EDitorial ± 2-May-2006

Do The Math

I loved maths at school. I was that kid. It was blissfully second nature for me. Mental maths, marvellous. Though I remember struggling with the concept of splitting a shape in two and the two bits not necessarily being halves, if that makes sense.

So it was flattering to be asked by a friend to act as maths tutor to both her and her eldest in readiness for the latter's impending SATs. The last four Tuesday evenings, 6 'til 7pm, we've been covering fractions, decimals, percentages, subtractions, et cetera. Yum.

If that sounds like your idea of fun, here's the homework that I devised for mother and daughter tonight:

  1. 60327 – 5037
  2. 30% of £540
  3. 80% of £720
  4. for this equilateral triangle, what is angle x?
  5. for this isosceles triangle, if bottom left angle is 50 degrees, what is angle x?
  6. for this right-angled triangle, if top right angle is 20 degrees, what is angle x?
  7. list the factors of 80 (e.g. 1, 2, 4, etc.)
  8. express 0.6 as a fraction
  9. simplify the fraction 48/64
  10. 1.02 – 0.7
First person to email correct answers gets a mention. And do show your working.