‘Impossible’ maths question on GCSE exam

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! Divide into triangles, find area of sector and then area of triangles. Final answer 16 root 3 - 16 pie over 3

Is there a mark scheme?

I finished secondary school 3 years ago and already forgot everything, especially everything math related. Why did I forget it all? Cause 90% of the things school taught me was and is completely useless, like the question above. Now tell me, unless you're planning to be a career mathematician, or an architect or something, how does knowing how to solve the question above help you in life? It probably doesn't and you will forget everything 3 years from now, just like I did.

You, I and many people world-wide, spent most of their childhood developing skills they're gonna forget and never make use of. I understand learning the basics, those are important but I still think schools should focus more on stuff that will actually prove useful to you outside of school and more importantly they should focus on your personal interests, help you develop what you're passionate about, what you're interested in. I am pretty sure Finland already does this and I fail to understand why other countries around the world still use this outdated system designed to prepare kids for their future in factories during the industrial era, it genuinely pisses me off and I feel like my childhood has been robbed from me.

This video explains precisely how I feel (forgive the thumbnail): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLSv17…annel=Thoughty2

i did it then i read you cant use a calculator and i cba

↩  Tozzit use 22/7 instead of pi?

↩ @'Ashleigh_The_Robloxian' it says to keep it in terms of pi blind fuck

↩  xPkz_ solve it then little prick

↩  LightUK yeah but these are GCSEs and the very last question. Only people who are very good at maths/want to pursue it further should be able to solve this question. The whole point of GCSEs is to teach the basics, after that you can study what you want.

↩  LightUK

Math is problem solving and critical thinking skills 101. There's a reason why there's such strong links between math and philosophy: logic.

So I think it ridiculous to assert that it's somehow useless or trivial in learning how to solve problems such as these. You may not be solving for the area of x in your careeer, but you are certainly using the same way of thinking and applying them to problems in your daily life, whether you want to admit it or not.

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I am pretty sure Finland already does this

Math is still mandatory in Finland.

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↩  Miwojedk , but you are certainly using the same way of thinking and applying them to problems in your daily life, whether you want to admit it or not.

i think a big issue, at least in my experience, is that math teachers never go properly into the material or actually properly explain what they teach. Basically, someone gives the quadratic formula and expects you to memorize it, with no explanation to how or why it works, who made it, why it was made, etc.

↩ @'Miasmus.'

Agreed. That's a matter of poor teaching.

↩ @'Ashleigh_The_Robloxian' yeah I did it a different way to how you are actually meant to do it, which at one point involved inverse of cos

↩  Tozzit what did you get?

Given the nature of the question and the fact this is GCSE, I've a funny feeling it's actually quite simple. I'm sitting here trying to do all this complex stuff (which clearly isn't working) but I've a feeling now that the answer is quite simple and doable when you know the piece of information critical to solving it.

I quite like it when questions like these pop up - they reward candidates who think outside the box and are able to apply the principles they've learned to scenarios they haven't learned. It's probably a question not much different to ones you've covered in class and are capable of doing, but it's obfuscated a little behind some extra info to make it seem harder.

Which brings me onto my main point.

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↩  LightUK 90% of the things school taught me was and is completely useless, like the question above.

This isn't useless, as I've brushed over before, it's encouraging you to think outside the box. In maths the questions can often be.. repetitive, especially if you've done quite a few past papers. They're worded often extremely similarly and it boils down to just repeating the same method you've learned with different numbers.

But every paper usually has one or two questions like this, and my maths teacher would describe them as the questions that separated an A from an A*.

It's encouraging you to think outside the box, approaching the problem from multiple different angles to try and solve it, using the knowledge you've picked up from before.

I can't think of a possible reason why thinking like that isn't extremely useful in the real world.

Just find the area of the circle segment times 4 and subtract that from the area of the circle.

π r^2 - 4 * (π r^2 - sqrt(3) / 4 r^2)

= sqrt(3) r^2 -1/3 π r^2.

or 16 * sqrt(3) - 16/3 π

Unless I made a mistake somewhere in my calculations.

I kinda wish I could use LaTeX here since Flarum kept screwing with my formatting.

↩  erin Once you understand how to do it, it is simple. It is hard to figure out how to do it. Use the instructions I provided in my response for guidance.

↩  hhhzzzsss You are correct. I divided into segments and triangles, your method is practically the same.