“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ….“
The despairing cry made its way from dream to reality as a distraught Miss Loi sat up in bed in the middle of the night, with her heart still rapidly beating from a nightmare that had felt so frighteningly real.
That vivid scene from the dream continued to play out over and over again in her head as she drove along the PIE the following morning, causing a train of frustrated cars to form behind hers, as she was in no mood to notice the incessant horning and flashing of headlights when her speed dropped from 90 km/h to 70 km/h to 50 km/h …
Recognizing the futility of trying to shake off the recurring images in her mind, she decided to turn off the expressway and head towards the scene of the nightmare, for if the terrible dream was true, life would have lost some of its meaning, and a part of her future would be in grave jeopardy.
At her favourite boutique in Far East Plaza, Miss Loi asked the regular salesgirl who has always served her in all her visits
Hey you know what? I dreamt of you quitting the shop last night! Must be just a dream right? Coz if it’s real, who’s gonna give me my regular discount next time???
The salesgirl’s eyes widened.
小姐, this kind of things cannot anyhow say! My boss over there can hear!
She then leaned forward, smiled and said,
“But since I know that my boss didn’t pass her O-Level EMaths, I can tell you this …”
Let y be my salary, and x be the time that has passed since I’ve joined this shop.
Before I joined this shop, my previous pay was represented by y=a−x+c, where a=2 and c=580.
After I joined this shop, my salary over time is represented by y=axn+c.
Initially I humbly asked for a=20, n=2 and c=500. But my boss was kind enough to offer me a=15, n=1 and c=550, which I accepted.
A couple of years later, when I charted my salary records using what I’ve learnt from this website, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was actually a=−100, n=−2 and c=600.
Furthermore, after a review, a became 550, n became 0 and c became 0 for a long period of time.
And now my friendly boss has even decided to give me a bonus by making a=−1, n=3 and c=600!
So do you think there is any chance that I will quit?
While your question on Graphs won’t exactly appear in this form in your O-Level E-Maths Paper 1, Miss Loi thinks that sketching out all the graphs described by the salesgirl above will give E-Maths students some practice to familiarise themselves with some of the shapes of the 12 Graphs of Functions and, at the same time, convince Miss Loi that it was, after all, just a bad dream.
P.S. Please just focus on the shapes of the graphs more than anything else.
