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Apr 132020
 

This quiz has been doing the rounds on social media. Apologies to the author, but I can’t credit you as I don’t know who you are!

A very common mistake in maths exams is to forget to label the axes of a graph. Here are 10 graphs without labels on the y axis. Can you use your skill and judjement to work out what they should be? Click on the graph to enlarge it.

Jun 212017
 

mapThe Sheaf Valley Maths Trail is a short walk starting outside Sheffield City College on Granville Road, along the footpath to Sheffield Station and the steel blade sculpture, behind the station to the steel steps and the amphitheatre, up the hill to the Cholera Monument and then back to college via Clay Wood. Along the way you will answer questions on many different aspects of mathematics. It is suitable for school groups, college students studying Functional Skills, home schoolers and their parents or anyone who would like to have a go!

Download the student booklet here. It is best printed as a booklet.

amphitheatrescaledThere are also a teachers booklet and a powerpoint which I will send to you on request. Email graham@mathswithgraham.org.uk to request these. Please let me know who you are planning to use it with.

Topics touched on on the trail include

Number

Counting

Multiplication

Fractions

Time calculations

Reading a timetable

Calculating journey cost

Speed Distance Time calculations

Shape and Space

Measuring length

Estimating length and weight

Symmetry (Line and Rotational)

3 dimensional shape

Angles

Circle calculations

Volume of a cuboid

Area of irregular shapes

Data Handling

Averages

monument

 

Feel free to adapt the trail by missing out some questions and adding others to make it suitable for your students/pupils.

Split your group into teams of 3 or 4 people. Make sure less able students are paired with more able students. Each team will need a DIY tape measure, a large ball of string, a large protractor, a pencil and a calculator. You need to work out the logistics of ensuring there is someone to help at the various stopping points.

Tell your students to stay together, look after each other and take extra care when crossing roads. If this is a school/college outing you will need to fill in a risk assessment.

 

 

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Penrose Triangle sheffcol_logo

 

Nov 082015
 

This exercise involves reading and analysing data from charts, calculating averages and percentages and estimating length. It will also help you with the Driving Theory Test and hopefully help you to stay safe when you are driving.
There is an interactive version here and a worksheet version here.
stoppingdistanceswithoutcarlengthsscaled

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can download the answers here

Aug 032015
 

Here are the highlights of the 2015 Mens Final.

Can you use your skills to answer the questions? They range from easy Entry Level to GCSE questions involving data handling,  time, distance, speed and Pythagoras. There is a Scale Drawing task that is very good practice for Level 1 students.

The interactive version is here and the worksheet version is here.

wimbledon2015final

Jul 142015
 

Amey Streets Ahead photo from http://www.amey.co.uk/media/press-releases/2012/april/amey-announced-preferred-bidder-for-2-billion-sheffield-highways-contract/ (with permission)In this exercise you will need to read the information from an Amey press release about the massive Streets Ahead contract. You will then use your skills to answer the questions. You can download a worksheet or use the interactive version here.

Jul 032015
 

Can you correctly answer the questions about this graph?

healthandsafetystatisticsTry the interactive quiz or the worksheet.

There are two extra questions on the worksheet which are also below.

This table shows the number of fatal injuries by industry in 2014/15.
fatalitiesbyindustry

  • Draw a suitable chart to display this data.
  • Write two interesting facts that the graph shows.

 

May 212015
 

Fed up with your GCSE revision? Try these new quizzes. You’ll find lots of different topics. Beware, they are designed to catch you out! The authors have thought carefully about the mistakes you are likely to make. So when you get to the end of a quiz look carefully at the mistakes you have made and make sure you understand where you went wrong.

premiummathsquizzes

May 192015
 

In May 2015 the United Kingdom went to the polls. A Conservative Government was elected. The UK uses the “first past the post” electoral system. The country is divided into 650 constituencies. The candidate with the most votes from each constituency is elected.

housesofparliamentMost other countries in Europe use various forms of proportional representation. This means that the number of MP’s for each party would be proportional to the number of votes that were cast for them. (There are many different forms of PR, but in this exercise, to keep it simple we are going to work out the number of MPs by dividing the vote for each party by the total vote and then multiplying by 650, which is the total number of MP’s in the House of Commons. )

First fill in the missing numbers in this table. You will need a calculator. Remember that to round to two decimal places you need to look at the 3rd decimal place. If this is 5 or more round the 2nd decimal place up. If it is less than 5 then ignore it. eg 34.349239=34.35 to 2dp. 2.983432909=2.98 to 2 dp.

If you got the first exercise correct I want you to illustrate your results with two pie charts. Use this table to work out the degrees for each party. You can draw them in excel or with a protractor and pencil.

If you would rather do this exercise using a worksheet download here.