An effective revision technique can make all the difference. Here are my handy hints: Get yourself organised with a folder or notebook for each subject. Condense your notes into well ordered, easy to read and colourful notelets. Don't put too much information on each notelet, they should contain key facts to jog your memory. Highlight... Continue Reading →
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How to solve a sample GCSE exam question
Work out how many people are in an office, given the ratio of females to males and what proportion wear glasses.
Polygons
A polygon is a 2-dimensional many sided shape. If all the sides are the same length it is a regular polygon, if not it is an irregular polygon. A polygon is usually thought of as a convex shape (roughly circular), but they don't have to be, they can fold in on themselves and have intersecting... Continue Reading →
Exam Question Technique
Here is question 18 from the AQA 3F June 2017 paper: The first thing to notice is this question is worth a whopping 5 marks and there is that tell-tale sentence 'You must show your working.', so it is going to require some thought and thorough working out. Before committing anything to paper have a... Continue Reading →
A Level & AS Exam Strategy
An A Level/AS Maths exam typically has 9-10 questions, with a total of 75 marks. That's an average of 8-9 marks per question. There are between 8-11 topics in each module, meaning there is going to be roughly one question on each topic. So, there may only be one opportunity to get all that knowledge... Continue Reading →
World Education Rankings – Where is the UK?
The 2015 OECD PISA report shows more UK students plan careers in STEM.
Are the World Maths Rankings Relevant?
The 2012 OECD PISA study ranked Great Britain 26th in the world for maths. The study tested over half a million students aged between 15 and 16. You can have a go at some of the questions. They are graded in levels 1-6, level 1 being the easiest. The graph shows the percentage of students... Continue Reading →
What is the point of logarithms?
Lets say a scientist is studying the growth of a colony of bacteria. She has a hunch that the number of bacteria is given by the following: n = 10kt, where n is the number of bacteria in the colony, t is the time in minutes and k is a constant. She does an experiment... Continue Reading →
Number bonds to 10
An important part of Key Stage 1 maths is fluency with addition and subtraction of single digit numbers. A significant step towards this is to play around with all the possible combinations of numbers which add up to 10, so called number bonds. Possibilities are: 0+10, 1+9, 2+8, 3+7, 4+6, 5+5, 6+4, 7+3, 8+2, 9+1,... Continue Reading →
More on quadratics
Why does the general method Factorising quadratics, work? We are trying to factorise a general quadratic ax²+bx+c [1] into the form (dx+e)(fx+g). Multiplying this out gives: dx(fx+g)+e(fx+g) [2] dfx²+dgx+efx+eg [3] dfx²+(dg+ef)x+eg [4] If a = df, b = dg+ef and c = eg, then equation [1] is same as equation [4]. So ac can be... Continue Reading →
Factorising quadratics
When factorising quadratics of the form x²+bx+c, the usual procedure is to write it like this: (x+..)(x+..) and then think of 2 numbers which multiply together to give c and add up to give b. So, for example: x²+x-12 factorises to (x+4)(x-3), because 4 * -3 = -12 and 4-3=1. Possible combinations which multiply together... Continue Reading →
Southville Maths Tutor 