{"id":124,"date":"2006-08-17T16:08:48","date_gmt":"2006-08-17T16:08:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/?p=124"},"modified":"2007-05-06T22:34:34","modified_gmt":"2007-05-06T22:34:34","slug":"a-level-results-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/?p=124","title":{"rendered":"A Level Results Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the body in charge of exams in the UK, is running a newspaper ad to show that A levels are not getting easier. They do this by reproducing exam questions. And which gets the greatest prominence by far? You guessed it &#8211; an A level maths question. This is because everyone &#8220;knows&#8221; that maths is hard and only the brightest people take it. Sigh!<\/p>\n<table>\n<tr>\n<td><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.qca.org.uk\/16657_17209.html\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/sixthform.info\/maths\/files\/a_level_advertisement.jpg\" alt=\"QCA A level advert\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/td>\n<td><small>The question just asks you to find the x-coordinate of the minimum point of <img src='\/maths\/latexrender\/pictures\/3da150633c526dd2fab91ee42de4d342.gif' title='f(x)=(2x-1)\\tan 2x,\\ 0 \\leq x \\leq \\frac{\\pi}{4}' alt='f(x)=(2x-1)\\tan 2x,\\ 0 \\leq x \\leq \\frac{\\pi}{4}' align=absmiddle> using an iterative solution of <img src='\/maths\/latexrender\/pictures\/a33f3538ec98745c1d55417fb10ffa00.gif' title='f^{\\prime}(x)=0' alt='f^{\\prime}(x)=0' align=absmiddle>.<br \/>\nOf course it holds your hand through the question, as is the fashion these days as I have mentioned <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?m=200604#117\">before<\/a>.<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>There is some good news. The BBC report <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/education\/5259036.stm\">Maths resurgence follows changes<\/a> says that the number of students taking A level mathematics is increasing, though sadly still at a low level. The article also says: <em>&#8220;Another encouraging feature of the figures is that girls significantly outnumber boys among the new students.&#8221;<\/em> which certainly agrees with my experience as you&#8217;ll see from the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?m=200605#118\">photo<\/a>. The results for the pictured students were excellent &#8211; congratulations to all of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the body in charge of exams in the UK, is running a newspaper ad to show that A levels are not getting easier. They do this by reproducing exam questions. And which gets the greatest prominence by far? You guessed it &#8211; an A level maths question. This is because [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}