Another excuse for more failures:-)

[ARW]

Proper O level maths exam..

I failed at question 1.

[NY]

Not difficult (except that we're out of practice in dealing with £sd, which

1950s students would have been fluent in) but certainly not something you could do in your head. Converting shillings and pence to all-pence...

Cost for electricity is 15*12 (fixed) + 808*(3/4) = 180 + 606 d = 786

Cost for gas is 2*12+6 (fixed) + (12+2) * cu_ft/200

Gas and elec charges are the same, so

30 + 14/200 * cu_ft = 786

cu_ft = (786-30) / (14/200) = 10800 cubic feet

Now update the costs to the eye-watering 2022 equivalents ;-) Am I right that in general, the fixed cost is a smaller proportion and the unit price is higher nowadays, so you are mainly paying for what you use rather than a lot of standing charge?

[NY]

Apologies: I meant

Cost for gas is 2*12+6 (fixed) + (12+2) * (cu_ft/200)

Though BODMAS rules would have done the division before the multiplication (as I intended), there's no harm in being explicit.

[Robin]

I'd see more cause for concern if you had bothered to learn the nonsense that was our pre-decimalisation currency given you were at best a toddler on 15 February 1971.

[Tim Streater]

Yes, converting it all to pence makes it easier.

Same answer.

Disappointment was that all the .doc files for the exam papers were formatted as Language: English (US).

Why can't these fatheads learn how to set Word to use UK English by default. Or even convert the language if someone else gave it them. It's trivial to do.

[Colin Bignell]

You would have lost marks if you did. You always had to show your workings.

Converting shillings and pence to

[Colin Bignell]

Easier, but for that reason likely to get less marks. One thing you needed to look at in exams of that time was what knowledge was being tested and you had to shape your answer accordingly.

In this case, the numbers make it fairly clear to me that it is knowledge of the monetary system. In any case, working in Base 10 would have been quite alien to a schoolchild of 1950. We were used to working in simultaneous multiple bases before decimalisation. I can't, however, think of anything that used Base 10.

What I think the workings were expected to look like is:

808 x 3/4d - 606d 480d = £2 606d-480d = 126d 120d = 10s Cost of electricity use = £2/10/6d Quarterly charge = 15s Total quarter cost of electricity = £3/5/6d

Gas meter rent = 2/6d £3/5/6d - 2/6d = £3/3/-d = 3 Guineas

2d is 1/6 of a shilling 6 x 1/2d = 7s 7s = 1/3 Guinea Therms used = 6 x 3 x 3 = 54 54 x 200 = 10,800

Same answer, but calculated demonstrating an understanding of the monetary system at the time.

[Chris Hogg]

"Tables of Logarithms are provided"

Do kids know what logs are these days, or how to use a slide rule? And does it really matter if they don't? Probably not.

[Colin Bignell]

I'm not sure I remember how to use a slide rule any more, certainly not the complex engineering slide rule I still have.

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

I never did any exams, and always found the way stuff was taught was not my way of learning it. Once I realised this I just went and learned things in my way. I've done OK and I feel a lot of the hype around education and qualifications is just that. Its just giving the companies who hire people a simple way to compare people, when in point of fact it does not test for common sense, loyalty and ability to think independently in any way. All the education establishments, well many of them, are just money making enterprises in my view. Brian

[Rex Jones]

Certainly not in fact. Same with the abacus and Facit machines.

[charles]

I probably can't either, but rememeber the slide rule is/was simply a tool. If a better one is available - use it instead.

[The Natural Philosopher]

well its a proper exam, innit.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not many car mechanics can shoe a horse, either.

[Chris Green]

Or even stop using proprietary file formats like Word! :-) Yes, I know Open/Libre Office can read Word documents but it's still proprietary.

[Tim Lamb]

In message [e-mail]>, charles [e-mail]> writes

I once surprised myself by realising that a basic slide rule is simply a mechanical application of log/anti log tables!

>

[JNugent]

Does MS still provide a read-only version of Word as a free download?

[Chris Green]

For Android, or Linux, or MacOS?

[Jeff Layman]

Does anyone know why it's BODMAS rather than BOMDAS? If you're sticking with whole numbers it won't make any difference, but once you're into decimal points, doing division first could introduce errors. It's interesting that in the USA PEMDAS is used, where multiplication comes before division.

Take 1 x 6 / 3. No problem in that being 2. Now try the same thing with

1 / 3 x 6, to three decimal points. The answer is 1.998, which isn't 2. The BODMAS rules also say "Multiplication and division are of equal importance, so should be completed in order of left to right". Should that not be amended to "do all multiplications before divisions". Or would that make it too complicated?

[newshound]

The important point is that the conventions are arbitrary. In computer systems there have been strict left to right, and strict right to left rules as well.

For "exam purposes" there is some merit to drumming a single convention into the students, and encouraging the use of brackets when sharing expressions and calculations.

I love the arguments about "the right answer" in those Facebook posts with symbol for digit substitution. I like to point out that the question is meaningless without defining the rules.