Error
There was an error loading the page.
Eight expressions, of increasing complexity. The student must simplify them by expanding brackets and collecting like terms.
Metadata
-
England schools
-
England university
-
Scotland schools
Taxonomy: mathcentre
Taxonomy: Kind of activity
Taxonomy: Context
Contributors
Feedback
From users who are members of Transition to university :
![]() |
said | Ready to use | 7 years, 7 months ago |
![]() |
said | Needs to be tested | 7 years, 8 months ago |
Hannah Aldous | said | Has some problems | 7 years, 9 months ago |
![]() |
said | Has some problems | 7 years, 9 months ago |
History
Christian Lawson-Perfect 5 years, 10 months ago
Saved a checkpoint:
Replaced javascript with pattern restrictions in every part
Christian Lawson-Perfect 7 years, 5 months ago
Saved a checkpoint:
I've fixed part h - I was missing a plus-or-minus in the matching pattern.
J. Richard Snape commented 7 years, 5 months ago
Thanks for this fantastic question set in "Transition to University". I'm trialling using them in my teaching this year. I have a tiny problem with part h in this question - for some reason when I use it when a student enters a correct answer it marks it wrong, giving feedback that it can be further simplified. I attach a screenshot - not sure what rule is triggering this as even the 419 constant is prime, so I can't see any further gathering of terms possible. I'll try to debug myself, but any help would be appreciated :) It seems to be using "all" for simplification in the marking, but so are other parts in this question that work fine.
Christian Lawson-Perfect 7 years, 7 months ago
Gave some feedback: Ready to use
Christian Lawson-Perfect 7 years, 7 months ago
Saved a checkpoint:
I've set expected variable names for the parts with more than one variable.
Elliott Fletcher 7 years, 8 months ago
Published this.Aiden McCall 7 years, 8 months ago
Saved a checkpoint:
I can't see anything particularly wrong with this question.
Bradley Bush 7 years, 8 months ago
Gave some feedback: Needs to be tested
Christian Lawson-Perfect 7 years, 8 months ago
Saved a checkpoint:
The string restrictions aren't doing a great job here. I don't think you should require the asterisk.
Talk to Elliott about adding pattern matching.
This should be two questions - a question with each of the items from part a as a separate part, and part b on its own.
Christian Lawson-Perfect 7 years, 8 months ago
Gave some feedback: Has some problems
Bradley Bush commented 7 years, 8 months ago
Thank you for the feedback and s0rry for the typing errors. Changing the marking order was very difficult but has been done using either string restrictions or marking scripts. Thank you for the advice for the wording of wuestions, I need to get more concise with the way I word things. I am glad you liked it.
Lauren Richards commented 7 years, 8 months ago
- MAIN PARTS
- Typo in the statement - "bellow" instead of "below".
- Part v) gave me "1ab" as one of the terms. Maybe make sure the 1 cancels.
- I think part b) sounds a little complicated when it is your friend. I suggest you make it yourself or a specific person, eg. Jim. "Jim has a fondness of handmade sweets and is trying to work out the amount of money he has spent on them in one week. He eats [blah] lollipops, [blah] toffees and [blah] jelly sweets. Lollipops cost [blah], toffees are £1 more expensive than lollipops and jelly sweets are half the price of toffees."
- Make sure all your i), ii)... are in italic in both the main question and the advice.
- i) in part b) - "it's" should be "its" and "simplist" should be "simplest". I also think you should specify not to have brackets in your answer.
- ii) in part b) - I think you should just say "If the cost of a lollipop was [blah], calculate Jim's total expenditure on sweets for the week." I also think you should put a pound sign before the gap fill as the units are pounds.
- Issue with numbas not acccepting answers as terms are in a different order to that which it is expecting. Maybe in the question, specify which order to put the terms to avoid this happening.
- ADVICE
- In parts vi), vii) and viii), I think I would add a line expanding out the brackets to make it more clear.
- I think the advice for b)i) could be more helpful rather than just telling them to read carefully! Explain how (x+1) means toffees are £1 more expensive etc.
- Part b)ii), I think you could write "Using the equation we had devised from part b)i), we can substitute the price of lollipops, x=2, to calculate Jim's total expenditure."
- Good question, I like it!
Bradley Bush 7 years, 9 months ago
Gave some feedback: Needs to be tested
Bradley Bush commented 7 years, 9 months ago
Thank you for the feedback, I agree about the "*" requirement so I've removed that from the answer. I fixed the typos and the latex errors, added some gaps, reworded part b and changed the text layout.
Hannah Aldous commented 7 years, 9 months ago
all of your part a answers require * using in the answers, however some parts of v don't. Not sure I would require * for the answers.
part b i) typo "tofffee",
make sure x and £ in the question is written in LaTeX,
you need to place gaps in before and after the = for both i and ii,
the question for part i seems a bit clunky and long maybe split it after algerbraic expression and start the next sentence as 'write the answer in...'
in b ii) maybe write '...calculate total cost..'
in the advice part a make sure x^2 and x are in LaTeX
also you've written x^2+x=x^2+2?
in part b i you've centred and aligned part of your text with the equations
for ii use \times instead of *
Hannah Aldous 7 years, 9 months ago
Gave some feedback: Has some problems
Bradley Bush 7 years, 9 months ago
Gave some feedback: Needs to be tested
Chris Graham commented 7 years, 9 months ago
typo: "algerbraic". Re-consider part b)
Chris Graham 7 years, 9 months ago
Gave some feedback: Has some problems
Bradley Bush commented 7 years, 9 months ago
Thank you for the feedback!
The 'doesn't work' was something Christian set when he came over and the changes we had made to the editor weren't being reflected in the test runs. I have made the statement more direct, added some string restrictions, changed the advice errors and the part b advice.However, for the part b) question I wanted to test the ability of the student to turn the text they are reading into equations which can then be manipulated as a higher level skill to round off the question, but I would like to hear any further opinion you have on this.
Bradley Bush 7 years, 9 months ago
Gave some feedback: Needs to be tested
Chris Graham commented 7 years, 9 months ago
I've changed the Doesn't Work status as it seems to run OK. What was the problem?
The statement is currently more of a description of the question, rather than instructions for the student. "For each of the expressions below, collect terms..." would be more direct.
In part b) you can use the string restrictions tab to set the expected variables and warn the student if they use anything other than those.
The prompt in b) starts quite abruptly with "One bag...". Why not say e.g. "Brad has two bags of tokens. The first bag contains..." I think I would move the bag contents to two lists, which is easier for the student to work with.
In the advice you have some small errors e.g. 7z(=, and you could make use of the align environment. Similarly with part (b).
In the final part of the advice I would give an expression for each bag first, in terms of r,b,y and then put the two together.
Chris Graham 7 years, 9 months ago
Gave some feedback: Has some problems
Bradley Bush commented 7 years, 9 months ago
The error in the marking of the first question seems to have fixed itself.
Bradley Bush 7 years, 9 months ago
Gave some feedback: Doesn't work
Bradley Bush 7 years, 9 months ago
Gave some feedback: Doesn't work
Bradley Bush 7 years, 9 months ago
Created this.There are 86 other versions that do you not have access to.
Name | Type | Generated Value |
---|
a1 | integer |
6
|
||||
b1 | integer |
9
|
||||
c1 | integer |
10
|
Name | Type | Generated Value |
---|
a | list |
[ 5, 7, 12, 7, 9 ]
|
||||
b | list |
[ 6, 5, 3, 4, 3 ]
|
||||
c | list |
[ 8, 7, 4, 8, 10 ]
|
||||
d | list |
[ 26, 16, 30, 27, 22, 19 ]
|
||||
f | list |
[ 5, 9, 16, 3, 7, 17, 4 ]
|
||||
g | list |
[ 9, 2, 6, 7, 3, 13, 14 ]
|
||||
h | list |
[ 13, 15, 14, 12, 7, 8, 18 ]
|
||||
j | list |
List of 9 items
|
Name | Type | Generated Value |
---|
Generated value: integer
- b1
This variable doesn't seem to be used anywhere.
Parts
Use this tab to check that this question works as expected.
Part | Test | Passed? |
---|---|---|
Gap-fill | ||
Hasn't run yet | ||
Mathematical expression | ||
Hasn't run yet | ||
Gap-fill | ||
Hasn't run yet | ||
Mathematical expression | ||
Hasn't run yet | ||
Gap-fill | ||
Hasn't run yet | ||
Mathematical expression | ||
Hasn't run yet | ||
Gap-fill | ||
Hasn't run yet | ||
Mathematical expression | ||
Hasn't run yet | ||
Gap-fill | ||
Hasn't run yet | ||
Mathematical expression | ||
Hasn't run yet | ||
Gap-fill | ||
Hasn't run yet | ||
Mathematical expression | ||
Hasn't run yet | ||
Gap-fill | ||
Hasn't run yet | ||
Mathematical expression | ||
Hasn't run yet | ||
Gap-fill | ||
Hasn't run yet | ||
Mathematical expression | ||
Hasn't run yet |
This question is used in the following exams:
- Algebra and functions by Elliott Fletcher in Elliott's workspace.
- Malcolm's copy of Algebra and functions by Malcolm Roberts in Malcolm's workspace.
- Algebraic manipulation by Christian Lawson-Perfect in Transition to university.
- MATH6057 Tutorial 2 by Julie Crowley in MATH6057.
- P1 - Algebra & Functions by Rob Beckett in Rob's workspace.
- Nick's copy of Algebraic manipulation by Nick Walker in Nick's workspace.
- Algebra by Samantha Konig in Samantha's workspace.
- Algebraic manipulation [L1] by Matthew James Sykes in CHY1205.
- NUMBAS - Algebraic manipulation by Katy Dobson in Katy's workspace.
- Initial maths test by J. Richard Snape in J. Richard's workspace.
- Simplifying and manipulating algebra by Jo-Ann Lyons in Jo-Ann's workspace.
- Year 10 Practice Exam 1 by Neil Anderson in Neil's workspace.
- test by Fady Ghanem in Fady's workspace.
- Ryan's copy of Algebra and functions by Ryan Poling in Ryan's workspace.
- Numbas Lab by Katie Bullen in Katie's workspace.
- Test 1 by Patricia Cogan in Patricia's workspace.
- Fundamentals of Algebra by Simon Thomas in Maths support.
- Algebra by Alan Levine in Mathtest Questions.
- Algebraic manipulation by Guillermo Bernardo DURÁN GONZÁLEZ in Numbas N° 7.
- Algebra varias preguntas con ejercicios by Guillermo Bernardo DURÁN GONZÁLEZ in Numbas N° 7.
- Kwame's copy of Malcolm's copy of Algebra and functions by Kwame D Dwamena in Kwame D's workspace.
- Preliminary Mathematics Advanced Assessment Task 1 by Joanna Rankins in Joanna's workspace.
- Preliminary Advanced Mathematics Assessment Task by Joanna Rankins in Joanna's workspace.
- ALG Operaciones algebraicas by David Vanegas in Exámenes.
- test exam algebra by Jose Camarena Brenes in Jose's workspace.
- ibrahim's copy of Algebraic manipulation by ibrahim khatib in KS3.
- MEM23004A by Mykola Kyrylenko in Mykola's workspace.
- Week 2 by Anne Crowley in Anne's workspace.
- algebraQuestions by Ed Southwood in Ed's workspace.
- alge by Ed Southwood in Ed's workspace.
- Agnieszka's copy of Algebraic manipulation [L1] by Agnieszka Kulacka in Agnieszka's workspace.
- MATH6057 Tutorial 2 (2021 by Vincent Cregan in Vincent's workspace.
- Edina's copy of Algebraic manipulation Exam Qs by Edina Kurdi in Edina's workspace.
- International Summer School: Basic algebra by Lee Fawcett in Lee's workspace.
- International Summer School: Basic algebra by Lee Fawcett in MSP International Summer School.
- Algebraic Manipulation by Anna Cartlidge in Glasgow Numbas Question Pool.
- claire's copy of Algebraic manipulation by claire lines in claire's workspace.
- Maths 1A Week 1 Homework by Maria Aneiros in Maria's workspace.
- Felix's copy of Algebraic manipulation by Felix Lenders in Felix's workspace.
- Algebra II by Chris Templet in Chris's workspace.
- David's copy of Malcolm's copy of Algebra and functions by David Elliott-Button in David's workspace.
- Algebraic manipulation by George Witty in Preparing for MTH at UEA.
- Summer Quiz 1 by Kate Vincent in Kate's workspace.
- Math Diagnostic - Sep 26 by Math Center in MYP4 Math.
- Week 1 Diagnostic test by Anne-Sophie Kaloghiros in MA1630 - Fundamentals of Mathematics 2024-2025.
- Jan's copy of Algebraic manipulation [L1] by Jan Hansen in IPC Hobart.
- EGD105_PST1 by Matt Falk in Matt's workspace.
- Johan's copy of Math Diagnostic - Sep 26 by Johan Maertens in Johan's workspace.