Material created by students working with the School of Mathematics, Statistics & Physics E-Learning Unit at Newcastle University over the summer of 2017, to support students making the transition from school to university.

Project activity

Picture of Chris Graham

Chris Graham on Probability of the union of two non-mutually exclusive events 8 years, 4 months ago

Gave some feedback: Has some problems

Picture of Chris Graham

Chris Graham commented on Probability of the union of two non-mutually exclusive events 8 years, 4 months ago

I think that the statement needs re-wording. As it stands, to me, it suggests that the people having "cereal and toast" are in addition to the others. I can't quite put my finger on it, perhaps the presence of "and"? Try this on Aiden and see what he thinks. 

In the advice, "The Venn diagram tells us..." is not required, as you have just created the Venn diagram from the info given. 

Picture of Chris Graham

Chris Graham on Calculating Expected Values given a table of probabilities 8 years, 4 months ago

Gave some feedback: Has some problems

Picture of Chris Graham

Chris Graham commented on Calculating Expected Values given a table of probabilities 8 years, 4 months ago

Can we invert the table so that "Film" and "P(Film)" are columns? Also, the table and everything above it should be the question's statement, with the part beginning "100 people..."

It's a nice straight-forward question, but you could add a little bit to this with an extra column "Genre", ie. action, comedy, sci fi etc. And then ask the student to calculate the expected number going to see a particular genre (of which there is say 2 films). Just make sure that you still have 'nice' numbers if you do this, so that the expected value comes to a whole number.

Picture of Chris Graham

Chris Graham on Calculating expected values using theoretical probability and experimental probability 8 years, 4 months ago

Gave some feedback: Has some problems

Picture of Chris Graham

Chris Graham commented on Calculating expected values using theoretical probability and experimental probability 8 years, 4 months ago

I was told that Alice rolled a die 350 times. I then find the expected number of rolls of a 3 or 5, which is 350/3, and am asked to round to the nearest integer. Why not make the number of rolls a multiple of 3 so that we get a round answer here?

Again in b) you could choose nice numbers. I got 297/350 which has no common factor, but 300/350 would have been lovely, and made part c) much more pleasant.

Picture of Chris Graham

Chris Graham on Identify independent events 8 years, 4 months ago

Gave some feedback: Has some problems

Picture of Chris Graham

Chris Graham commented on Identify independent events 8 years, 4 months ago

This looks good now. Just a couple of small changes to the advice:

  • It doesn't make sense to number the parts of the advice in b), since they are not numbered in the question. Either number them (i),(ii),(iii), or find a different way to format the advice for b).
  • The student does not need to work out the probabilities in order to answer the question, which is assessing their understanding of the concept. I would prefer that you draw your conclusion earlier in the advice for each part (e.g. for the cards, at the point where you state there are now only 51 cards in the deck, and only 3 kings) And then go on after that, with something like. "In fact, we can calculate...".

Aiden McCall on Finding the $n^{\text{th}}$ Term of a Quadratic Sequence 8 years, 4 months ago

Saved a checkpoint:

 The advice in this question is very hard to follow. I have an alternative method and am going to change the advice. In case my method is not preferred or wants to be reverted I have made a checkpoint here.

Elliott Fletcher on Use speed and distance to calculate time 8 years, 4 months ago

Gave some feedback: Needs to be tested

Aiden McCall commented on Find the equation of a line through two points - positive gradient 8 years, 4 months ago

This is also true for all other questions of this nature. 

Aiden McCall on Find the equation of a line through two points - positive gradient 8 years, 4 months ago

Saved a checkpoint:

I have edited the main and advice to make sense and tweaked parts. There is a problem with the question that where you put y = mx +c you can write m in the gap fill and even when restricting the string it shows what m is on the graph so you can effectively 'cheat' this also works in the same way if you type in c. I cannot think of a way to fix this without the JSXgraph code and I don't know where abouts that is.

Aiden McCall on Find the equation of a line through two points - zero gradient 8 years, 4 months ago

Saved a checkpoint:

Edited the advice in this question. The advice is almost identical to the line equation through two points -ve gradient. The changes made were the same as the -ve question basically.

Aiden McCall on Expand brackets and collect like terms 8 years, 4 months ago

Saved a checkpoint:

I can't see anything particularly wrong with this question. 

Aiden McCall on Find the equation of a line through two points - negative gradient 8 years, 4 months ago

Saved a checkpoint:

Edited the wording and equations in main and advice.

Elliott Fletcher on Calculating a simple rate of pay 8 years, 4 months ago

Gave some feedback: Needs to be tested

Elliott Fletcher created Calculating a simple rate of pay 8 years, 4 months ago

Elliott Fletcher on Using compound units: price/weight of sweets 8 years, 4 months ago

Gave some feedback: Needs to be tested