Now is the time that many young people are sitting their examinations. And a news article has been reported in the last few days regarding a twitter trend from 16 years old taking their GCSE "O" level maths examination. Apparently many of these 16 year olds have complained about one particular question, which they feel is too hard for them to solve, and in some way "unfair" & the pass level should be lowered because of this question being "too hard" for them to solve. Well I am quite disgusted at this trend. Especially after reading the question, which I solved in under 20 seconds! I read some of the posts for these whining teenagers on twitter.... Here was one ... "My mother is an accountant & it took 4 accountants 2hrs to solve the answer, & they have a degree in maths" What a joke! Has the British education system fallen to such low levels? If so we need to kick our politicians up the backside to do something about it. And in the case of these 4 accountants, their employer should maybe reconsider their employment contacts, if they fail to solve such a simple "O" level question. As I said, I solved it in under 20 seconds & it was a VERY easy question. I don't have a degree in maths (I do have an A level) but haven't attended a statistics class in over 30 years, yet the solution was extremely simple. Just some basic statistics & some very simple algebra. The question : A bag contains "n" sweets, 6 of them are orange, all the rest are yellow. Two sweets are taken at random. The probability of two orange sweets is 1/3. Prove that "n^2 - n - 90 = 0" As I said t took less than 20 seconds to solve. But the worrying point I that the online petition may actually influence the examination board to lower the pass rate to accommodate these ignorant pupils that feel it is acceptable to apply pressure via online media in order to gain a pass that they clearly do not deserve. And it also bothers me that media outlets like the BBC are labelling this news article as "that TRICKY question". IT IS NOT A TRICKY QUESTION, it is VERY simple probability & algebra. As for those 4 accountants with maths degrees that took 2 hrs to solve the question.... If I was their employer .... I would sack them on the spot. This also bring up the question. Can we trust our examination system. When a potential employee presents their examination results as part of a job interview, should they be trusted? NO!!!! Every employer should make candidates sit an entrance exam to weed out the weak. And just in case you wondered how simple the solution is : chance if the 1st sweet being orange = 6/n chance of 2nd sweet being orange = 5/(n-1) Stated chance of both sweets being orange = 1/3 so 6/n X 5/(n-1) = 1/3 after that simple easy algebra. allows you to modify that equation to show the answer, in about 3 steps. It truly sickens me at the dumbing down of Britain & sickens me more at their apologists.
