Are these the GCSEs that “you can pass with 50%”, that are “so easy that my 5-year-old passed it” and “kids would have no chance if they took an O-level. GCSEs are far too easy nowadays”?
Oh really. How completely stupid that quarter of the population is. They shouldn’t be allowed to have jobs.
Is there a point to this story…I would fail miserably my maths….and my french, physics, chemistry, biology, english, history, geography…so fucking what. When was the last time anyone here had to solve a quadratic equation at work…or calculate the angles of a triangle using sines, cosines and tangents, or had to calculate compound probabilities for the boss. As long as you have a decent grasp of basic arithmetic and a bit of common sense you can get by in most workplaces. A builder mate of mine couldn’t count to twenty without taking his socks off…but he could calculate how much concrete or tar he would need for a driveway to the nearest shovelful or how many bricks he needed for an extention to the nearest dozen out of a thousand.
I can do trig, diferrential & simultaneous equations and use logarithms.
I would fail the current GCSE exam because it deals with probability curves, scatter graphs & other stuff I have never been taught.
Yup. 15m adults cant do stuff that they have never been shown how to do. oh wow.
Winston O’Hoodie has got it here – you learn to pass exams and give yourself a broad knowledge at age 16 before deciding what you’re going to do for the rest of your life. I imagine it also wouldn’t take long for most of those 15 million people to get back up to scratch – it’s amazing how quickly things come back.
Lets be positive guys. If 15 million adults can’t pass GCSE Maths and we accept that there 60 million people in Britain then that means 85% of adults like me could pass the exam!
That headline must be a mistake, surely? Ane fule no that in the good old days when men were men and teachers were allowed to birch you and policemen to hit you, that everyone left school fully literate and numerate. It is only since Blair and his liberal feminazi elite came to power that our children have not been properly edookated. Unless of course those 15 million people used to be able to add up but have had their brains turned to mush by reading the Mail and watching free dvds?
Is this just because they’re rusty? If so, that’s hardly front page news. Stick them in class for a few months with Sigismund Arbuthnot the mad maths master and it’ll come back to them.
Really? I thought that GCSEs were getting easier? That’s what my conservative media have been telling me! I am also interested that the Mail are the first paper that are complaining about the sale of royal stuff, seems perfectly fair to me that rich people have to pay taxes and if they fritter their money away and can’t afford it it is their fault.
This is the legacy of the Thatcher years, I hope she’s proud of what she started, with no regard to the future. Labour’s promise, although they said it would take many years, was to undo the injustices of those sad years under the Conservatives. All they’ve done is escalate them. We’re a doomed nation, it’s a wonder the illegals want to come here.
- Steve Webster, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
er Steve you are in Holland mate,so use there not here, did u pass your geography and english gcse? are you an illegal?
i take your point about here and there larry but to be fair i agree with steve webster in his amsterdam home…(though not necessarily with regard to GCSEs)..
ps she’s munter int she, that victoria…lollipop stick with a couple of inflatable bowling balls sticking out…
David PENRY: Lets be positive guys. If 15 million adults can’t pass GCSE Maths and we accept that there 60 million people in Britain then that means 85% of adults like me could pass the exam!
Call me dim, but you were being ironic right? 75% of adults unlike you could pass!
hehe..you said it penry..i liked victoria, ironically, because i thought she had really nice legs…best of a pretty poor bunch tho…when people would talk about it and say, oooh who’s your favourite spice girl, I had to really think…
Confused, you should be able to work it out easily in your head if you approach it the right way. Look at the 6 and the 9. What’s the lowest common multiple of 6 and 9? Think about how that applies to those equations.
A typical question from the intermediate or a higher tier GCSE Maths paper. If you can do this, you should be able to pass GCSE Maths quite easily, with an C grade.
It could be wrong, since it’s been a while for me, so my arthimetic may have gone shoddy in my working. I did have to look up the method, as there were gaps in my knowledge (especially how to deal with the complentary function have a factor the same as the particular function), but I did like having to do something like that again, thanks.
Big deal. I failed my maths at 16, so why should I do any better as an adult?
And, I know this may be horribly sexist, but that is one of the worst pairs of legs I’ve ever seen.
Are these the GCSEs that “you can pass with 50%”, that are “so easy that my 5-year-old passed it” and “kids would have no chance if they took an O-level. GCSEs are far too easy nowadays”?
Oh really. How completely stupid that quarter of the population is. They shouldn’t be allowed to have jobs.
So GCSEs are worth the paper they’re written on? Or are the stupid proles thinning out Middle England’s numbers on mathematical ability?
Seriously, this shows GCSEs are doing they’re job, if they distinguish a certain portion of the population.
Is there a point to this story…I would fail miserably my maths….and my french, physics, chemistry, biology, english, history, geography…so fucking what. When was the last time anyone here had to solve a quadratic equation at work…or calculate the angles of a triangle using sines, cosines and tangents, or had to calculate compound probabilities for the boss. As long as you have a decent grasp of basic arithmetic and a bit of common sense you can get by in most workplaces. A builder mate of mine couldn’t count to twenty without taking his socks off…but he could calculate how much concrete or tar he would need for a driveway to the nearest shovelful or how many bricks he needed for an extention to the nearest dozen out of a thousand.
I can do trig, diferrential & simultaneous equations and use logarithms.
I would fail the current GCSE exam because it deals with probability curves, scatter graphs & other stuff I have never been taught.
Yup. 15m adults cant do stuff that they have never been shown how to do. oh wow.
Winston O’Hoodie has got it here – you learn to pass exams and give yourself a broad knowledge at age 16 before deciding what you’re going to do for the rest of your life. I imagine it also wouldn’t take long for most of those 15 million people to get back up to scratch – it’s amazing how quickly things come back.
Lets be positive guys. If 15 million adults can’t pass GCSE Maths and we accept that there 60 million people in Britain then that means 85% of adults like me could pass the exam!
Better to fail miserably than to fail brilliantly!
Deferred success all round!
Extrapolated data if ever I saw it.
What? World Cup Vicky on the front page but no bunion update? Once more the DM fails to give the nation the news it really needs…
Christ on a bike – didn’t she used to be the fit one in the spice gils? I dread to think what the others look like.
And I guess Dave aint good for much other than kicking footballs cos I reckon one good shag would snap that..
If the great royal car boot sale is so unedifying why have the DM got it on the front page?
Oh yes – because they’re a bunch of cretins.
While trawling through the bile on the readers comments, I noticed that the Mail now has a dating agency. Now there’s a concept.
I wonder if they use different acronyms and abbreviations; no GSOH or WLTM. More BNP , WASP and the like.
Also, if you are looking for extrapolation and thin content check out the story on ‘Bosses’ and ‘Outrage’ Today.
That headline must be a mistake, surely? Ane fule no that in the good old days when men were men and teachers were allowed to birch you and policemen to hit you, that everyone left school fully literate and numerate. It is only since Blair and his liberal feminazi elite came to power that our children have not been properly edookated. Unless of course those 15 million people used to be able to add up but have had their brains turned to mush by reading the Mail and watching free dvds?
and they all read the Daily Mail…..is this the results of some reader survey or somethin….
Is this just because they’re rusty? If so, that’s hardly front page news. Stick them in class for a few months with Sigismund Arbuthnot the mad maths master and it’ll come back to them.
Really? I thought that GCSEs were getting easier? That’s what my conservative media have been telling me! I am also interested that the Mail are the first paper that are complaining about the sale of royal stuff, seems perfectly fair to me that rich people have to pay taxes and if they fritter their money away and can’t afford it it is their fault.
This is the legacy of the Thatcher years, I hope she’s proud of what she started, with no regard to the future. Labour’s promise, although they said it would take many years, was to undo the injustices of those sad years under the Conservatives. All they’ve done is escalate them. We’re a doomed nation, it’s a wonder the illegals want to come here.
- Steve Webster, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
er Steve you are in Holland mate,so use there not here, did u pass your geography and english gcse? are you an illegal?
i take your point about here and there larry but to be fair i agree with steve webster in his amsterdam home…(though not necessarily with regard to GCSEs)..
ps she’s munter int she, that victoria…lollipop stick with a couple of inflatable bowling balls sticking out…
David PENRY: Lets be positive guys. If 15 million adults can’t pass GCSE Maths and we accept that there 60 million people in Britain then that means 85% of adults like me could pass the exam!
Call me dim, but you were being ironic right? 75% of adults unlike you could pass!
used to be my favourite spice girl as well….
We disagree again. I liked Ginger. How bloody sad.
Not even a story just a pic of the skinny one, and on a lighter note, victoria beckham.
there love her i don’t know why but they do.
Hummm…. A GCSE Mathematices (non-calculator) question.
What are the values of X and Y in this equations?
4X+6Y=32
9Y+7X=98
hehe..you said it penry..i liked victoria, ironically, because i thought she had really nice legs…best of a pretty poor bunch tho…when people would talk about it and say, oooh who’s your favourite spice girl, I had to really think…
How do they find out this information? How would they know!! Did I miss the massive GCSE exam the other day or what? And how bad is miserably? 2-3%?
This country’s in the shit, combining this with the headline the other day suggesting every boy in the country is going to fail at everything!!
At least it’s the DM so you guarantee that the story is a complete pile of shit!!
IVANHOE! looking at the pic below I read that as IMANHOE
Oh my not headline news really i knew that 3 years ago.
What is the answer to that equation? Seriously, I need to know.
I would certainly fail Maths GCSE most miserably, if I had to take it now.
I’ve just spent 30 minutes of my (employer’s) time trying to figure it out…
Confused, you should be able to work it out easily in your head if you approach it the right way. Look at the 6 and the 9. What’s the lowest common multiple of 6 and 9? Think about how that applies to those equations.
4X+6Y=32 (a)
7X+9Y=98 (b)
Multiply (a) by 1.5:
6X+9Y=48
7X+9Y=98
Subtract:
-X=-50
=> X=50
Substitute into equation (a):
(6×50)+ 9Y=48
300+9Y=48
9Y= -252
Y= -28
So, X=50, Y=-48
Every day’s a school day at Mailwatch!
Got the right answer, but had to resort to a calculator, and it took around ten minutes
I doubt i’d win the GCSE contest today!
15million people out of a population of 60 million…. I make that about 65%
Chris, wrong!!!
X=5 and Y=7
(4×5)+(6×7)=62
(9×7)+(7×4)=98
You got the right idea, but you made so more complicated then you need to.
3x 12X+18Y=186
2x 14X+18Y=196
You can now see that 2X is 10, as there only 2Xs and 10 between the first equation and the second equation. So then you…
(14×5)+(18Y)=196
(70)+(18Y)=196
18Y=126
126/18=?
126/8=7
A typical question from the intermediate or a higher tier GCSE Maths paper. If you can do this, you should be able to pass GCSE Maths quite easily, with an C grade.
Fair play, there are some clever buggers on this site.
Chris, you got it wrong too. Read the question ! You’re asked to find the values that make 32, not 62 !
I mean …
Philip you got it wrong too ! I need to read properly as well
That question was easy. Took me seconds in my head. How about a nice second order differential equation.
Oi! I had enough trouble with first order DEs in my maths exam the other day. Let us never speak of them again.
Awesome attempt at proving that 32 = 62, Philip M.
Solve y”(x) + 3 y’(x) + 2 y(x) = e-2x.
Apply the initial conditions y(0) = 0, y’(0) = 1.
Sorry. The right hand side should be
e {to the power of} -2x
I work it out as:
y = e^(-x) – e^(-2x) – xe^(-2x)
It could be wrong, since it’s been a while for me, so my arthimetic may have gone shoddy in my working. I did have to look up the method, as there were gaps in my knowledge (especially how to deal with the complentary function have a factor the same as the particular function), but I did like having to do something like that again, thanks.
Sorry, I totally buggered up the bit at the end. I got as far as y = Ae^(-x) + Be^(-2x) – xe^(-2x), which I reckon is correct.
y = Ae^(-x) + Be^(-2x) – xe^(-2x), which I reckon is correct.Spot on.
So y(0) = A + B = 0
y’(0) = -A – 2B – 1 = 1
Quick eliminations A = -B, and -B = 2, so I make
y = 2 e^(-x) – 2 e^(-2x) – x e^(-2x)
Still, I’d give that 8/10.