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Friday, August 19, 2011

Maths?

I might have mentioned this before but surely i can mention this again.

I topped my level in mathematics in Sec 2. So i consider myself pretty decent in maths. And i remember that sec 2 maths was all about quadratic equations and indices. Although i was good at that, i always wondered how i'd ever use it in real life.

Almost 18 years later, i got my answer.

I mentioned in my previous post that i submitted my resume to a headhunter and they wanted me to do an online test. I was told to allocate at least 30 mins. That's fine because i did a 2-hour test before i got my current job.

At the start page, i was further informed to have rough paper and a calculator (???) ready.

It was 120 questions and time limit of 30 mins.

As i was cruising through the first 60 questions on reactions/feelings to situations, i started getting the maths questions which was quite tough! I begun to sweat. I managed to quickly cut and paste:

"We change a (sufficiently large) square into a rectangle by making it 7 cm less wide, and making it 7 cm taller. How much does the area change?"


Woah. That was quadratic equations 101. The answer i got eventually baffled me and i double and triple checked. Same answer. Oh well.


Then there was another question:


There were 10 apples and you took 3 of them. How many apples do you have?


Tricky eh?


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