The mathematical equivalent of having brown rice rather than white biryani rice. An unsexy, wholesome math curriculum that is healthy to the mind, but brain-unfriendly for most students, who need to force themselves to mastering the concepts confidently.
Like taking cod liver oil, which is good for the body immune system, Singapore math may look unappetizing, but after spending a few hundred hours practicing thousands of nonroutine, impractical or sterile questions, your brain can only get mathematically stronger and healthier.
by MathPlus May 20, 2018
When the methodology and pedagogy used in Singapore math textbooks and supplementary titles (foreign and local editions) at the same grade are believed or perceived to be equivalent, yet the level of difficulty of the brain-unfriendly questions in both editions differs significantly—the tailor-made overseas editions are often one or two grades lower than the local one.
US math educators need to take note of the same-same-but-different Singapore math titles to temper their expectations of their students’ mathematical proficiency compared to that of their Singaporean counterparts.
by MathPlus August 31, 2021
When Singapore’s affirmative action allows Malay students to pay zero school fees all the way up to their tertiary education, which has raised the mathematical proficiency of the Malay community over the decades—Malay math students, of which 99⁺% are Muslims, have fared reasonably well in international comparative studies like TIMSS and PISA vis-à-vis their foreign counterparts, albeit they still have some catching up to do compared to their local peers from other races.
Years ago, based on some TIMSS rankings, a Malay cabinet minister had figured out that Singapore Malay students are unofficially among the “world’s top ten,” which positively suggests that Malay math policies have helped raise the quantitative literacy of the Malay or Muslim community in Singapore.
by MathPlus July 15, 2021
Singapore’s beloved or narcotized visualization problem-solving strategy that allows word problems set in upper grades to be solved without algebra in lower grades, by using part-whole or comparison models in the form of bars or rectangles.
The bar model method is so addictive that an unhealthy number of Singapore math students in middle school, who are expected to use algebra to solve challenging math questions, couldn’t be weaned from it.
by MathPlus November 26, 2020
A problem-solving visualization heuristic that is the heart of the Singapore math curriculum, whose copyright is being contested by both China and Russia (or even Japan), because they claimed that the “look-see” methodology used to solve challenging word problems in elementary grades originated from them.
In the aftermath of the Singapore’s claim that they and the Canadian songwriter Hugh Harrison own the copyright to the “Count on Me, Singapore” song rather than the Indian composer Joseph Mendoza, China and Russia now want Singapore to compensate them for “plagiarizing” the bar model method for over three decades—unprovenly, it’s their tit-for-tat message to high-GDP Singapore for not approving their home-made, half-baked vaccines.
by MathPlus March 20, 2021
Christ’s exceeding love for believers that is too great for them to ever understand how wide and long and high and deep it is—a love that is beyond measure and that surpasses any form of human knowledge or wisdom.
A God who could not leave us to suffer eternal death and disease and sickness and sent His beloved Son to bear all our sins and sicknesses upon His own body, as demonstrated by His death on the cross, is divine proof of 4D love in action.
by MathPlus April 29, 2021
If a radian is defined as the angle formed by an arc length of a circle subtended at the center that is equal to its radius, then there are 2π radians, or 2π radii, that fit around the circumference of the circle. In other words, 360° equals 2π radians, or one radian is 180°/π, which is about 57.3°.
by MathPlus January 22, 2021