Nearly caught me too. I never bothered the learning the obscure names for triangles other than equilateral, which is easy, and the “iso” nearly fooled me.
20/20. Though obviously I'd have to fall on my sword if I got less
I'm not going to say it. I'm not going to say it. I'm not going to say it. Wow! I didn't! ;-)
Ahem, anyway... They even say you can use a calculator! (I thought a pen and paper was shockingly cheating). Did you do it when they had an incorrect question? (Number 17 was an x^2 question that, when they first put it up, had the option -2 and +2, both of which, when squared, would give the right answer. When I refreshed, only one answer remained)
I don't think we discussed the English test. I wonder what subject they'll pick next time. How much points do you think you'll get? Maybe they'll discuss food, then we can all decide whether fewer jam on our toast is better for us.
Perhaps I am, yes. But all I did was click on the link which says "If you missed it, you can still take part by clicking on the link below" under the result of the maths test.
Got to 18/20, then yeah, looked at the last couple of questions, saw all the x's and y's, and thought "eh, life's too short for stuff like this" and chose random answers for the last two. So, 18/20.
What rubric? I've looked again and still can't find the bit about the calculator. Anyway, I got 20. Most of them don't require involved numerical calculations, even when they look like they do.
It doesn't seem terribly well designed though. Apart from the use of "solve" when they actually mean "evaluate", and the tennis ball mentioned in another comment (which "is rolled with twice the force" when they mean at twice the velocity)… when they give you a box with four formulae in it, why don't they make the formulae clickable (given that they've gone to the trouble of doing it in Flash)? Instead you have to choose A, B, C or D which don't line up with the unlabelled formulae. Perhaps that's all part of the test (if so, I passed).
Where? $%£&#! I *thought* the mental arithmetic required was a bit steep compared to the algebra knowledge required, but I'm very rusty and assumed there supposed to be 'last digit' tricks, etc.
Quite. I was thinking about balls rolling to a standstill and energy loss through friction and air resistance, and kinetic energy. Then I thought again about it, and...
The lengths they were talking about, it seems pretty likely that the ball is not moving very fast by the end of it, especially for a tennis ball rolled by hand. I don't think it was a good question.
OK. I had thought it was going faster than that. If you assume any resistive force at all you instantly get a quadratic equation dependent on the initial velocity/the force and hence can't solve it with the information given.
You might be able to rule out some of the answers, but I couldn't be bothered to try.
I got as far as the question where they gave a few integers and asked you to work out which one came next and ten I gave up in disgust. It's the kind of question that makes my blood boil as the answer depends entirely how you're generating the sequence, and since they've not given that you're supposed to guess which sequence generating rule is more "right" at which point you're no longer doing maths since mathematically ANY ANSWER COULD BE CORRECT, YOU MUPPETS.
Yep. Well, actually, maths is the art of spotting *important* theorems, since any provable statment *is* a theorem, but the sequences given are so short you can normally find a number of *reasonable* explanations. In fact, it's guaranteed, just use different simple polynomials of n.
I don't think that's entirely fair. Spotting patterns and inferring general rules from them is an important part of real mathematics: that's what gives rise to the conjectures which you then search for proofs of. And telling the difference between an elegant, simple and plausible conjecture and a nasty kludge which is liable to be wrong is an important part of that skill.
It's certainly not the same type of question as all the rest, and it's true that you could make a case (if a rather feeble one) for it being any of the available answers or anything else you liked, but I think it's going a bit far to say that it has nothing to do with maths at all.
I don't think that's entirely fair. Spotting patterns and inferring general rules from them is an important part of real mathematics: that's what gives rise to the conjectures which you then search for proofs of.
And good for science too. I can do those on Real Data (TM) - in fact I think I'm pretty good at it. But I'm not so hot on silly test questions.
Spotting patterns and inferring general rules from them is an important part of real mathematics
True, except that as you say after spotting those patterns you still need to be able to find a proof for the conjecture that you come up with. I would have had no problem with the question if it had been phrased as "Find a sequence, the first N values of which are... ... and in the sequence, what would be the N+1th value?" but that's not really the kind of thing that you can easily design for in a little flash app and radio buttons.
I guess you can "prove" your answer by seeing whether they agree with whoever wrote the test, but that's a bit different. Maybe take a statistical approach and say that a quiz aimed at a certain demographic (e.g. people who visit the BBC website) that involves a sequence question is more likely to have an answer that fits a particular kind of sequence. But that may be getting a little silly.
And telling the difference between an elegant, simple and plausible conjecture and a nasty kludge which is liable to be wrong is an important part of that skill
Oh, absolutely, but that shouldn't detract from the fact that (sadly) the elegant, simple and plausable conjecture could be wrong and (equally depressingly) the nasty kludge could be right.
That's what I object to in the question (which I'll admit I did get a bit ranty about). I see it as enforcing this belief that we don't need to bother out heads with that pesky proof thing if something is "pretty".
Also 20/20; also infuriated with all the shoddily-worded questions. I wasn't counting, and because it's flash I can't go back to check, but I'd say barely half the questions were wholly unobjectionable.
13/20, which actually I'm quite pleased about. I remembered the definitions of triangles and using paper and pen worked out some of the sums - I did the others in my head.
Couldn't do minus powers; I spotted the pattern in the sequence but without a calculator couldn't work out the square of 63; didn't have a calculator to do the question with the root of 64 (I know the root of 64, but didn't know the square of the other number); didn't know what factors were; and got lost simplifying the formula at the end. I started okay and then fell apart!
The sequence confused me becuase I was looking for a function mapping position to value rather than value to successor. Both are valid things to analyse of course but the latter has the confusing property that the first element is arbitrary and thinking too hard about it can only confuse. A good exercise for anyone making such puzzles would perhaps be to think about what element comes before the first as well as what comes next.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 03:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 04:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 06:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 03:02 pm (UTC)I'm not going to say it. I'm not going to say it. I'm not going to say it. Wow! I didn't! ;-)
Ahem, anyway... They even say you can use a calculator! (I thought a pen and paper was shockingly cheating). Did you do it when they had an incorrect question? (Number 17 was an x^2 question that, when they first put it up, had the option -2 and +2, both of which, when squared, would give the right answer. When I refreshed, only one answer remained)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 03:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 03:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 03:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 03:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 03:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 04:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 05:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-21 12:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 03:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 03:41 pm (UTC)(S)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 04:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 03:27 pm (UTC)I didn't notice the calculator bit, so I did it all in my head. Moral: read the rubric :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 04:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 04:45 pm (UTC)It doesn't seem terribly well designed though. Apart from the use of "solve" when they actually mean "evaluate", and the tennis ball mentioned in another comment (which "is rolled with twice the force" when they mean at twice the velocity)… when they give you a box with four formulae in it, why don't they make the formulae clickable (given that they've gone to the trouble of doing it in Flash)? Instead you have to choose A, B, C or D which don't line up with the unlabelled formulae. Perhaps that's all part of the test (if so, I passed).
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 04:00 pm (UTC)Where? $%£&#! I *thought* the mental arithmetic required was a bit steep compared to the algebra knowledge required, but I'm very rusty and assumed there supposed to be 'last digit' tricks, etc.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 04:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 04:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 03:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 03:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 03:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 03:57 pm (UTC)My issue was it was rather misleading to say 'force' in a physics question when you don't mean force in the physics sense.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-21 09:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-21 11:44 am (UTC)You might be able to rule out some of the answers, but I couldn't be bothered to try.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 03:37 pm (UTC)Think tht says I'm not a mathmo..
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-21 08:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 03:55 pm (UTC)*grrrrrr*
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 03:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 04:01 pm (UTC)It's certainly not the same type of question as all the rest, and it's true that you could make a case (if a rather feeble one) for it being any of the available answers or anything else you liked, but I think it's going a bit far to say that it has nothing to do with maths at all.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 04:57 pm (UTC)And good for science too. I can do those on Real Data (TM) - in fact I think I'm pretty good at it. But I'm not so hot on silly test questions.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 06:53 pm (UTC)True, except that as you say after spotting those patterns you still need to be able to find a proof for the conjecture that you come up with. I would have had no problem with the question if it had been phrased as "Find a sequence, the first N values of which are... ... and in the sequence, what would be the N+1th value?" but that's not really the kind of thing that you can easily design for in a little flash app and radio buttons.
I guess you can "prove" your answer by seeing whether they agree with whoever wrote the test, but that's a bit different. Maybe take a statistical approach and say that a quiz aimed at a certain demographic (e.g. people who visit the BBC website) that involves a sequence question is more likely to have an answer that fits a particular kind of sequence. But that may be getting a little silly.
And telling the difference between an elegant, simple and plausible conjecture and a nasty kludge which is liable to be wrong is an important part of that skill
Oh, absolutely, but that shouldn't detract from the fact that (sadly) the elegant, simple and plausable conjecture could be wrong and (equally depressingly) the nasty kludge could be right.
That's what I object to in the question (which I'll admit I did get a bit ranty about). I see it as enforcing this belief that we don't need to bother out heads with that pesky proof thing if something is "pretty".
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 04:02 pm (UTC)Also thought: don't say 'solve' when you mean 'evaluate'.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 05:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 06:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 05:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 06:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 11:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-21 09:51 am (UTC)Couldn't do minus powers; I spotted the pattern in the sequence but without a calculator couldn't work out the square of 63; didn't have a calculator to do the question with the root of 64 (I know the root of 64, but didn't know the square of the other number); didn't know what factors were; and got lost simplifying the formula at the end. I started okay and then fell apart!
I got 19/20 for the Language test.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-24 10:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-24 10:39 am (UTC)