I sat a set of GCSE maths questions and here is what I thought

Before I begin sharing my thoughts on the test let me just start by saying maths was never a strong point of mine at school. I am definitely more of a words than number person.

I sat my GCSE maths exam in 2011 and I’ve rarely used maths since then and after sitting the test I would like to keep it that way.

If you can find me someone who enjoys maths then I’d love to meet them because I find no pleasure in solving equations or working out the area of triangle for what purpose?

Anyway, so I sat myself a challenge to sit some typical maths questions that would come up in a GCSE paper to see how much or in this case how little I know.

The questions are split up into different topics such as ratio, fractions, algebra, trigonometery and more and you can select a set of questions from different categories to answer. Without an account you can answer five questions per set of questions and with an account you can answer 10.

Even though the questions are multiple choice I was still having difficulty answering some of them and the answer I was working out in my head wasn’t an answer to choose from. Where was I gong wrong? My workings out were clearly way off.

When it came to working out the areas of 3D shapes I had no idea what I was doing. Was I multiplying and adding the figures, or was I dividing them? Whatever I was doing it was not the right answer.

The world of numbers confuses me more than it should but one thing I will never be able to comprehend is ALGEBRA because to me that is like a foreign, I have no clue what is being asked of me. In all honesty do we really need algebra?

My brain was baffled after a few topics trying to work out how you even work out the answer and with some poor scores I tried some other topics which must have been less complex and more on my wavelength as I managed to score 4/5 and 5/5 in arithmetic and probabilities. I am glad I got something right to boost my confidence.

If this experience has taught me anything is that I’m still as bad at maths as I was in school if not worse and I wouldn’t get by without the calculator on my phone. All I can say is I dread the day my children ask me to help them with their maths homework.

If you’d like to put your knowledge to the test and see how you’d get on with GCSE maths visit www.maths-quiz.co.uk and have a go at the questions.

Will you be a mathematical genius or will you leave with a fuzzy head and a very confused look on your face? Best of luck!

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