Maths: testing the parties
28th October, 2008
Labour party members are the worst at maths, according to a test set at this year’s party conferences.
The Reform challenge was posed in a bid to highlight the importance of numeracy.
Average scores by conference delegates were:
Liberal Democrats: 83 per cent
Conservatives: 71 per cent
Labour: 65 per cent
The overall top five, in no particular order, included John Hemming, the Lib Dem MP for Birmingham Yardley; Nigel Ashton, the Tory leader of North Somerset Council; and Philip Nye, a freelance journalist. The two others were not at the conferences and were tested seperately.
The questions included:
1. What is the angle between the hands of Big Ben at 9.15?
2. When you count “1, 2, 3, …” out loud, what is the first number you come to that contains an “a”?
3. Fresh apricots have a moisture content of 80%. When left in the sun to dry they lose 75% of their moisture content. What is the moisture content of dried apricots?
Answers? When I feel like it.
1) 172.5degrees (the obtuse angle as the hour hand moved passed 9).
2) 8???
3) 20%
Labour supporter in case that matters.
October 28th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
A much better (and very evry difficult) question is at what time, between 1:00 and 2:00 is the minute hand immediately above the hour hand.
Bobby bonus to anyone who can answer that, showing all of their wokings…
October 28th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
It’s either Eight if it’s the sound of the “a” you want, One hundred And one if written.
Kurt. The answer is somewhere between 1.05 and 1.06 (probably about 20 seconds or so past 1.05)
I’ll try harder later when I have more time.
October 28th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
OK. Done it.
1:05.27.27272727 (ish)
Between noon and midnight, the hands converge 11 times, so, the interval between convergancies is 60/11 which is 5.4545454545r.
Or.
Every hour, the hour hand moves 5.454545454545 minutes before the minute hand catches it again.
So a quick calc to convert .4545454545 into seconds and we’re done.
(60/100)*45.4545454545 = 27.2727272727
October 28th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Good work that man, give yourself a pat on the back and take the afternoon off
October 28th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
LMAO @ Kurt’s answer for No 2.
Personally I’d say the correct answer is 101 – “One hundred and one”
If that’s right, do I get a prize?
October 28th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Try this one.
If a bear travels one mile south, turns left and travels one mile east, then turns left again to travel one mile north ending up in exactly the same place it started from, what colour is the bear?
October 28th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
“When you count “1, 2, 3, …” ”
Personally, I think it speaks volumes when the question masters have to give an example of counting up.
October 28th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Any answers yet David?
November 2nd, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Answers, with the setters’ comments:
1. Big Ben
“This is an excellent example of a simple, everyday problem, which requires one to coordinate two thoughts at the same time. One’s first thought may be to picture the minute hand pointing at the ‘3′ and the hour hand pointing at the “9” and so to answer “180deg”. However, one should immediately realise that between 9 and 9.15 the hour hand has moved one quarter of the way from 9 to 10. Since each ‘hour’ corresponds to one twelfth of a full turn (namely 30deg), in one quarter of an hour, the hour hand moves 7½deg, so the angle between the two hands may be given either as 172½deg or as 187½deg. Working recently with a very select group of 200 Year 10 pupils – from the top 1-5% of the ability range – almost three quarters failed to see beyond the knee-jerk response ‘180deg’, which indicates that English school mathematics now systematically trains its best pupils to assume that all problems are mindlessly trivial.”
2. Counting aloud
“This was included as a light-hearted surprise – linking language and mathematics. The obvious answers are: ‘a hundred’; or if you think of this as ‘one hundred’, then perhaps ‘one hundred and one’; or if you insist that the ‘number word’ should include the letter ‘a’, you may have to go up to ‘one thousand’.”
3. Apricots
“This problem shows the dangers of thinking of percentages as numbers, rather than as operators: there is no such thing as ‘20%’, only ‘20% of something’! The problem is not that hard provided one has learned to model such problems in an appropriate way. Draw two identical copies of a strip – each representing an original fresh apricot. Shade 80% of each strip (representing the moisture content). Then scrub out ¾ of the shaded part on one strip, leaving 20% of the original strip shaded (representing the remaining moisture in a dried apricot), and 20% of the original strip unshaded (representing the residual solid content in the dried apricot). Hence 50% moisture.”
November 3rd, 2008 at 1:58 pm