Are you smarter than a sixteen year old?

[MereNovice]

What constitutes a furore?

In my day kids might hang about outside the exam room to whinge about questions with their friends.
Nowadays, a few of them use Twitter or other social media to do the same and national newspapers which are struggling for stories make an online article out of it.
(Personally I prefer videos of cats doing cute things).

Surely the whole point of an exam is to have some tough questions. If everybody could answer all the questions then it wouldn't serve much purpose.


Right, now that that's sorted, the grumpy old git is off for his afternoon nap.

[Doobs]

What constitutes a furore?

In my day kids might hang about outside the exam room to whinge about questions with their friends.
Nowadays, a few of them use Twitter or other social media to do the same and national newspapers which are struggling for stories make an online article out of it.
(Personally I prefer videos of cats doing cute things).

Surely the whole point of an exam is to have some tough questions. If everybody could answer all the questions then it wouldn't serve much purpose.


Right, now that that's sorted, the grumpy old git is off for his afternoon nap.

I was thinking much the same about the furore, I guess the definition is something the BBC picks up on?

[RED-DOG]

What constitutes a furore?

It's more than a row but less than a fracas.

[MC]

It's a weird question. The equation itself is easy to solve but I don't understand the relevance of all the text before it.

[Doobs]

Hannah has 6 orange sweets and some yellow ones.

Overall, she has n sweets.

The probability of her taking two orange sweets is 1/3

Prove that n²-n-90=0


(Taken from this year's GCSE Maths paper)

How many sweets has she picked up? I can't see anywhere where it says she has picked up 2 only.  She could have picked up 8.  Always hard to get the kids to just pick up 2 and 8 seems a much more likely answer if daddy isn't there.

[doubleup]

It's a weird question. The equation itself is easy to solve but I don't understand the relevance of all the text before it.

??

Every bit of info is required

 combos of 2 from 6 divided by combos of 2 from n = 1/3.

Use that to prove n2-n-90=0

[doubleup]

Hannah has 6 orange sweets and some yellow ones.

Overall, she has n sweets.

The probability of her taking two orange sweets is 1/3

Prove that n²-n-90=0


(Taken from this year's GCSE Maths paper)

How many sweets has she picked up? I can't see anywhere where it says she has picked up 2 only.  She could have picked up 8.  Always hard to get the kids to just pick up 2 and 8 seems a much more likely answer if daddy isn't there.

That was the ambiguity I saw, however, I think its reasonable to ask children of that age to use some reasoning to interpret a bit of ambiguity.  They could even prefix their answer with a statement of their interpretation.

[Cf]

Here is the actual question:

Click to see full-size image.

[Doobs]

Here is the actual question:

Click to see full-size image.

lol Tal makes a perfectly reasonable question look bad

[mulhuzz]

QESweets

Click to see full-size image.

[AndrewT]

What constitutes a furore?

It's more than a row but less than a fracas.

Greater than a contretemps, but less than a set-to.

[MereNovice]

What constitutes a furore?

It's more than a row but less than a fracas.

Greater than a contretemps, but less than a set-to.

Rather more than a brouhaha but somewhat less than pandemonium?

[Tal]

Here is the actual question:

Click to see full-size image.

lol Tal makes a perfectly reasonable question look bad

What does n²-n-90=0 actually mean? That's what I think is poorly explained. Well, it's not explained at all, is it?

My suggested last sentence tells the person sitting the exam what they are being asked to do. It doesn't give them a helping hand or anything like that; all the work has to come from the student.

This is only GCSE. How many interviews have you sat in where a question is asked without apparent context and the interviewee has no opportunity to ask what is meant, nor will the interviewer ask follow-up, probing questions to steer the conversation towards the area they're interested in?

[doubleup]

your suggestion was

Show that the probability of her picking two orange sweets in her two next selections can be rewritten as n2-n-90=0

unfortunately that is nonsense

You could perhaps say "using the above information show that n2-n-90=0" but that's about it.

As I said my equivalent was o level many moons ago and probability/combinations wasn't covered, not sure it was even covered in highers, so the question does seem a bit hard for GCSE.

[RED-DOG]

What constitutes a furore?

It's more than a row but less than a fracas.

Greater than a contretemps, but less than a set-to.

Rather more than a brouhaha but somewhat less than pandemonium?

More than a wrangle but less than a melee.