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SkillsFuture Singapore widens support for digital education

August 26, 2023 by Maths Statistics Science Tutor

26th August 2023

SkillsFuture Singapore has launched the Digital Andragogy Blueprint, a practical guide designed to provide Singapore’s educators with recommendations and strategies for adult instruction and learning. It was produced by the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) in collaboration with Microsoft.

It offers a curated collection of digital tools aligned with specific learning objectives. By facilitating the adoption of digital tools among adult educators, the blueprint also aims to improve the quality and industry relevance of skills training.

Minister of State for Education and Manpower Gan Siow Huang, said: “The use of educational technology paired with sound andragogy can enhance CET accessibility, and overall learning experience and effectiveness for learners.”

The Industry Practice Master of Digital Economy programme is another course designed to support the digital upskilling of mid-career workers. The programme, launched by the Singapore Management University Academy and supported by SSG, aims to bridge the gap between academia and industry, and to equip learners with the skills and knowledge required to upskill or transition into the digital economy. It will feature two tracks of specialisations: data protection and data governance, and digital supply chain and intelligence.

Mathematics and Tort Law

August 8, 2023 by Maths Statistics Science Tutor

From the Editor’s Desk
8th August 2023

A tort is a civil wrong. To understand a tort, we should differentiate it from a crime. A crime is a wrong committed against the state, and when someone commits a crime, the Public Prosecutor will prosecute that person. However, when someone commits a tort, they could be sued by a private party – the state is not involved. It is possible for one action to be both a tort and a crime.

This article will explore the relationship between Mathematics and Tort Law, to show that even lawyers require an understanding of Mathematics during their work. One area where Mathematics is relevant is the computation of damages – the payment the aggrieved party is owed for the wrong committed against him.

To give you, the reader, a better understanding of a tort, let’s suppose that A has a wild, fierce dog chained up to the gate of his house. However, A fails to take reasonable care to restrain the dog, and the unsuspecting mailman comes to deliver the mail and gets mauled, sustaining injuries which prevent him from working as a mailman ever again. The mailman sues A for failing to exercise reasonable care in preventing his wild dog from escaping and hurting him for damages – and A must pay money to the mailman as compensation for his injuries.

Mathematics comes into play in quantifying the damages involved. How should the court go about calculating the damages owed to the mailman by A? One way is to look at the position the mailman would have been in, had the injury not happened. A would thus have to pay for the mailman’s medical bills and all expenses incurred since the dog bit him.

The mailman could also argue that he would lose his future earnings due to the tort. As such, the mailman’s streams of income are evaluated, and an estimate is given as to how long the mailman would have been working those jobs. The concept of extrapolation comes into play, as the court would have to evaluate and make an educated guess as to how much the mailman would suffer in future to calculate how much money A should pay him as compensation.

Another area of tort law which involves mathematics is Loss of Chance, which revolves around the tort of negligence. If the claimant can show that he has suffered a loss, he is able to receive damages. Such a loss could be the loss of physical objects, or even loss of seemingly intangible items such as economic loss or the loss of genetic affinity (such as in a case where the baby born as a result of fertility treatments was not the one having the same genes as the person who donated sperm). However, in Singapore, for medical negligence cases, the courts have refused to recognize a loss of chance. For example, such a case would include a loss chance arising because of the doctor’s negligence, which prohibited a patient’s recovery.

There has been much debate in the law due to this loss of chance area, which relates to Mathematics as it involves quantifying the damages awarded to a patient. This blends the law with science and Mathematics as it requires the law to evaluate the severity of the patient’s illness, the likelihood of recovery, and the extent to which medical negligence prohibited recovery for the patient. A pure legal background will not be sufficient to determine these, and the law must rely on experts such as doctors and researchers to determine these factors. In fact, courts have relied on statistics provided by expert witnesses, and the debate revolves around how reliable these statistics are in proving their case – should they be held as gospel, or should they serve no more than a rough guideline?

As such, students should hopefully see that Mathematics and Science can be applied across many disciplines, including in a court of law.

Skillsfuture Singapore launches more support for digital education

August 8, 2023 by Maths Statistics Science Tutor

8th August 2023

The platform offers a curated collection of digital tools aligned with specific learning objectives, and is produced by the Singapore University of Social Sciences in collaboration with Microsoft. By facilitating the adoption of digital tools among adult educators, the blueprint also aims to improve the quality and industry relevance of skills training. It is available for free on the SUSS website.

New digital courses for mid-careerists, such as the Industry Practice Master of Digital Economy programme, have also been launched recently. The Industry Practice Master of Digital Economy programme seeks to support the digital upskilling of mid-career workers. It is designed to bridge the gap between academia and industry, and to equip learners with the skills and knowledge required to upskill or transition into the digital economy. It will feature two tracks of specialisations: data protection and data governance, and digital supply chain and intelligence.

Prime Minister Lee says Raffles Institution must remain an inclusive and egalitarian educational institution

August 2, 2023 by Maths Statistics Science Tutor

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has said that Raffles Institution (RI) should continue to exemplify Singapore’s inclusive spirit and egalitarian ethos, as well as remain a beacon of hope and opportunity for every student regardless of background.

These remarks were made at RI’s Bicentennial Founder’s Day celebrations.

Mr Lee said that over its 200-year history, RI has established a strong reputation for student leadership, academic excellence and service to Singapore.

Mr Lee also challenged RI students to define excellence not just by their personal achievements but also by their contributions to society.

Mr Frederick Yeo, RI’s principal, said the school has taken “definitive steps” to boost access to RI for talented students since the PM last spoke about this in 2018.

Mr Yeo also said RI will make available more learning opportunities at the school, such as the RI boarding programme, for students from other schools so both groups of students can interact at a deeper level.

The relationship between Mathematics and Technology

August 1, 2023 by Maths Statistics Science Tutor

From the Editor’s Desk
1st August 2023

When we use technology today, it is often taken for granted its development over the years. By tracing the development of technology, we need to think about the definition of technology in the first place. Technology is not limited to computers – rather, the wheel is also a form of technology. Mathematics has an invaluable relationship to technology – it allows there to be a systematic way of reproducing technology and measuring its effectiveness.

1. Edison’s light bulb

Although Edison took credit for the invention of the light bulb, he played more of a conceptual role and firm principles for its success. His staff approached problem solving systematically, using Mathematics to conduct a cost analysis for the success of the lightbulb. Edison rightly predicted that electric lights would replace gas burners. To build a high-resistance lamp filament, Edison calculated the cost of the copper coils by using Ohm’s Law, as he realised that by increasing the resistance of the lamp filament, he raised the voltage in relationship to the current, making his light bulb more economically competitive than the gas burners.

2. Transitioning to industrial society

The first industrial revolution happened in England, which caused a shift from a feudal system to a disciplined, industrial capitalism. Discipline was enforced upon workers by the use of timesheets and clocks to regulate workers’ behaviour. Mathematics helped workers and factories divide the day into a certain number of hours, with designated activities according to time. The day was compressed into 10 hours, with bell ringing to signal a change in time.

3. Ergonomics – The Science of Work

As society became more industrial, Ergonomics (the science of work) was invented based on laws of Physics to help workers become more efficient. The Science of Work imagined the human body as a motor, and sought to get rid of fatigue and maximise the energy of human bodies. Although this may sound nebulous in our current climate, the Science of Work was an attempt to meld the natural world with the concepts of Physics.

How to improve critical thinking with Mathematics

July 25, 2023 by Maths Statistics Science Tutor

From the Editor’s Desk
25th July 2023

“Critical thinking” is a term that is thrown around a great deal in the field of education, but often, people do not stop to question what this term means exactly. When faced with a new set of information, the act of critical thinking involves not blindly accepting a piece of information, but rather questioning its base assumptions, examining whether the new information coheres with existing literature, and evaluating its implications and consequences.

Mathematics as a discipline can be shown to improve critical thinking as it tests assumptions, proves statements, and can be used as a tool to give a statement empirical evidence to back it up. Mathematics should be viewed as a tool to provide answers to questions arising from critically thinking about something – critical thinking does not often involve intense mental gymnastics, but rather questioning assumptions and asking, “How do I know what I know?”

1. Testing assumptions using statistics.

Firstly, there are many assumptions that are made, as humans are creatures who like to generalize and put everything they observe in neat categories or boxes to make the chaos of life easier to comprehend. For example, if we experience a particular phenomenon many times (such as encountering many red cars on the road), we may believe that there are many more red cars on the street than they actually are. Furthermore, if we have never seen something (like perhaps a rainbow holographic car), we may believe that it does not exist – this is called the Black Swan effect. To improve our critical thinking, we should always base our assumptions on statistics in order to make sure we are more informed.

2. Extrapolating using Mathematics.

Extrapolation is a natural aspect of human life – people want to know how much they have in the future. For example, if a farmer buys a new machine, he wants to know how much he could produce with that new technology as opposed to on his own, even though he does not have the machine yet. This is called extrapolation, which is refined using Mathematics. Extrapolation is an important part of critical thinking, as it is important to consider how (if any) the past influences the future to better prepare for it.

However, extrapolation is not a wild guessing game, but it needs to be based on existing data. If we want to predict the population of a country in future, it stands to reason that with the current medical technology and food security, the population of a country will likely go up. How much will it go up by? We then need to look at existing population data to observe how much it has increased in previous years to get a rough estimate of how much it will increase this year.

3. Tethering abstract concepts using Mathematics

Economics is the social science which studies how to use limited resources and allocate them amongst competing people. There are many theories in Economics which govern the allocation of resources, and these theories remain in the abstract until Mathematics is involved. The field of Econometrics involves quantifying these theories so their effects in practice can be better examined. Abstract theories about what happens in the economy hold no water until they can be shown in numerical terms, which shows the weight of Mathematics in tethering these ideas.

The aforementioned techniques are just some ways of improving critical thinking with Mathematics. However, less focus should be placed on the quantitative aspects of improving critical thinking, but the emphasis is instead on asking the right questions. By asking the right questions, such as how the piece of information is derived and how information is portrayed, the quantitative tools can be bent and melded to answer these questions, which is the foundation of how to think critically.

Edusave scheme and Ministry of Education’s Financial Assistance Scheme to be expanded

July 25, 2023 by Maths Statistics Science Tutor

25th July 2023

Students in Singapore’s government and government-aided schools will be able to utilize the Edusave scheme and Ministry of Education’s Financial Assistance Scheme (MOE FAS) to fully pay their school miscellaneous fees from 2024.

Government and government-aided schools collect miscellaneous fees to defray the cost of materials and programmes for students. Students can use Edusave from next year to pay all miscellaneous fees, instead of only the second-tier fees currently. Similarly, students receiving the MOE FAS may use it to pay for school fees and all miscellaneous fees, instead of only the school fees and standard miscellaneous fee currently.

MOE expects to spend an additional $3.8 million per year to extend the FAS’ miscellaneous fee coverage, which will benefit around 40,000 MOE FAS students. The enhancements will reduce parents’ out-of-pocket expenses for a child’s educational needs by up to $162 a year.

More national examinations in Singapore are now being conducted electronically

July 23, 2023 by Maths Statistics Science Tutor

23rd July 2023

In Singapore, more national examinations are now being conducted electronically, doing away with the need for physical writing of scripts and the usage of pen and paper. To date, 60 GCE examination papers are now in electronic mode.

Student competencies such as critical and inventive thinking are better assessed through e-exams with the use of multimedia, as compared with pen-and-paper examinations.

In 2021, the introduction of the Personalised Digital Learning Programme ensured that every secondary school student owned a school-prescribed personal learning device (PLD). This necessitated a shift in the way lessons are designed and enacted, so that students would make use of their PLDs in their classroom learning.

Each e-exam mode has innovative features that provide an engaging examination experience. For some examinations, it will also be easier for candidates to edit and organise their responses. They can make use of the editing features – cut, copy and paste functions – and not have to worry about untidy cancellations or illegible handwriting.

The use of multimedia allows questions to be set with authentic and real-life contexts, which test important disciplinary knowledge and skills. It would be difficult to set similar questions in a pen-and-paper format.

E-exams make assessments more accessible for students with disabilities. One example is candidates who require larger font sizes due to their visual impairment. This can be facilitated through the use of zoom and text-to-speech software in e-exams.

Such exams also boost efficiency, by removing certain administrative processes in paper-based examinations. These include printing question papers, transporting them to and from examination venues, and collecting and counting them at the end of an examination.

Technical issues, such as Internet connectivity problems or computer glitches, can disrupt the examination experience. To address this, there are resiliency features to safeguard examination candidates’ responses. One of these is an automatic save function at multiple locations, including candidates’ laptops and the government cloud, during the e-exams. If there is a disruption, candidates’ responses can be restored easily. Should there be a network or power failure, candidates can continue their examination on laptops with battery packs.