximation (or rounding off numbers).

Like swimming, cycling, and driving, estimating ought to be a life skill that is indispensable for all responsible citizens aiming to be numerate in our quantitative world of bloated data.

A PSLE Estimation Routine

In this year Singapore's PSLE (grade 6) math paper, a routine guesstimation MCQ question has irked some parents, who "blamed" the Ministry of Education for posing an "unfair" question.


Ghostly Math from @MathPlus

How to Fermi-ize

Current Singapore math textbooks are often too Puritan, not to say, boring, to contain fertile exercises that could hone students' estimation skills. A dose of humor, without insulting or shocking the readers, will go some way in nurturing some Fermi disciples. Let's look at eleven non-drill-and-kill guesstimation questions, which could be posed to above-average math students bored by school math.

0. Zero Toilet Paper 

If all the toilet paper used in Singapore in an entire year were rolled out, how far would it stretch?


1. The Trillionth Heartbeat

Assuming an average human heart of 72 beats per minute, estimate that most folks would breathe their last breath around their billionth heartbeat, or by their near-666 weeks of life on this side of eternity.

2. Pools of Eyeballs

About how many Olympic-sized swimming pools would all the world's human eyeballs fill?

3. Death Nailed by Tobacco Sticks

© Chua Sin Yew

A medical association claims that a cigarette smoker shortens the length of his life by 9 minutes for each cigarette smoked. A student smokes three-quarters of a pack of 20 cigarettes every day for 30 years. Excluding leap years, by how many months or years has this student cut short his life to?

4. To Pee or Not to Pee

How much urine is in a typical public swimming pool? Or, how much pee in a pool would kill you?

5. Length of Intestine

If you were to pull your small intestine out and laid it in a straight line, how long would that be? Is it shorter than the distance from Earth to Moon?

6. A Nation of Vampires—Human Blood Aplenty

If you were to take all the human blood from all the living people in Singapore and pour it into the Singapore Indoor Stadium, how deep would it be?

© Mark Parisi

7. Zoo Poo

Estimate how much zoo poo is collected every week at the Singapore Zoological Gardens. How much of it could be used as fertilizers?

8. The Host with the Most

How many (unfriendly and not-s0-friendly) bacteria are living on and inside you right now?

9. Cash in on the Trash

Show that, on average, every square mile of sea on the planet contains 46,000 pieces of rubbish. How much cash could be generated annually by an entrepreneur involved in the trash business? [1 mile is about 8/5 kilometers.]

10. Green Pollution

© Sidney Harris
Thanks to Indonesia's mostly incompetent politicians and corrupt businessmen, its neighbors Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, have unhealthily been affected by the annual haze visiting them, as a result of illegal forest burning by local farmers to save costs for their bosses.

Guesstimate the number of people inside and outside Indonesia, who have been affected in the last two decades from this man-made pollution. How many natives, Mohammedans, and "infidels" will die prematurely because of near-zero political will from oft-corrupt Indonesian politicians?


Estimation Skills via Gross, Illegal, or Murderous Math

Be it via "Gross Math," "Murderous Math," or "Illicit Math," creative or fertile questions on the "shit," "death," or "illegal" business, could be posed to enhance students' guesstimating skills.

Indeed, gross Singapore math could serve as a catalyst to imparting real-life estimation skills to students, and to reducing more complaints from kiasu Singapore parents, whose children will be sitting for the PSLE oft-dreaded math paper in coming years.

Selected Answers
2. About 73 swimming pools.
5. About 18 miles long.
8. About 2,000,000,000,000,000 bacteria.


BONUS: Some Facebook Estimation Quickies

The Boring Talkative Math Teacher

500 GB of data can store X books. What is X?

Number of people in the picture

Grave Humor


Ballroom Readers' Institute (2011). Uncle John's impossible questions and astounding answers. Ashland, Oregon: Bathroom Readers' Press.

Krantz, S. G. (1997). Techniques of problem solving. American Mathematical Society.

Mockus, S. & Millard, T. (2010). How to speak zombie: A guide for the living. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books LLC.

Rimmer, G. (2005). How to make a camel smoothie and other surreal sums. Cambridge: Icon Books.

Teng, A. (2015). An informed estimate is worth its weight in coins. The Straits Times, Oct 9, 2015. http://tinyurl.com/q7ly7bx

The Bathroom Readers' Institute (2011). Uncle John's bathroom reader impossible questions and astounding answers. Ashland, OR: The Bathroom' Readers Innstitute.

Yan, K. C. (2012). Mathematical quickies and trickies. Singapore: MathPlus Publishing.

© Yan Kow Cheong, October 15, 2015.