Impossible maths question

[Bunk]

bowl out of the blue

A what?

[TheFaQQer]

A what?

It's like a bolt out of the blue, but in a Devon accent

[DaveB]

Maybe that's the normal phrasing of the question. Having done my A level maths a long time ago (not as long ago as many mind you) it didn't seem obvious to me that they wanted you to show that that equation modelled the sweets scenario.

I.e. it's not surprising that the general public find a simple question so hard (re the article) when it's not the difficulty of the question that is problematic so much as the discerning what the actual problem to solve is, based on the wording of the question (for people who haven't had to worry about that kind of wording since school and are now reading it out of context). It's not necessary to arrive at that equation in order to solve the mystery, so it doesn't seem intuitively obvious why you even have to care about it unless you happen to have been studying those exact same kinds of questions for the last few years :s

The question isn't about solving the "mystery" it's not even about probability beyond some fairly basic concepts that are required to understand the question, it's about being able to prove that the equation that describes the problem is correct. That requires you to read the question, understand what is relevent and what is not and then follow through a sequence of logical steps to arrive at the proof.

[NotAllThere]

The question isn't about solving the "mystery" it's not even about probability beyond some fairly basic concepts that are required to understand the question, it's about being able to prove that the equation that describes the problem is correct. That requires you to read the question, understand what is relevent and what is not and then follow through a sequence of logical steps to arrive at the proof.

I.e. it tests mathematical reasoning, not the ability to calculate or following simple algorithms.

[tractor]

...

Seems to me quite subtle for a GCSE question, as it was a kind of inverse of the usual type of probability question where one is given the item counts and asked to find the probability.

Maybe it was a deliberate bowl out of the blue, to identify potential Mathematical Olympiad candidates or future codebreakers etc.

The exam board has condensed the basic, intermediate and higher papers into two. They had to have some way of differentiating between A and A* so threw that in along with a red herring.

The kids complaining are unlikely to have ever been able to answer the question satisfactorily anyway. It is moot whether it should be there. From a candidates point of view, they are denied marks if you consider that all questions should have been manageable by candidates taking the exam. That is why they are annoyed.

The answer was easy, the jump from the problem description to the actual question is what undoubtedly screwed them up.

[MyUserName]

I really don't see the fuss even if it could not be answered by most candidates.

When I was university one of our lecturers, I think it was for vector field theory or something like that, told me that he intentionally had questions in his papers that were not really covered by the course. It allowed him a way of identifying and rewarding exceptional students. I thought it made sense.

[TheFaQQer]

It's only one three mark question - get the others right and it makes no difference.

[BrilloPad]

I really don't see the fuss even if it could not be answered by most candidates.

When I was university one of our lecturers, I think it was for vector field theory or something like that, told me that he intentionally had questions in his papers that were not really covered by the course. It allowed him a way of identifying and rewarding exceptional students. I thought it made sense.

I agree. I understand meccano used to put deliberate errors in their instructions to make people think.

[Platypus]

When doing GCSE past papers with my daughter, we identified the type of questions she found hard and strategised that she should simply skip them and score some marks in questions she could answer. If she had time left over, she could go back.

Don't schools do past papers and teach exam technique any more?

In all the the past papers we looked at, the questions got progressively harder, so pupils shouldn't have been surprised to find some towards the end that were quite challenging.

[centurian]

Don't schools do past papers and teach exam technique any more?

Yes, although I think that was part of the problem. Some of the whining I heard was along the lines of "but this question wasn't in the past papers".

Like a past paper is supposed to be like a cookie cutter...