How to Celebrate Zero Day

Zero causes so much pain and suffering to tens of millions of students and their parents every day. Indeed, zero is the real troublemaker among the numbers! It's not too late to get even with the Roman Catholic Church’s once-deemed blasphemous infidel number (again).

Below are ten idiot-proof activities you’d do to celebrate Zero Day.

10. Avoid writing the now-redundant zero before a decimal point: .23, .583, .0045, …—move away from dated deception, faux religion, or numerological superstition.

9. Use the letter “o” or “O” when you mean the number or numeral “0”—for example, when giving a bank account or ID number to someone requesting it on the phone for verification purposes.

8. Use “nothing” to half-truthfully convey the idea of zero, even though the number zero is “anything but nothing.”

7. Fight for the Year Zero to be included in the timeline, to avoid confusing billions of people that the year 2023 is conventionally in the 21st century rather than in the 20th century.

6. Canvass for the number zero instead of the number one to be the first number in the set of whole numbers, especially in some puritan or radical circles, where the devil number is excluded.

5. Mobilize semi- or quasi-innumerate folks to use a different numeral when zero is used as a place number and as a number itself—strip zero of its double personality. For instance, use Ø in lieu of 0: 3Ø14Ø to emphasize place-value.

4. Be a zerobreaker, by defying the eleventh commandment, Thou shalt not divide by zero! without life-threatening consequences—that one has the (civil or political or religious) rights to divide by zero, although the answer may prove insensible or unreasonable.

3. Puncture the egos of haughty geeks who think they know it all, by exposing mathematical loopholes in their reasoning, resulting from illegally (or unknowingly) dividing by zero—humble them with fallacies and paradoxes, such as 1 = 0 or π = 3.

2. Have a law that fines companies from offering 0% interest rate as a gimmick to lure gullible customers.

1. Warn people to flee from the free—beware of free gifts, free seminars, and free air tickets, which seldom have zero strings attached.

Now is the time to teach Zero who’s in charge here—zero is your servant, not your master.

Nøtøriøuly yours

© Yan Kow Cheong, September 25, 2023.

A Dozen Numerical Deeds for the Chinese New Year

The Lunar New Year is often a time of receiving rather than a time of giving for most youngsters. However, like Christmas, for not-well-to-do donors, it's the worst time of the year, when they're expected to give hong baos or gifts to the younger generation, many of whom think it's their juvenile rights to receive these red packets.

An extra zero is always welcomed!
From: The Straits Times, Feb. 18, 2015. p. A24.

In recent years, more shops and supermarkets are open during the Chinese New Year, because foreign workers and non-Chinese Singaporeans are willing to work overtime to serve locals, who would otherwise be inconvenienced when it comes to buying household items; or having a wallet-friendly meal, while they go around visiting friends and relatives. Not to say, foreign-born doctors and nurses who are on stand-by to look after local patients, who are admitted to hospitals during the Chinese New Year public holidays. 

There is no better time than the Chinese New Year to show our appreciation to the financially disadvantaged and to tens of thousands of migrants, who help sustain the economy, when most Chinese Singaporeans are having a good time catching up with relatives and friends.

A Dozen Deeds for Singaporeans of All Sizes, Shapes, and Ages

Here are a dozen simple numerical deeds many could afford to do during this festive season, especially after receiving fat hong baos from senior family members and relatives.

12. Give some iTunes or Google play gift cards to children from disadvantaged homes for them to purchase some educational apps or ebooks.

11. Donate a math ebook, or offer a sample chapter, or book voucher to someone whose child might benefit from it.

10. Overtip a waitress.

The book may be unsuitable for non-geeks!

9. Give ten bucks to a street musician or blind person.

8. Compliment three strangers every day during this festive season.

7. Give a gift certificate or cash voucher to a beggar.

6. Bless a poor child with a Rubik's Cube.

Not all Rubik's cubes are made equal!

5. Offer ten percents of your income to charity, on top of your tithe.

4. Surprise an old friend overseas with a phone call.

A value-for-money grade 3 SG math book

3. Volunteer to teach or tutor someone how to use the model- or stack-model method as a problem-solving strategy to solve brain-unfriendly questions.

2. Settle the restaurant bill for a family of four strangers while they are enjoying their meal.

1. Buy a seasoned train ticket and give it to a poor person.

The time to spread happiness and joy is now, especially among foreign and migrant workers and the economically disadvantaged. For the young, it's never too early to be a cheerful giver! Let the spirit of giving be extended far and wide vis-à-vis disadvantaged Singapore citizens and residents!

© Yan Kow Cheong, March 1, 2015.

Thank you, Math!

Journal writing in mathematics education is often perceived as a boring activity in getting students to reflect on their own mathematical thinking. Perhaps an appealing way to assess students' mastery of mathematical concepts is to encourage them to write "mathematical letters" to a buddy in the form of "thanks goodness for anything numerical or mathematical."

Let's look at a sample of these math-lite correspondences.

Dear Numbers

© mashable.com 

Thank you for being such a buddy I can always count on. You don't change because of geography or history. A while ago, you gave me an idea to blog on "Singapore Math by Numbers." Without you, the world would come to a standstill. You numbers don't just rule the world; today, you've been semi-elevated to a god—with all your metrics and analytics.

Numerically yours

Dear Calculus book

Thank you for letting me use you as a weight or support. Your thickness scares the hell out of so many otherwise intelligent mortals, especially those who have had an unpleasant experience with their high school math teachers. Besides, I use you as an inexpensive cure to help my friends and loved ones, who are suffering from insomnia—your deltas and epsilons are sufficient to hypnotize the hardcore sufferers.

Infinitesimally yours


Dear 1001

© shashindrasri.blogspot.com

You're a mirror to my numerical soul. Indeed, you provided me with so many oddities and idiosyncrasies about the Palindromic Family. In fact, I've started writing the first few chapters of "The Joy (and Pain) of Palindromic Numbers."

Palindromically yours

Dear LOGIC

Thanks for being such a reliable companion in my dealing with irrational and illogical folks. Your cold, austere character has put off many egos, who would otherwise have trampled over the rest of us.

Logically yours

An i-protractor
© 1mobile.com

Dear Protractor

I hope you won't go the way of the abacus or slide rule, because I'm seeing lesser use of you these days. Anyway, I promise to keep you as a vintage math instrument for my grandchildren.

Dear Compasses & Unmarked Ruler

Thank you for frustrating and humbling thousands of our mathematical forefathers in their futile attempts to constructing a square with the same area of a circle. To revive your popularity, I'll be conducting an enrichment math lesson on The Lost Art of the Compass.

Christmas all year-round

Dear 25

Thanks for confiding with me some of your innermost secrets, which allowed me to write some parallelisms between the king of the public holidays and the queen of the sciences. Don't worry, I'll dedicate CHRISTmaths to you on its silver edition.

Joyfully yours

Join the CHRISTmaths fan page.

Dear Boring Math Teacher

You provide jobs to half a dozen tutors, as they try to teach the most disliked subject in school in a less parrot-like manner! And your boring test of artificial questions only serves as a filter to separate the nerd from the herd—the mathematical goats from the sheep.

© business.mcmaster.ca

Dear Probability

Thanks for mocking my intuition and flawed logic. The answers to your problems have humbled the mathematical brethren, as you tease them with your counter-intuitive results.

 © tower.com

Dear FRENCH

Thank you for making me pronounce the first part of the word "factorize" to sound like the four-letter word. To test my hypothesis, I tried that trick on my French female teacher many moons ago, and the class then couldn't control themselves but burst into laughter*. 

Fact-ally yours

* Try this trick on your French-speaking friends and fans who speak English as a second or third language.

Dear Math Editor

Thank you for introducing me to so many conceptual and linguistic faux pas—I couldn't have fabricated them without your poor grammar and punctuation, and shaky grasp of some difficult mathematical concepts. Some are jaw-achingly funny. My collection of your blunders is growing, and I couldn't wait to compile them in a book for green editors. If only I knew earlier that "poor writes" could open up the doors to many freelance assignments. 

© 123opticalillusions.com

Dear Dice

Thank you for feeling so good in my hand and for showing me so many different possible outcomes. You've taught me a lot about chance and probability, and you look pretty sitting on my book shelves. That's where you'll stay. Love, Leah.

Dear Sex

Thank you for revealing to me your intimate liaison with the most boringly taught and disliked subject in school. And for giving me enough materials to writing and getting "Mathematics And Sex" published.  Indeed, MATH is a four-letter word! 

© mathandchess.net

Dear Chess

Thank you for using me to beat those older and smarter chaps. Mentally satisfying to "humble" them! But I can't stand you when you used the same trick on me years later—when those young geeks refused to let me win or draw even one game.

Dear Calculators

Although you had atrophied my mental calculation abilities, however, you're a God-sent tool to working out those tedious and mindless computations. I'm totally dependent on you for my everyday numerical chores—from calculating the waiter's tip to finding the amount I owe to the credit card companies. On the negative side, you've upped my innumeracy index by a dozen points. On a positive note, I wished you'd upgrade yourself to becoming an instrument of desire, just like the iPad. 

Dear Amazon.com

A trick-and-tricky math book 

Thank you for showcasing our math titles on your site, but we hate that 55 percent you're charging us every time there is an order for our books. When we factor in the time we need to dispatch them, and the shipping freight, most of us are only operating at a negative profit! Plus, your payment in US dollars, and your reluctance to link with PayPal, makes authors living outside the US hesitant to promote their titles on Amazon.

Dear ZERO

© spaceadventures.com

Thanks for sharing with me how you're once marginalized by your fellow numerals, and how you're even ostracized by the Catholic Church for calling you the "infidel zero." Your forgiving spirit towards the Pope and his bishops, and your revelation to Newton and gang regarding some of your oddities and idiosyncrasies, had earned you a numerical place in the Mathematical Hall of Fame. However, your critics never cease to call you the "troublesome zero."

Dear NOTHING

Folks always mistake you for the numeral zero—both of you are like faux twins. Zero is nothing, and nothing is zero. In fact, you're anything but nothing—you're something! Philosophers and mystics curse or deify you, with their ever-convoluted arguments—they've almost elevated you to the status of an atheistic religion. 

There's almost an alphabet for your name: abyss, chasm, emptiness, hole, pit, void, nothingness, nada, naught, …, nil, nix, zilch.

books.google.com

Dear Empty Set

Thank you for causing so much confusion among school kids. Do you exist or not? Are you really a set? Are you like a club with no members? Or, a bag without items? You're like something with zero nothings.

© shop.cafepress.com 

Dear Imaginary Numbers

Once upon a time, they denied your existence, just like your rejected, dejected, and ejected cousins, the negative numbers. But today, like zero, you're having the last laugh; in fact, we often take you, guys, for granted, albeit you prefer to keep a low profile. I wished school teachers won't tell the kids that you're complex, when you're really simple to manage.

Dear May 1

This is the only date in the year, when working folks don't have to labor. A day of protests and political rallies, you remind the masses of Karl Marx's words that workers of the world must unite—that they have nothing to lose but their chains.

© eoagh.com

Dear Black Hole

It's beyond my reasoning ability to understand the math that predicted your existence. Thank God, He produces a few Hawkings among His creation every century or so to reveal your galactic existence and importance. 

 © abqjournal.com

Dear Sudoku

You give me hope that in my golden years my chances of dying from schizophrenia or dimentia are significantly reduced if I indulge myself to playing with you more often.

Dear Numerology

© geocaching.com 

From the simple idea of digital root, you manage to bluff tens of millions of numerically challenged folks into believing that they can predict their good and bad days, and that they can take control of their future from their birthdates. Indeed, a pseudo-equation of yours is: f(birthdate) = lucky/unlucky days 

Dear iPhone

Thank you for saving me the trouble of having to carry a scientific calculator around. Yes, by a mere 90-degree turn, you magically turn yourself from a four-function to a scientific calculator. I look forward to seeing you functioning as a graphing calculator in a-not-too-distant upgrade. Hope you can strike a deal with Texas or Casio, just like you did with HP.

Dear Statistics

Thank you for revealing to me all your curves and standard deviations. However, I'm still confused about your three musketeers: mean, mode, and median. Which mean do you mean? Now I understand why some folks call you "Sadistic Statistics" for torturing hundreds of thousands of students every day.

Dear 13

© sabotagetimes.com 

I know you didn't deserve that awful publicity surrounding your name, especially when those superstitious folks wickedly try to associate you with some black Friday. You're just an innocent-looking prime who had suffered so much—far worse than 666 and 4444.

Thank you for providing me with rich materials to write about, every time you fall on a Friday. We, recreational math enthusiasts, feel a bit like "numerical hypocrites," when we can't help but gossip about the numerical quirks of Friday 13.

Un-triskaidekaphobically yours

Dear Death

Thanks for being the great equalizer. You won't let the rich and the powerful, or the arrogant and the haughty, live beyond their undeservedly numbered days. Three scores and ten, or a billion odd heartbeats—that's your deadline to them, all!

It's now time to write and e-mail some math-lite letters to the rest of us to read and enjoy!

Mathematically yours

Reference
Dieterich, L. (2011). thx thx thx: thank goodness for everything. Kansas City, Missouri: Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC. thxthxthx.com

© Yan Kow Cheong, July 24, 2012