These days, being a blog awards finalist comes with great responsibility and … umm … extra tasks.
Just when Miss Loi was coming to terms with the great timing of Omy.sg’s request for “two pictures of your hand, doing anything you think is symbolic of blogging” (which arrived right after she removed her nail art), in came another request for a short email interview:
Even though she’s been pretty busy these couple of weeks (hence the lower frequency of blog posts – hopefully this will change soon), being the archetypical goody-two-shoe award nominee that she is, Miss Loi shall nonetheless strive to fulfill this obligation in the best manner that she can …
Looking through the archives (i.e. the Ten-Year Series portion on the bottom-left of this blog), you’ll find that the total number of posts add up to 191 (including this post).
Actually “blogging” can be further split in two x–y components i.e.
- x: thinking of what to write
{x: 1 hour ≤ x ≤ 3 hours each across 3 days, x ∈ R} - y: the actual writing/copy-and-pasting/images creation process
{y: 1 hour ≤ x ≤ 5 hours, y ∈ R}
So taking the average values of x and y to be approximately 4.5 hrs and 2.5 hrs respectively, and multiplying by the number of posts, you’ll get:
= (4.5+2.5) hrs × 191 = 1337 hrs (55.7 days)
As since this blog started 560 days ago (at the time of writing), blogging has taken up roughly 47.75/561 = 9.93% (correct to 3 significant figures) of her life (which is about right in terms of work-life balance 😉 )
As for why she started blogging, let’s just say that a Darth Vader-ish voice echoed suddenly in her head on one fateful day … 😉
Note: Blogging time excludes the time spent on replying comments.
Ans to Part 1:
Since being selected as a finalist, the shape of Miss Loi’s lips can be expressed by the function:
It’s now up to voters and the judges to increase the value of that coefficient a to as high as possible, but not too high as her mouth would then start to look a bit weird.
But please, please she begs you not to let a fall to below zero!
Ans to Part 2:
According to the judging criteria, it’s 70% to the judges and 30% to the voters.
Since the judges are supposed to be impartial and not be influenced by the results of the voting, we shall assume that winning the votes (V) and being picked by the judges (J) are two mutually exclusive events.
Now to calculate the chances of Jφss Sticks winning, we need to consider all the possibilities:
- Jφss Sticks wins the votes AND being picked by the judges i.e. P(V)P(J)
- Jφss Sticks loses the votes but got picked by the judges with judging margin (mj) > vote margin (mv) i.e. [1-P(V)](P(mj > mv|J)
- Jφss Sticks NOT picked by the judges but wins the votes with vote margin > the judging margin i.e. P(mv > mj|V)[1-P(J)]
So to obtain the grand probability of Jφss Sticks winning P(W), we need to add up all the possibilities above i.e.
Which is non-trivial as without mind-reading abilities to extract more data from the judges’/voters’ minds, we won’t be able to calculate P(V) and P(J), let alone the *conditional probabilities in the cases mentioned above.
ARE YOU SURE THIS QUESTION IS IN THE SYLLABUS?!
*Not in syllabus – O-Level students are advised not to be alarmed.
Miss Loi’s Temple has been heavily bombarded by flying teapots all week! You say leh?!
But having said that, Miss Loi likes the designs in Dandy Angel‘s collection very much 🙂
*STERN MOOD ON*
At this point, Miss Loi would like to pay a special tribute to a teacher blogger known as Stressed Teacher, whose blog was unceremoniously taken down without warning earlier this year under mysterious circumstances.
His frank writings had provided an enlightening insight into the daily working lives of teachers in Singapore, beyond the veil of glossy brochures depicting smiling noble teachers teaching in surreal classes of well-behaved students.
In a nutshell, his blog should have been compulsory reading to all aspiring teachers and to all who wonder why Singapore is a Tuition Nation.
*STERN MOOD OFF*
Best Youth Blog ?
Best Design Blog ?
Best Blog Shop ?
Most Entertaining Blog ?
Most Insightful Blog ?
Best Individual Blog ?
Best Photo Blog ?
Oh heavens you want Miss Loi to go through all that probability calculations again?!
Here ends Miss Loi’s ‘short’ OMY email interview.
*Rushes off to save The Temple from the massive attack of flying teapots by getting as many people as possible to vote daily for Jφss Sticks*
*dodges a flying teapot*
救命啊!!!
*dodges another flying teapot*
14 Comments
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Ive brought the whole town here this time...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v638/peewee78/mob-1.jpg
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Cockroach: LOL Last time your 'brothers' were Chinese. This time your 'whole town' are ang mohs.
You're a healthy symbol of multi-racialism 😀
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No, they are yellow-skinned like us!
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Where did you find that Chinese picture cockroach?
I really like it xD
and it's funny..
yellow-skinned like us...
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all equations look foreign liao. wahaha. miss loi muz tong suan ah!
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Wow! You gave those answers for the interview? Wahahaha!
Really enjoys reading your posts. Always so thought provoking and funny!
VOTE FOR MS LOI!!
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Haha hilarious! Should include winning probability of bell curve figures lah, standard variation formulae and such
Good luck!
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If there's a most funny blog, you'll win with this interview. Maybe if next year Omy decides to do this again, can consider! hahaha..
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You make Maths seem so interesting!
Too bad I'm not Singaporean, otherwise I would pop over to get tutored by you.
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Hope those flying teapots contain a genie and someone tells it to become a shield to shield the Temple from more bloodshed.
Yeah these things can kill especially if you consider g = 10ms^-2 and F = ma and the cuts the broken pieces could make.
Where has the five Japanese characters of your signature gone? *PuZzLeD*
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LOL Cockroach since when you become so witty? LOL
MGCCL: Please cast your votes for Jφss Sticks! Foreign talents are welcome!
|c3^sNoW: TONG SUAN AH!!! *ducks another flying teapot*
Claudia: Seems like they've yet to publish this on their official blog. Perhaps it's just too bizarre for their liking, or perhaps this has brought back too many O-Level nightmares for them 😛
Encik: There are only 10 finalists so the respective probabilities of each finalist winning when put together should be described by a discrete probability distribution. The bell curve, which is a continuous probability distribution, cannot be applied here.
Besides this being an inaugural competition, we do not have sufficient past data to form a reasonable hypothesis. Tsk tsk.
*Once again this is out of syllabus - O-Level students are advised not to be alarmed.
Soupie: But there's already a Most Entertaining Blog category ...
Welcome to Jφss Sticks Kym! Hope the Jφss Sticks smoke has not been too choky from where you are 😀
ITIF: Thanks for your touching and motivational message which caused Miss Loi to suddenly remember those five Jap characters:
がんばって!!!
*dodges another spinning teapot hurling in at an acceleration of 5G*
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Pity I can't joint in & no 'horny' category! Wish u the best & hope u win!
Off the record....since the judge play a very big role in choosing the winner.........it might be a good idea if u can have a 'private audition' with them first....Ahem..ahem...ahemmmmmm!!!
Have a very nice day!
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HAM: Hey are you trying to undermine the integrity of the competition? This is Singapore where we have a strict system of checks and balances in place to prevent fugitives from escaping, charities from fraud etc. etc. okay?! Such heresy ... tsk tsk.
P.S. Besides, your 'idea' will fail if the judges are females. Ahem ... ahem ...
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Not necessarily Miss Loi. I mean you should be hot enough to have girl on girl actions (儿童不宜!) with them...
Wrote a blog post about math and sex:
http://mgccl.com/2008/07/12/math-is-like-sex-but-more-so