MathML and Blogger

I'm planning a series of blog posts that are going to be heavy on the mathematics content and I've been researching the best way of displaying complex equations in a web browser.

MathML is my own personal winner but two pitfalls present themselves:

(1) Integration with Blogger

(2) Rendering MathML in Internet Explorer requires a plugin (Firefox can render it natively)

Problem (2) is easily solved by ignoring it. If you're stupid enough to (a) use Internet Explorer and (b) can't work out how to install the plugin then you're not going to understand my equations anyway.

Looks like problem (1) can be "solved" in a number of horrific ways, least painful of which seems to be the method described here. Now, if I've implemented it correctly, and you're using a proper web browser you should see a nicely formatted equation below:

∑ k=1 k=n k 3 = n 2 (n+1) 2 4 = ( ∑ k=1 k=n k ) 2

JLPT Results

I was pleasantly surprised to see my JLPT results had turned up the other day, slightly ahead of the originally forecasted some-time-in-March.

The fact they came in a DO NOT BEND envelop pretty much ruined the surprise as it was clear there was a certificate inside! Here's the all important score report:



312 / 400 is 78% which is a very comfortable pass (60% being the pass mark). As anticipated, the listening section was my weakest.

How did everyone else do?

Where to buy Investors Chronicle?

Update: Success! Camden News - about 2 minutes from my house - stocks Investors Chronicle, along with a bewildering array of other UK and international magazines. Highly recommended if you live in the area.

I've recently developed an interest in spread betting and investing which frankly deserves a blog post all to itself. This particular post, however, is concerned with the magazine Investors Chronicle.

From all of the literature I've read - mainly Malcolm Pryor's good, if not excellent, series of books on spread betting - it seems like Investors Chronicle is a publication worthy of my somewhat limited attention, specifically for the purposes of helping me to identify which shares to buy/bet on. I've popped along to the website of course which looks like a veritable gold mine of financial information to pour over. However, and feel free to call me old fashioned, there is something to be said for reading an actual honest to goodness magazine, and I don't mean one of those new-fangled e-zines either. You know, the feel of the paper as you bestow upon it your soft caress etc. etc.

But mainly I want a hard copy because they haven't got round to installing free WiFi on the Tube yet.

Put aside any criticism of my motivation for wanting to get my hands on a hard copy of Investors Chronicle for one second and let me just roll with it. Since deciding a few days ago that I'd quite like to get a copy, I've come to the conclusion that it's remarkably difficult to track down. The about us section of the website tells me "Investors Chronicle magazine is published every Friday and is available both from the newsstand and via subscription." Sounds easy enough. Problem is, so far I've been to W H Smith in Brent Cross, my university's newsagent and my local newsagent and none of them stock it. W H Smith in Brent Cross is huge - split over two levels for crying out loud! - and my local newsagent has an otherwise excellent selection of magazines so I don't think it's a case of looking in the wrong places.

The more resourceful amongst you may be rushing to point out that I could get a subscription from W H Smith online rather than committing the rather pre-internet revolution mistake of bothering to visit a bricks-and-mortar store or perhaps from the intriguing looking Newsstand website which offers you the chance to specify a subscription of arbitrary length - anything from just one issue to an entire year. Or perhaps even, duh, direct from the Investors Chronicle website itself.

But the problem is I have commitment issues. What if I want to bail after the first date? What if the magazine and I just don't click? I'm just not ready to commit to a whole subscription without first having a sample.

So I've set the scene for my latest mission in life: tracking down a copy of Investors Chronicle. For those of you in similar positions you can take heart that I'm blazing a trail - any stockists I find I'll add to this post. Handy - assuming you happen to live in London.

JLPT: The aftermath

This update is dedicated to Toby for being possibly the only person interested in reading my blog!

I know you're all dying to know how the JLPT went in the end, and why I've been so quiet with the updates. Well, the answer is I'm just not sure.

In the days leading up to the exam I bit the bullet and bought the 2007 and 2008 past papers from the Japan Centre, because anyone who tried to take advantage of my previous post may have noticed that, probably due to the legal grey area of posting these materials on the internet, (a) the audio files were missing or very badly recorded (b) the audio transcripts were missing (c) for some years the papers were missing in their entirety, especially the most recent ones (d) the answers were unofficial and in many cases incorrect.

This gave me 2 forms of final preparation for the exam: taking the past papers as practice exams and, for the listening section, which seemed to be my weak point, practicing transcribing the audio. For most of the practice exams, I remember feeling extremely discouraged and lacking in confidence in my answers during the exam, yet somehow managing to score around 75%. Given that the pass mark for level 4 is 60%, these were all comfortable passes.

I started to get an overall picture of what to expect from the real thing. Section 1, Writing and Vocabulary, can be broken down into four subsections:

1. Identifying the reading of a given Kanji in a given context
2. Given a reading in kana, producing the correct Kanji
3. Identifying the correct word to use in a given context (in a vocabulary rather than grammatical sense)
4. Synonyms - e.g. the question might read "That hotel is famous" and the answer is "Everyone knows that hotel"

Relatively speaking, this section is extremely easy. There are about 100 Kanji to learn for level 4 and it is easily achievable for one to memorize how each one is read and written. Provided you have a good vocabulary which, frankly, is essential for the entire exam, the other 2 parts should also prove no problem. Getting 100% in Section 1 is realistic, was definitely my goal, and should be yours too.

Section 2 is listening. This remained my weakness throughout my study period. On the day before the exam, I felt sufficiently prepared in all other aspects that I dedicated the entire day to improving my listening skills, by working on transcribing the audio. Nevertheless I continued to find it extremely challenging, although I felt my skills had improved somewhat by the end of the day. But here's the thing: sections 1 and 2 are worth 25% of the marks each and section 3 is worth a whopping 50% of the entire paper. Keen mathematicians amongst you will have quickly realized that I could get 0 marks on the listening section and, provided I aced the remaining sections, comfortably pass. Even keener mathematicians will note that, given the exam is multiple choice with 4 choices per question, by chance alone I should be able to pick up 25% of the marks in the listening section, which is equivalent to about 6% of the overall marks. Which means I could get as low as 72% of the marks across the remaining 2 sections and still pass - and I've already told you I intended to get 100% on section 1.

Section 3 is Reading and Grammar and has 6 or so subsections. You'll need to

1. Identify the correct particle to use in a variety of contexts
2. Conjugate verbs
3. Have an excellent grasp of question words and key phrases
4. Have a top notch vocabulary to handle the extensive comprehension questions

The particle usage I found to be the part where I was most lacking in confidence, being unsure of my answers in most instances and having to rely too heavily on intuition. However, it seemed my particular method of revision worked brilliantly insofar as granting me that inuitive grasp of particle usage, at least for the practice exams. The comprehension questions are not that challenging provided your vocabulary is up to scratch, and it's important to bear in mind that these questions carry many more marks - perhaps 4 or 5 times as many marks as one of the particle usage questions. I cannot stress enough how vital a good vocabulary is for passing. It may seem obvious, but if you can't read the questions in any of the sections, or identify the words in the listening, then you're going to struggle.

So how did the real thing go? Like I said - I'm really not sure. It went pretty much exactly the same as all of the practice exams - I lacked confidence in my answers. But I'm comforted by the fact I passed those practice exams. Now all I have to do is wait until March for the results...

JLPT Past Exam Papers - All Levels, with Audio Files!

Big shout out to nihonhacks.com for pointing me in the direction of past exam papers for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test.

Here you can download past papers for all levels going back until 1991 and here are mp3 files for the listening section.

It's not all good news, however, as I've noticed some of the listening files are virtually incomprehensible, presumably because someone simply snuck a microphone into the exam center.

At least for the other two sections I now have a lot more to practice on, and in my first attempt at 1991 I managed to answer a little over 60% of the non-listening questions correctly - I don't know if this translates into 60% of the marks as I wasn't sure of the marks breakdown - but with a pass mark of 60% things are looking promising. I've pretty much nailed the Kanji recognition and production but my grammar could use a lot of work, particularly verb and adjective conjugations.

Right now the thing I'm terrified of is the listening section. This is worth 25% of the total marks and I'm completely awful at it. My strategy for the coming days is to transcribe 2002's listening section as an exercise and compare it to Peter van der Woude's at the JLPT Study Page. Ideally what I need is transcripts of the listening sections for all of the past papers I've now downloaded but these seem impossible to get hold of.

I do still have the book of 2004 - 2006 exam questions and answers which does include the listening transcripts and, hopefully, high quality listening audio but I'm still aiming to hold these back until Sunday, with a week to go, and treat them as proper exam rehersals.

JLPT Level 4 Update: 18 days to go...

It had been my intention to provide more frequent updates on my Japanese Language Proficiency Test revision but frankly I've been too busy actually revising to even think about updating my blog.

If you recall, I had planned on making Anki flash cards from the large collection of example sentences and short conversations found in The Preparatory Course for The Japanese Language Proficiency Test, Level 4. However, in hindsight I believe there are two problems with this approach:

1. It's incredibly time consuming to construct the flash cards
2. I'm not sure the range of sentences covers enough vocabulary

Perhaps with more time to prepare this method may have worked out. Right now I'm really being held back by a poor vocabulary. I'm sticking to the Anki flash card approach but I'm supplementing the sentence flash cards with very basic vocabulary ones, and I'm about to make a new deck (of flashcards) for Kanji and Kanji compunds.

If you're also studying for JLPT Level 4 I'm sure you're already well aware of Peter van der Woude's excellent JLPT Study Page which covers not just Level 4 but also Levels 2 and 3. This is a great resource for the official Kanji list and vocabulary that I'm using to help make my flash cards. I'm also a huge fan of the Denshi Jisho web-based dictionary.

With 18 days to go and plenty of work still to do, I have no real idea whether I'll be able to pull this off. The plan is to do as much prep work as possible before taking a look at the past papers from 2004 - 2006 when I have a week to go, which should give me some contingency if these past papers throw up any concerns. がんばって ください!

Passing JLPT Level 4 in 38 Days

A while ago I (foolishly) signed up for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test Level 4 without actually knowing any Japanese. Counting today, I now have 38 days until the test date, 6th December, and I still don't know any Japanese.

I exaggerate slightly. I've worked my way through about 200 frames of Remembering the Kanji Vol. 1, seemingly the de facto standard for learning the meanings of Japanese characters. I have a decent grasp of kana, thanks to Japanese for Busy People: Kana Workbook, although my ability to read katakana is significantly worse than hirigana. I've also done a couple of chapters of Japanese for Busy People Vol. 1.

The problem is that all of this is scant preparation for the JLPT Level 4. Those 200 kanji I learnt from RTK? Not all of those are going to appear in the test, and there's a sizable number which come later in the book that I haven't had a chance to learn yet. There's also the issue of retention - I learned those kanji a while ago and, mainly due to laziness, have not reviewed them in some time. The major problem with Japanese for Busy People is that it completely avoids teaching you any kanji which is neither realistic nor practical for a test which contains an entire section devoted to character recognition and production.

Fortunately I have two aces up my sleeve. The first is this blog, and this post, which announces my intention to the internet at large (or at least the pitiful fraction who read this site) that I'm going to pass my JLPT Level 4 with only 38 days of preparation. You, dear reader, are going to be holding me accountable for passing. The second is The Preparatory Course for The Japanese Language Proficiency Test, Level 4.

As far as I am concerned, this is the holy grail of JLPT preparation. I mean, the clue's kinda in the title isn't it? This information rich book set me back £36.40 from London's Japan Centre and it's worth every penny. Any Londoners remotely interested in Japanese food, books, manga, tableware, etc. absolutely have to pay the Centre a visit. It's heaven.

So back to TPCFTJLPT4. Consider the following question:

中山さんは　中国語＿　できます。

1. は
2. を
3. が
4. に

This is exactly how the question would appear in the JLPT. There's no English in the test (aside from the instructions at the very start, like where to write your name on your answer sheet). The question is asking which postpositional particle should go in the blank. But there's a lot more to understanding this sentence than knowing which particle to use:

1. What do the kanji mean and how are they read?
2. What do the words mean?
3. What's the general grammatical rule that applies here?
4. What does the sentence sound like when read by a native Japanese speaker?

The reason that TPCFTJLPT4 is the dog's bollocks is it answers all of these. Firstly there's furigana so that you know how the kanji are read:

なかやまさんは　ちゅうごくご＿　できます。

Then there's the English translation:

Nakayama-san can speak Chinese.

The correct particle to use is が and the rule for this is given as:

Use が before できる (can do)

And here's the clincher: the book comes with 2 CDs containg native Japanese readings of just about every single sentence in the book.

Now here's where I'm going to really up my game. Because I'm not just going to study the book. I'm going to combine it with a spaced repetition system (SRS). This is a fancy way of studying flashcards. Essentially you increase the time between viewing previously learnt flashcards in order to exploit the spacing effect - read the Wikipedia articles if you want a proper explaination. A great site for the application of SRS to learning Japanese is All Japanese All The Time which, if I didn't have the JLPT Level 4 test coming up, would be my preferred method of learning Japanese.

Right now I am taking the audio tracks from the TPCFTJLPT4 CDs - they come as 1 track per page - and am splitting them up into individual sentences using mp3splt. Then I'm going to build flashcards using my SRS implementation of choice: Anki. The example sentence given above could be used to make several different cards for instance:

1. Question: Japanese text in kanji, no furigana, with the particle filled in. Answer: Japanese text in kana accompanied by native reading. This would test the ability to read the kanji
2. Question: Japanese text as above. Answer: English translation. This would test reading comprehension.
3. Question: Japanese native reading. Answer: English translation. This would test listening comprehension.
   
4. Question: Japanese text without the particle. Answer: The particle and grammar rule. This would test the grammar rule (i.e. the actual test question)

These are just some ideas - I haven't decided on the exact format yet. For instance, cards 1 and 2 could be combined. Right now though, I need to get these audio files split up. Only 86 more to go...