not really, he'd drop a few marks on a hard fp3 paper
For all those despising Maths, it's getting easier!
- Thread starter MajorMaccas
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not really, he'd drop a few marks on a hard fp3 paper
Soldato
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Why? From what I can remember of the old P6, it was just matricies and stuff? What's in FP3?
And surely you don't need to do fp3 to get 600/600?
I was taught quite a lot of mental maths when I was younger. This is how I would have done it:
140503 / 10 = 14050.3
14050.3 / 10 = 1405.03 * 4 = (2810.06 * 2 =) 5620.12
14050.3 + 5620.12 = 19670.42
Soldato
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But this isn't mental maths. This is an exam. All you do is algorithmical long multiplication.
Doesn't anyone remember this?
Code:
140503
14
-------
562012
1405030
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1967042And don't forget to divide by 100
Soldato
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that what i did, a bit before:
140503/10 = 14050.3
140503/100 = 1405.03
14050.3 + 1405.03 + 1405.03 + 1405.03 + 1405.03 = 19670.42
That makes no sense because marks are adjusted based on how well the nation did as a whole on the paper, so marks never go down or up.
Soldato
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The pass rate has been going up for the past 27 years!
People must be getting better then.
That or the ums ratio was increased. But there would be no reason to dumb down papers to "keep up the grades".
A levels are A levels... there are many other ways to sort out candidates other than from such exams. I would argue a degree result was more representative... but its solid to get a first and with some considerable effort at least, not too challenging to get a 2.1.
People must be getting better then.
That or the ums ratio was increased. But there would be no reason to dumb down papers to "keep up the grades".
Actually...
As explained by my old physics teacher: Exam boards compete with each other for schools to do their exams. So if one board can say " X % of our candidates got grade A while Y % got grade A from this other exam board " which exam board will the head of a department at a school choose to go with? Hence papers are made easier so exam boards get more schools. I'm not sure how much of that I believe myself, I don't even know if exam boards gain financially by providing more schools, but I thought I'd add that.
But still, if you don't believe papers are getting easier then you obviously haven't had two papers to compare for yourself.
Associate
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Like I just said, the ums ratio can be adjusted, there is no point in making the exams easier to get better grades when you can just increase peoples marks anyway by adjusting the ratios. In fact I have looked at past papers from around 130 years ago, and they were not anymore difficult than today.
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I know many many many people who have 600/600 in A2 Further Maths. I know people with 600/600 in A2 Additional Further Maths (The other 6 modules) and 1800/1800 in 18 maths modules. I know people who got S,S,S in Step I, II, III. There ARE people who get these scores. Certainly, 600 in A2 Maths is straightforward. 600 in A2 Further Maths isn't too difficult for many.
They might not have done so well 20 years ago though; they'd be top, but not with 100% marks.
They might not have done so well 20 years ago though; they'd be top, but not with 100% marks.
As someone who did the exams 20 years ago, I can tell you this is nonsense (at least for London Syllabus B, which is what I sat then). Due to the format, it was very easy to get 100% in the 2 long papers - anyone expecting to get into Cambridge could do 8 or 9 questions per paper, and they'd only take the top 6 answers, so mistakes weren't costly. So the only thing that could trip you was the multiple choice (easy, but there'd always be 1 or 2 questions that was a bit confusing, usually due to the wording).
On the other hand, I think most people these days getting 600 didn't do "perfectly". I expect they a few raw marks before being bumped up by UMS.
About 25 years ago, I did a mock French CSE paper for a joke (the joke being that I'd done about 1 term of French before quitting the class). I was able to get almost 70% largely by guessing French vocabulary by seeing how they'd used words in other parts of the paper.
Of course, CSE's were a bit of a joke in their own right back then, but it shows being able to blag your way through a paper is not a new phenomenon.
What are you talking about? I said that Exams were getting easier and then recounted some info from in interesting program produced by the BBC. I never said the show was conclusive proof, or even anything to suggest that this was the sole basis for my opinion. I see that basic comprehension skills are failing now as well as mathematical!
So perhaps the critical difference is not the exam content but the scaling?
FAIL on an epic scale.
Oh wait, I get it, it's funny because there's arabic in there! Haha