Jφss Sticks Tuition Centre

FRONTLINE UPDATE:

So let it be told that our warriors, weary from two rounds of linguistic assault in the morning courtesy of some insightful planning from the bureaucratic War Council, took a brave stand against the mighty Horde on this gloomy afternoon.

Details are sketchy at present. Some were reported to have been felled by the lethal swarms of tiny pallets (each carrying 1-2 marks) launched by the enemy at the start. But ultimately the enemy’s charge was valiantly halted, albeit with a few marks lost here and there compared to my friend who only lost a total of 2 marks. At the same time Miss Loi is silently glad that some of her prophecies have indeed came true.

Now that night has fallen and the wounded are being tended to, Miss Loi shall list a condensed version of the topics that you can expect to face at dawn (yes don’t oversleep!) tomorrow:

Algebra – usually an early part involves the proving of some quadratic equation. Should you fail to prove, remember that you can still use ${-b pm sqrt{b^2-4ac}}/{2a}$ to solve the later part! Don’t leave blank!
Mensuration
Similarities and Congruencies (see below)
Vectors (see below)
Graphs
Trigonometry
Cumulative Frequency Curve (possibly with Probability and Histogram thrown in together)
Geometry
Arithmetic (maybe a question on interests
Number Patterns (Don’t spend too much time on this if you find it difficult. Come back when you have the time!)

Sleep well tonight. For tomorrow, we fight again at dawn!

After running non-stop overnight all the way from the frontline, the messenger collapsed from exhaustion in Miss Loi’s tender arms, muttering a faint “They are here …” as he drew his last breath.

Holding back her tears, and wondering at the same time if the messenger should’ve just called her on her mobile instead of running all the way back, Miss Loi hurried up the steps leading to The Temple‘s ramparts, to come face-to-face with the largest army ever witnessed by students this academy year.

Gasp!

Despite our glorious victory on the opening days, the enemy has regrouped as we enter the most critical period of our campaign in this dark Halloween week, where it has been foretold that attacks will commence at the break of dawn, further depriving students the life-regenerating beauty sleep that they crave.

Miss Loi knows many of you are weary from the exertions the week before, but let it be known that for your sweat and toil all these years, the time has finally come for you to claim your Mathematical Nirvana and enter paradise – where the guys are cool and the gals pretty (esp if you’re one of those ‘deprived’ student), and where lectures are so much more easier to pon!

As you enter the penultimate leg of your epic secondary school journey, Miss Loi has already said all that she wanted to say. It will be over soon. What lies beyond is a flaming bonfire of your O-Level books. As each of you make that final dash to your own finish line, just make sure that, for the last time, you leave the exam hall with no regrets.

So fare thee well and let these be Miss Loi’s final words to you for your E-Maths papers and may they serve as a quick checklist to help you in your final revision:

Remember your numerical definitions e.g. natural, rational, irrational, real, integer, perfect square/cube, prime numbers etc. so that you will not be lost in Paper 1 when asked to “list out” all numbers of a certain kind e.g. part 3 of this question.
Oh and remember that 1 is not a prime number.
Don’t forget your primary school stuff like LCM and HCF for your Paper 1.
Know the difference between simple and compound interest.
Memorize your mensuration formulae for all the figures in your textbook.
Familiarize yourself with the 12 graphs of functions in your textbook, and know how to draw them.
Familiarize yourself with the velocity-time, distance-time and acceleration-time graphs, and how to derive them from one another.
Familiarize yourself with angle properties of n-sided polygons i.e. sum of interior/exterior angles, each interior angle etc.
Remember the 4 tests for congruent triangles and the 3 tests for similar triangles.
When you see the keywords similar figures or similar solids, please utilize the little-used similar figures formulae and don’t spend a thousand years trying to find the individual areas/volumes!
When the question asks “describe fully the symmetry“, you must write down the number of lines of symmetry, and the order of rotational symmetry.
Remember your TOA CAH SOH, as well as your sine, cosine rules and bearings.
Remember that bearings are measure from the North in a CLOCKWISE direction and are always written in three digits (e.g. 010°)!
Know the definitions of mean, median and mode.
Familiarize yourself with histograms and their frequency densities, stem & leaf diagrams, dot diagrams, pie charts and frequency polygons. Pay attention to the estimation of mean in a histogram.
Know the definitions of upper/lower quartile and interquartile range in a cumulative frequency curve. Be familiar with the little probability question that always pops up at the last part of typical cumulative frequency questions.
Gone throught all your transformations yet?
Know your vectors well.
- Know that if the point P has coordinates (a, b) ⇒ position vector and its magnitude = √(a²+b²)
- Know that if a is parallel to b ⇒ a = kb.
- Know that if A, B and C are collinear when .
Be alert to the use of area ratios using common heights when encountering similarity questions involving vectors.