OT: Any good at maths?

Apparently British children now score way down the international league table... I bet DIYers do better ;-)

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Reply to
John Rumm
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Not exactly challenging. Depressing really to think that folk are struggling with that now.

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

John Rumm scribbled...

As a billionaire shortarse, I believe Q7 was put in to piss me off.

Reply to
Artic

Most of that was sums, not maths.

Reply to
Tim Streater

Tim Streater scribbled...

My youngest tells me they call it numeracy this week. WTF do they let management, add, pr speak get into everything?

Reply to
Artic

90%.

Q4 was wrong and Q6 was a lucky guess. This was mentally though. I could have done it with a calculator or even pen and paper.

Owain

Reply to
spuorgelgoog

A fairly simple mental arithmetic test, even if it had not been multiple choice.

Colin Bignell

Reply to
Nightjar

I didn't expect our PISA results to be any better but I'm unexpectedly depressed by the use of English in these questions:

Q1 "The speedometer can tell Helen the distance she travels and her average speed for a trip." So it's an "odometer" innit? Q3 And "...to the river, which is 4 km away. She rode home using a shorter route of 3 km." So the river is *not* 4km away. We don't know how far away it is. All we know is that there are at least 2 routes of

3 and 4km respectively. It could be just 50m from her home, on t'other side of a railway.
Reply to
Robin

Mount Fuji is a famous dormant volcano in Japan. It is only open to the public for climbing from 1 July to 27 August each year. About 200 000 people climb Mount Fuji during this time. On average, about how many people climb Mount Fuji each day?

Well the correct answer is of course 200,000/365.25 near enough which comes out at 547 people per day averaged over the year, because the questions fails to say 'in the period in which it is open'

Education is it seems so bad people cant even ask a question right, let alone come up with the right answer.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

strictly, if the river is 4km away

(1) any route must be AT LEAST 4km and may be much more.

(2) There cannot be a route to it that is 3km without invoking wormholes.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher
90% because I rounded Q6 the wrong way in my head. Would have got it right if I'd scribbled something on paper.

And yes, most of the questions are actually wrong!

jgh

Reply to
jgh

Also one of the answers (a wrong one, fortunately) was "12pm", which is a contradiction in terms.

Reply to
Mike Barnes

While you may be correct, the English language is a changing, live language and I doubt many under 20 would have heard the word "odometer". I would also expect you to say the meaning of "gay" would be "happy"?

Similarly, English wouldn't define what "away" means. If you had said "as the crow flies" or "displacement" it would have been more clear. The rest of the sentence does give clarity what "away" means in this example.

Reply to
Fredxxx

The trouble is the kids these days think they are difficult and give up. I found the English more difficult than the maths.

They certainly weren't anywhere near as difficult as the 11+ was.

Reply to
dennis

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Colin Bignell

Reply to
Nightjar

The bear was purple.

Reply to
dennis

I came across the same thing about PISA maths tests for 15 year olds on the BBC news website a few hours ago and had a go at them. It astonishes me that any 15 year old couldn't get 100% on such a simple set of questions but then I have little knowledge of current education standards. I was lucky enough to have parents who could afford to send me to private schools when I was a kid in the 60s and 70s and came out with eight O levels including various languages such as French, German and Latin and A levels in pure and applied maths, physics and chemistry and economics. Sufficient to guarantee a place at any university of my choice and similarly a career in any field I desired. I chose chartered accountancy in the end.

My best mate who I've known for about 20 years spent the same number of years in school and came out with little more than a limited knowledge of English and not even knowing what Pi is nevermind how to apply it in calculations or equations, or in fact what an equation is. A few years ago him and another mechanic were trying to work out which size of suspension bush a BMW they were working on needed. They were trying to measure the diameter of the old one but couldn't get a caliper across it due to various bits sticking out and ended up stumped. They had no tape measure or any other way to measure the circumference, not that the purpose of this would have occured to them anyway. I cut a thin strip of paper off a sheet of A4, wrapped it round the bush, marked where one end came to with a pencil, measured the length with a ruler to get the circumference and divided by Pi to give them the diameter in mm. That clarified it was clearly the 35mm diameter one and not the slightly larger 38mm one for later models. Not a big enough difference to tell easily by eye. They looked at me like I'd just performed black magic. I could have turned one of them into a frog with less astonishment.

My interests include quantum physics, string theory, cosmology, paleontology, general and special relativity. His are working on his cars and going to music concerts. Yet we've never fallen out or even had a bad word in 20 years and are rarely short of things to talk about. It's a funny old world.

Reply to
Dave Baker

The show was on a bit early in the day to be drunk enough to see purple animals.

Colin Bignell

Reply to
Nightjar

Ditto.

Didn't analyse the questions too much as I knew what they meant even if it wasn't put that way.

Reply to
soup

Nah it was white.

Famous question all aspects of the house are

Reply to
soup

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