Suugaku Joshi Gakuen Ep 1

Hey everyone!

So a new drama featuring Hello!Project members recently came out called "Suugaku Joshi Gakuen". The drama is about a transfer student named Satou Kazuki, who hates math, but is accidentally transferred to an elite math school, which seems to be only filled with female students. ^_^"

In this first episode, you get a taste for the 2 female leads: Niina (played by Tanaka Reina, 6th generation Morning Musume member) and Sayuri (played by Michishige Sayumi, 6th generation Morning Musume member). Niina is extremely "my pace" and you find out that she's trying to become the Suugaku Banchou in order to figure out where her sister is (who disappeared after becoming Suugaku Banchou). Sayuri is a haughty student who dislikes Niina and wants everything to go her way. She claims to be the best mathematician in the class, but is eating her words (or losing her skirt) after Niina wins a math battle against her.

Speaking about Suugaku Banchou and math battles, in order to become Suugaku Banchou, students must win battles involving solving math problems or even reciting as many prime numbers as possible (for example). The referee for these math battles is played by Sayashi Riho (9th generation Morning Musume member). 

The main math problem in this episode involves Sayuri accusing Kazuki of peeping at her underwear from one flight of stairs below. Kazuki freaks out because he honestly didn't see her underwear and he never thought that he would be bullied by girls. Sayuri starts this accusation to try and get rid of him and Niina at the same time by getting them both in serious trouble, threatening that Kazuki can be expelled for doing such a thing (even though he didn't do it). Sayuri forces Niina to take responsibility for the matter and Niina suggest they settle it through math. Sayuri gives the math problem describing the peeping situation for Niina to solve.

The following is a video where I solve the math problem step-by-step:

The math in this question is trigonometry and is usually taught during high school. Your memory aid for these kinds of problems is the following: Soh Cah Toa (which means "Sine theta = Opposite side length / Hypotenuse length", "Cosine theta = Adjacent side length / Hypotenuse length", and "Tangent theta = Opposite side length / Adjacent side length"). When you get a number, it will not be in an angle form. You  need to perform the inverse function of the trigonometric equation you're using to get the angle. So if you were using Sine theta, you would perform inverse Sine to get the angle. 

In the drama, Niina only mentions key numbers and equations and of course, everyone in her class understands because they are in a math school. But for viewers who are not comfortable with math or dislike it very much, this kind of answer giving doesn't help at all. (You were most likely like this --> @.@) I personally wanted to make sure the numbers were actually correct (and they were), and I wanted to make sure that everyone else watching it knew what was going on also. Questions like "Why did Niina need to measure Sayuri's skirt?" or "Where did these numbers come from?" needed to be answered. The biggest question mark for me was the skirt diagram. When drawn by Niina, I didn't understand it at all. But once I re-drew it my way, I understood what Niina was trying to get at. Although she neglects to mention something extremely important: the angle she solves is not the only possible angle. 

In the video, the angle solved was 39º. This angle is actually the minimum angle possible for Kazuki to be able to look up Sayuri's skirt (if he was 120 cm tall). This means that the possible angles for Kazuki to look up Sayuri's skirt is actually 39º and up. If he bent down to a height of 80 cm, he would be looking at her skirt at a greater angle. This means that the answer to Sayuri's angle question would not be a single number. Thankfully, the whole "bending down to peek at her underwear" thing was dismissed by Sayuri's accomplice who said that she saw Kazuki from the 2nd floor window. I actually didn't explain this part very well in the video. If you watch the part where Sayuri makes the accusation, you'll notice that there is a half-wall between the window and the staircase Sayuri is on. The part that "no one could see Kazuki from the 2nd floor window because he was bending down" would be because the wall was blocking him. However, if you actually look at the video, he was nowhere near that wall in the first place... so yeah. ^_^"

Well, I hope to be able to watch more of this drama because I would really like to solve more of these math problems, so that more people understand these concepts and will maybe dislike the subject a little bit less as the drama progresses.