Entertainment For Lively Minds
Anyone want to try some old O Level questions?
I went shopping today and while my wife was looking for childrens books I stumbled across "The O Level Book. Genuine Exam Questions From Yesteryear". It is as the title suggests some old exam questions from a time when you had to earn your certificate. I have to say at this point that I was such a lazy bugger at school I left with only CSE's and these questions would have been beyond me 30 years ago, even more so now. These are from genuine papers set between 1955 and 1959. Anyway I thought I would set some for you and see how you get on, let's start with English Language, good luck!
Rewrite two of the following sentences in order to remove any errors.
(i) Uncle Tom has agreed to share his money between you and I.
(ii) The dog had hurt it's paw.
(iii) The number of accidents on the road are increasing.
(iv) Crossing the road her heel stuck in a manhole cover.
Maths and science to come in the comments..........
Edit: Here on Amazon if you're interested http://www.amazon.co.uk/Level-Book-Genuine-Questions-Yesteryear/dp/18431...
- More from Dave Amitri.
- Login or register to post comments
-
Mathematics
A machine which cost £35,000 is operated 8 hours a day in a 5-day week but one hour each day is used for test purposes. For use of the machine there are three scales of charges, the first at a rate of £5 an hour for private use, the second at £15 an hour for research work and the third at £40 an hour for commercial work. It is estimated that the numbers of hours charged at the first, second and third rates are in the ratios 4:2:1. Express the receipts from commercial work as a percentage of the total receipts.
If the machine cost £30 a week to maintain, how many complete weeks must elapse before one quarter of the original cost of the machine can be recovered?
Maths was never my strong suit, but here goes...
44.4 recurring %
20 weeks. (Nearly 21)
Is that right? God, I hope so. I've tried so hard to conquer my ridiculous old maths phobias.
The book says
44.5%; 21 weeks, I'm not sure how you would have been marked Bob but as a numpty who still counts out his 9 times table, I'm impressed
Ah, complete weeks!
I was always cursed by failure to read the question properly!
If only Joe R, aka Mathsboy, were here. I wasn't sure what you're supposed to do with recurring numbers after the decimal point, and Mrs Bob is upstairs. I thought if the recurring digit was below 5, you don't round up. Although maybe my maths was a little faulty.
Anyway! Score! 16 year old me would be so proud (I have literally never worked as hard for anything IN MY LIFE as I did for my B at GCSE Maths!)
I went from an E
to a B in GCSE Maths. First time round was in 1992, before the introduction of the National Curriculum. I'd missed quite a bit of school due to being hospitalised, and I'd been told that most of the Maths on which I'd failed was Trigonometry.
Five years later, post-introduction of National Curriculum, I re-took GCSE Maths at the age of 21 prior to going to University (it was a pre-requisite.) I was alarmed at being told to buy a calculator (at school, calculators were only provided when you were expected to use them, and were banned from the exam.) The lecturer seemed shocked that I was doing what were fairly simple mental calculations in the time it took the other students to turn on their calculators.
But it was brushing up on the Trig that got me the B. And, as I don't play snooker or work as an architect, I've never once needed it in the 14 years since.
I use trig quite a bit.
I'm a hobbyist woodworker - not terribly serious about it, but I've made a couple of guitars, a fitted sideboard and re-done the stairs. The last one in particular needed some trig to get the angles right on the bannister spindles. It was quite satisfying!
I got
44.4%, (4/9) and 21 complete weeks (20.82 weeks). So, I'm nor slipping at least.
Does the company
run the machine on Bank Holidays, and is there a shut-down over the Christmas Holiday period?
When was the machine bought? And what about depreciation?
I'll be up all night worrying now.
I'm just glad education had dummed down
by the time I took my GCSE's!
Oh, go on, then...
...although I'll probably make a fool of myself
(i) Uncle Tom has agreed to share his money between you and me
(ii) The dog had hurt its paw
(iii) The number of accidents on the road is increasing
(iv) is slightly trickier...
I think the original implies that the heel was crossing the road by itself so it should read Her heel stuck in a manhole cover while she was crossing the road.
Did the book include the answers?
Pretty sure that's just a missing comma.
(iv) Crossing the road, her heel stuck in a manhole cover.
Sorry Bob
they needed a bit more than that in the 50's
Bugger.
While she was crossing the road, her heel became stuck in a manhole cover.
Any closer? I wonder if removing the heel's implied agency in sticking itself in the cover will help. Probably not.
I did metalwork. (I didn't.)
So close,
the book says
While she was crossing the road, her heel got stuck in a manhole cover.
Ah, they'd let me have that!
At least I was right about the agency thing. Cool. :)
You're no fool Toffee
3 out of 4 spot on, 4 is a tough one. Let's see if anyone get's it
Sir! Sir!
Toffee's changed all four sentences and the question say change two! Surely he should be marked down for not reading the instructions properly?
That'll teach me...
...to read the paper properly. Always was a fault of mine. I wasn't trying to be a smart arse, honest, Cap'n Netherwear
In a maths mock at school
one girl in my class answered all of the questions correctly (you only needed to do ten of the twelve) and as a result the rest of us got marked down...umm...some percent.
Tweets
i Unc Tom leaving us his £
ii Dog paw ouch :-(
iii News: more RTAs
iv LOL woman shoe stuck
quick guess
44%
20 weeks
Very close
how the fuck did you "quick guess" that?
hehe...
4/9 as a percentage is something less than 50, therefore 44.
For the other part you simply need to know yer 42 times table.
English
Uncle tom has agreed to share his money between you and ME.
The dog had hurt ITS paw.
The number of accidents on the road IS increasing
Crossing the road, her heel stuck in a manhole cover.
Maths: 14% and 21 weeks.
See Bob after class...
the percentage of the receipts....not the hours.
Full weeks.
Hmm I did wonder
if it was number of receipts or value. Value makes more sense.
General Science
Give the chemical names of:
(a) the liquid in a lead plate accumulator
(b) the liquid in Leclanche cell
(c) a gas which can be burnt with oxygen to give a flame used for welding
(d) an important constituent of coal gas
quicker guess
Hydrochloric acid.
Saline.
Acetylene.
methane.
Two out
of four
mmmmm..
methane and acetylene must be correct. The lead acid accumulator, I guess is just a car battery so I must've got my acids mixed up, so the answer to #1 would be sulphuric acid. Leclanche cell sounds like another battery but I have no idea of that one.
I'll have a bash
A) diluted form of sulphuric acid
B)Ammonium chloride
C)Acetylene
D) methane hydrogen,carbon monoxide, are all present in Coal Gas (6th generation Coal Miner .Ok i Worked for 2 weeks but i'm counting it)
Props Uncle Tom
Im minted LOL.
Uncle Tom
has no idea what you just said...
To be honest
I'm not completely certain myself.
Ooh there's music as well
What kinds of music and musical instruments might have been found in an educated English household in the first twenty-five years of the seventeenth century?
Explain why the music of Berlioz, Schumann and Dvorak is described as romantic.
Instruments...
Stuff like lutes, dulcimers, virginals etc. They'd be singing madrigals.
And romanticism was all about emotion as an end in itself, as opposed to rationalism and science.
Any good? *apprehensive face*
Oh jesus
I've just read the answers and I'm not copying it all out! I'll give you lute and virginal though.
Haha
God, I love this kind of stuff. Which probably says deeply wounding things about my general character.
Treat yourself to the book Bob
it's completely fascinating and bloody hard. I'll try and find some more where the answer is more straightforward than the essay they wrote for music. Suffice to say Dvorak worked in the romantic symphonic poem form; apparently.
Just treated!
Got to love Amazon 1-Click. Thanks for this thread, Dave. I'm like a pig in shit (and also quite happy).
Tsk Tsk Robert. Language!
- the book harks back to the fifties.
Shouldn't you be a pig in S H one T?
could i) also be
iUncle Tom has agreed to share his money between us ?
You try and
Tell kids these days....
These aren't great questions, though, are they?
Post a modern GCSE paper. Which is designed to test all students from the least to the most able. Post a few more from a mid-80's Nuffield science paper. Test understanding rather than factual recall. The maths question is good, but there is no graduation in it. The science questions merely test rote learning. The English questions are probably the best of the bunch.
I think I was the 2nd
of school years to take GCSE so we were still using O Level papers to prepare for our mocks, and of course we'd have been geared up to O Level prior to 1988. The difference between the O Level and GCSE I thought was staggering, GCSE's were a walk in the park compared to the O Level questions I'd tried to do. By contrast, A Levels were still pretty hardcore.
Primary Questions
Here in Singapore my kids have exams / tests at Primary school (in Maths, English, Science and Chinese).
Some example questions from my 10 year olds Primary 4 maths questions....
1) Ben and Tom picked a number of shells at the beach. First, Ben sorted out all his shells and gave 1/3 of shells to Tom. Then, Tom counted all his shells and gave 1/4 of them to Ben. After that, Ben totalled up all his shells and gave 1/5 of them to Tom. Finally, Ben had 32 shells and Tom had 56 shells. How many shells did each of them pick at the beach at first ?
2) Mr Smith spent $375 in all for 5 similar tables and 6 similar chairs. Each table cost $20 more than each chair. What was the price of a table ? What was the price of a chair.
3) There ar 40 cars and motorcycles in a car park. There are 116 wheels altogether. How many cars are there ? How many motorcycles are there ?
BTW - they have not learnt algebra yet, which is the way I would have approached these questions - they use a method of drawing models. I got a straight A for A-level Maths and also did Further Maths A -Level, but I struggle on some of the questions they get !
3)
*peeps over illuminatus' shoulder*
18 cars and 22 motorbikes, sir.
Easy when you know how, innit?
my 2p worth
1) Tom started out with 64 shells, Ben had 32, which is fairly counter intuitive when you realise that that Ben has to hand over 1/3 of 32 shells at first. But the maths does check out. This was easily the toughest of the three.
2) table (x) = $45, chair (y) = $25
5x+6y =375, x = y + 20. By substitution, 11y = 275. So y = 25 & x = 45
3) 18 cars (x), 22 motorbikes (y): 4x + 2y = 116, x+ y = 40
I think that's correct......
That's the same answers that I got.
Remember though, the kids have to solve them without the use of algebra, which in my mind makes them a lot more difficult (maybe because I'm an old fart that doesn't understand these new methods...)
I agree
all I can think about now is this:
(full version)
how many shells ?
with respect, the final number of shells was 88, so 64 + 32 = 96 can't be correct. Working backwards from the answer and taking each stage at a time I got Ben 24 Tom 64
Good point
I'd have to go back and check my working, just to make sure I wasn't assuming 64 instead of 56 when I wrote some of my working down.
Update: I've checked my working, and now get Ben had 36 shells and Tom had 52. In fact, here is my working, with the numbers inserted to back check and make sure it's ok:
Extra Maths for me...
I can't even remember how to set this up.
All I know is I don't know 2 people called Tom and Ben who are prepared to go shell-collecting so this will never apply to me.
Just like SOH - CAH - TOA and long div...
Off on a slight tangent
I was sent some questions this year from Switzerland, one of which was;
You have a pack of ten cigarettes, you smoke all of them leaving a third from each one. You then make a new cigarette from 3 thirds. How many cigarettes do you smoke?
I have asked maths and critical thinking teachers at school who have given me different answers,What does the massive think?
10?
or 9.67.
13?
If you make up all of the thirds with one third over or 11 if you 'make A new cigarette from 3 thirds'.
Sorry
Yes you make a new cigarette with all of the thirds left over. Didn't explain properly. Hope that makes sense now.
7.67
If you smoke 2/3 of each fag, and there are 10 smokes thats 10x2/3 = 6.67.
If you make 3 thirds to make another that's 6.67 + 1 = 7.67 (7 and two thirds).
Possibly.
EDIT:
Just seen above clarification so that'll be
6 and two thirds plus 3 and a third = 10
14?
smoke 10.
make 3 extra from the unsmoked thirds ( with one third left over)
make 1 more from the unsmoked thirds (with one third left over)
so you've smoked 14 cigs and have two thirds left over.
*goes for lie down*
you can have two answers based on this question
you have a pack of ten cigarettes and you smoke all of them ... so you smoke ten cigarettes ... but *if* leaving a third of each cigarette means you can't count each one as wholly smoked, then the sum is 10 x 2/3rds = 6 and 2/3rds
at this point you have either smoked all 10 or the equivalent of 6 and 2/3rds full fags
but there's nothing in the rest of the question to imply that you smoke the last fag you make out of leftovers of the original lot, so you don't have to add anything else
clarification edit: even if you make a cigarette giraffe out of the leftover thirds, there's still nothing in the question to say you actually smoke the damn thing
If you smoke two thirds of each cigarette...
... and there's 10 cigarettes, that's equivalent to 6 and two thirds whole cigarettes. You're then asked to make a whole cigarette from three thirds (and I assume you're supposed to smoke it, although the question doesn't state that. Are the Swiss sneaky?), so 6 2/3 + 1 = 7 2/3.
Well
The questions says you smoke 2/3 of 9 cigarettes, so the answer could be six. It doesn't mention that you smoke any of the remaining cigarette or the one made from the leftover thirds. So that would still be six (or nine if you say partially smoking a cigarette is the same as smoking the whole of it). Whatever happens, if you start with ten cigarettes and do not add to them you cannot possibly smoke more than ten cigarettes.
So my answer is: smoking is bad for you and you should never start, kids.
I heartily agree
I say ten but from maths teachers I get the answer 14 (plus two thirds left over) as you can make another 'cigarette' from the 'extra three' that you smoke. As a friend says you can have fourteen 'smoking experiences' but there are only ten cigarettes to start with.
Oh yes and this was a question set for a group of thirteen year old Swiss children.
14 and 2/3 versus 10
If you ignore the confusing numbers the question is: if you have a pack of 10 cigarettes and you smoke some of them and later smoke what's left how many cigarettes have you smoked? That would be 10.
I imagine those who get 14 and 2/3 believe the rule of only smoking 2/3 of the cigarette continues to apply to the subsequent made-up cigs. But this is only valid if you accept the 2/3 cigarette as a full cigarette.
So I suppose the question is: define "cigarette".
Well
If you have only ten fags to start with, you cannot smoke more than ten.... SO if every fag is smoked down to a third, then re rolled and smoked, the the answer must be 9 and 2/3rds?
More precise...
when all ten are smoked, then you are left with ten thirds, which equates to 3.3 fags. Smoking the three fags will give you enough tobacco for one last fag... then there will be one third left after that. Add that to the OTHER third you have left over, then you have two thirds of a fag. Smoke THAT, BABY till there is a third of that left, then you have puffed nine and four/sixths capstan full strength.
Probability
This one has been floating around the Internet all week:
If you pick a random answer to this multiple choice question, what is the probability that your answer is correct?
a) 25%
b) 50%
c) 60%
d) 25%
that's clever
- is there an answer? I've strained my brain on it. Is it a paradox?
I haven't seen
anyone publish or post an answer anywhere else. I think you're right, it's a paradox.
Is this...
...a rhetorical question?
if
the correct answer to the multiple choice is 25% and you pick at random, then two of the four answers are 25% so you have a 2/4 (=1/2) chance of getting it right
if the correct answer to the multiple choice is not 25% and you pick at random, then two of the answers are other than 25% so you have a 2/4 (=1/2) chance of getting things right
so either the answer is 25% (two chances) or 'other' (two chances) so that's 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4 so you have a 25% chance of getting it right if you pick at random, despite the fact that two of the multiple choice choices are the same
er ...
NO....
the answer is 50%. There is one chance in four that you will be correct...ie 25%, but there are two chances out of four that you would randomly pick 25%, so the answer is 50%.
Ignore my post Glenbervie...
obviously Torry Grammer School taught you well... you are correct!
I think.
yebbut
that correct answer of 50% only appears once and the odds of you picking that at random are 25%. To my small brain it seems the answer is both 25 and 50 %
Ignore my ignore post
to Glenbervie.
You are correct.
I think.
Makes sense to me
If the correct answer is 25% a random punt is right 50% of the time.
If the correct answer is 60% a random punt will be right 25% of the time.
If it's 50% a random punt will be correct 25% of the time.
Therefore the correct answer to the question "If you pick a random answer to this multiple choice question what is the probability that your answer is correct" is.. that depends entirely on which is the correct answer to begin with.
Then again probability is a minefield so I could have just stepped on a mine...
I think I've spotted the mine...
In the a, b, c or d format there can only be one correct answer. So, by definition, if 25% appears twice it can't be correct. (a and d can't both be correct therefore neither is correct). So either b (50%) or c (60%) must be correct. The probability of picking either of these is 1 in 4 or 25%.
The puzzle is just linguistic sleight-of-hand
There is no question posed.
I did O-levels in '68 and the questions were along those lines
The Stimpettes are both around GCSE age and I've been shocked by the simplicity of the questions they've been asked, especially in Maths.
Book duly ordered :-)
I was about to defend modern maths papers.
But I decided to check some facts. I looked at some past papers from EdExcel. OK, I've got an A level in maths, but if I didn't nail each paper for a 100% score, taking about twenty minutes to do so, I'd be upset. Not even remotely taxing.
Maybe I'm looking at the wrong type of paper? Teachers. Please prove me wrong.
Can't speak for maths...
...but it's worth remembering that every single person who claims that exams are just as hard as they ever were has a stake in that being the case: kids, parent groups, government, local authorities, exam boards, schools and teaching unions. They all have an incentive to talk results up, and few tangible reasons not to.
Speaking for English, which is all I can do, I'll say this: the papers aren't the place to look for evidence of dumbing down. The place to look is the marking regime and the grade boundaries. Suffice it to say that the days of a C meaning the middle of the ability bell curve are long, long, loooong gone.
Yes -
I was going to say - look into the percentages required to get a grade A* or a C in Maths.
It should be remembered that GCSE replaced CSE as well as O Level (GCE) so some of the questions should be answerable by the less able candidates.
I do, however, remember invigilating a Graphical Communications exam where one question was 'What is this shape?' The diagram was a triangle.
plainly that's absurd
it's a percussion instrument and ting
Depends if it was a complete triangle or
if it was missing a corner to let the sound out.
partial triangles?
sine of the times
sine of the times ?
Of cos it is
Here we go...
Another tangent.
Everyone needs
to keep a sense of perspective, and not get hyperbolic about the triangles.
partial triangles
great for playing logarhythyms
Home
Home, home on the range, where the X and the Y axis roam.....
A car
starts at five, goes down to zero, gets up to fifty then goes back down to zero.
What is the make of the car?
It's
a Swedish Tank.
Is it...
... a Rolls Canardly?
You know, it rolls down the hill but can hardly (canardly - geddit?) get up the other side.
Oh, please yourselves.
Can I make a prediction?
You won't be here all week and, hence, I shan't be asking you for menu advice :-)
Ah Helena..
You are correct... as always!