Chinese University Math entrance test - Can you do it ?

Second Question with the 3/4/5 triangle is pre-GCSE stuff, the top one isn't something I recall seeing during either GCSE or A-Level Maths.


edit - looking again, it does look vaguely similar to something I did but certainly not anything that formed a notable part of my courses.
 
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I can, fairly easily tbh, it's in the Advanced Higher maths course, not sure about A level.

I love how they have taken what must have been the easiest question in some start-of-year test from the English uni though lol.

I'm in first year at Edinburgh Uni doing Mechanical Engineering for reference.
 
divine_madness said:
Second Question with the 3/4/5 triangle is pre-GCSE stuff
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idd, but its the entry test for "an english university", the one above is for chinese unis.
 
touch said:
idd, but its the entry test for "an english university", the one above is for chinese unis.
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lol no it isn't, it's taken from "a test" at "an English university." Firstly there are far too many Universities in this country at the moment, meaning a large proportion of them are old polytechnics and the courses they provide far easier than the "real" Universities.

Gl getting into a real university for a maths related course without A level maths is all I'll say.

Secondly it's an unspecified "test." What is it, a test in a tutorial? We got a test on the first day at Uni, it was absolutely basic stuff, but it was used as an icebreaker. The question for the Chinese uni isn't that hard if you know how to make sense of it.

The article and research behind it is clearly biased to make the UK version look poorer than the Chinese version.
 
The second question is pretty much a basic question in the first year maths element in a Geology degree. The maths element accounts for about 5% of the overall 1st year grade and is only there as a basic check.

Last year I was doing Civil Engineering and there is no way that question would have come up. We were doing matrices, determinates, complex numbers and the like.

The first question looks pretty similar to ones I did at A-level, although I would have to look back at my books to answer it as I havent done that sort of thing for a couple of years.
 
Baker said:
lol no it isn't, it's taken from "a test" at "an English university." Firstly there are far too many Universities in this country at the moment, meaning a large proportion of them are old polytechnics and the courses they provide far easier than the "real" Universities.

Gl getting into a real university for a maths related course without A level maths is all I'll say.

Secondly it's an unspecified "test." What is it, a test in a tutorial? We got a test on the first day at Uni, it was absolutely basic stuff, but it was used as an icebreaker. The question for the Chinese uni isn't that hard if you know how to make sense of it.

The article and research behind it is clearly biased to make the UK version look poorer than the Chinese version.
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The article says the UK question is from an aptitude test for new students. the UK is poorer at maths than China...Sadly thats very true.
 
Balddog said:
The article says the UK question is from an aptitude test for new students. the UK is poorer at maths than China...Sadly thats very true.
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Yeah, it is true, but not by as much as that article likes to suggest.

A lot of my first year maths modules are quite a bit more advanced than the Chinese question given there. Both questions are simple trigonometry, the UK one being only one calculation and the Chinese one being a bit of simple problem solving and basic understanding of the shape.

Neither question is hard.
 
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Baker said:
Yeah, it is true, but not by as much as that article likes to suggest.

A lot of my first year maths modules are quite a bit more advanced than the Chinese question given there.
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Not surprising given thats a pre uni test...im sure it gets harder there too :o

Its actually much more pronounced before university..The level of maths ability in schools is pretty shocking these days..My maths ability is pretty low but also around the norm amongst my peers.

I was shocked when i saw highschool maths in asia...
 
Balddog said:
Not surprising given thats a pre uni test...im sure it gets harder there too :o

Its actually much more pronounced before university..The level of maths ability in schools is pretty shocking these days..My maths ability is pretty low but also around the norm amongst my peers.

I was shocked when i saw highschool maths in asia...
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A lot of my Advanced Higher Maths course was also a lot more advanced than that question.

I can see this going round in circles already, all I'm saying is that that article is clearly heavily biased in order to give people the impression that students doing Maths related courses in the UK can barely do simple trigonometry whereas similar students in China are wonderkids.

Chinese people are very good at Maths, and I'm happy to admit that they tend to be better at it than us, but I won't have some biased report basically rubbishing the maths knowledge of the UK. Compare the end of year exams if they want to make a decent argument.
 
They start algebraic equations when UK students are still doing multiplication.

Read the paper a couple months back, top 5 countries in maths - all from asia.

- Singapore
- Hong Kong
- Taiwan
- Japan

One more forgot.
 
Baker said:
A lot of my Advanced Higher Maths course was also a lot more advanced than that question.

I can see this going round in circles already, all I'm saying is that that article is clearly heavily biased in order to give people the impression that students doing Maths related courses in the UK can barely do simple trigonometry whereas similar students in China are wonderkids.

Chinese people are very good at Maths, and I'm happy to admit that they tend to be better at it than us, but I won't have some biased report basically rubbishing the maths knowledge of the UK. Compare the end of year exams if they want to make a decent argument.
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I think youre taking it a little too personally there mate.
 
I have pretty much forgot all the math i did at higher while at school. I still remember differentiation (multiply by the power and drop the power by one and all that), Logs but i cant remember much else. I'll look at the exam paper tomorow lol.

For the british question isnt it just the square root of AB^2 + BC^2 ? Then the area is something 1/2 AB sine C or theota...cant believe i had to sit and learn all that just to forget it :rolleyes:
 
Balddog said:
I think youre taking it a little too personally there mate.
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When some poorly researched and heavily biased article comes along and attempts to rubbish my education, yes I do take it personally.
 
Jonny ///M said:
For the british question isnt it just the square root of AB^2 + BC^2 ? Then the area is something 1/2 AB sine C or theota...cant believe i had to sit and learn all that just to forget it :rolleyes:
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Length of the hypotenuse is 5 just by looking at the figures, I knew them off by heart when I was 16, so much for challenging University question.

Area isn't even trigonometry in this case because it's right angled, 3x4 divided by two...

SOH CAH TOA for the last question, cba typing what it means etc because u probably all know it anyway.


If a question like this comes up in my exam in two weeks time I will probably be laughing too hard to answer it.
 
Pretty sure in the chinese one there's some vector stuff like you have to prove that some lines are orthogonal, which means you have to show the cross product is zero... i.e. not A-level stuff (AFAIK)
 
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