The first post showed this gem from a mock GCSE maths paper on the BBC website: Just in case you think it was a typo, here is the corresponding extract from the solutions/marking scheme: The problem, of course, is that the illustration shows a dodecahedron, which has 12 sides not 10. So what exactly is [...]
The BBC website has a substantial section devoted to the three “Key Stages” (KS1, KS2, KS3) and GCSE (the UK exam aimed at 16 year-olds). It is part of its Learning: Schools beta site. Confusingly, there is a link at the bottom left entitled “The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. [...]
The first puzzle was here. You were asked to show that if group is defined as having a left identity e and every element g has a left inverse h with hg = e, then in fact the structure satisfies the normal definition of a group, so that e is also a right identity and [...]
Maths is a curious subject, which is reflected in its practitioners. Even by academic standards, mathematicians tend to come across as distinctly odd. For most of the world, maths means a school exam which they did not enjoy. A modest proportion can probably do some basic mental arithmetic and occasionally find that useful, although most [...]
I first took an interest in this topic when banking chiefs started parading before the Treasury Select Committee three years ago. I returned to it when Richard Williamson apologised to the pope shortly afterwards. Recently, claims Christina Patterson in today’s i, sham apologies have been coming thick and fast. Her main concern was l’affaire PIP. [...]
