Test your GCSE knowledge

[alicat]

6 - always been in two minds about binary numbers.

The rest were so easy - we aren't stretching our 16 year olds enough.

 

[mark st1]

3/7 still thick as shoot 20 years after leaving school

 

[Spinney]

6 - always been in two minds about binary numbers.

There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those that understand binary and those that don't.*



*sorry - an old one, but I couldn't resist

 

[Profpointy]

7 Easy-peasy.

Easy enough the quiz questions, but presumably you still have to write the essay on Palmerston, or compare and contrast Tybalt and Mercutio, or in maths, do a proof of something?

 

[Starchivore]

6 - always been in two minds about binary numbers.

The rest were so easy - we aren't stretching our 16 year olds enough.

It isn't really representative at all. You have to do lots of essays and whatnot, speaking assessments for French, etc.

 

[BrumJim]

4/7. Didn't get the Classics question, as I went to State school.

 

[nickyboy]

6 - always been in two minds about binary numbers.

The rest were so easy - we aren't stretching our 16 year olds enough.

Have to disagree. 16 yr old just completed his GCSEs. He would ask me for help on the trickier GCSE Maths which I did to A level. Some questions were too hard for me. I hate to think what Further Maths GCSE is like. The level of sophistication of analysis of, for example, 20th century history was surprising too.

I got 7/7...but the Greek Mythology was a total guess. I didn't go to the type of school that did Classics

 

[srw]

7/7

7. The binary one could only be an even number, as there's a 0 as the last digit, so no need to calculate the rest of it.

I was just about to add 128 to something else in my head to get the answer when I spotted that obvious giveaway.

How did people know the classics one? Is it common knowledge? I got that and the ICT ones wrong.

It's not a classics question, although I did read Aeneid book 4 for A level. It might be a music question - I'm sure I studied the Purcell opera at some stage for O-level; Dido's lament "when I am laid" is a canonical example of a ground bass, as well as being a smutty joke.

(No prizes for guessing what teenagers turn "Dido and Aeneas" into...)

 

[Tenacious Sloth]

6 my greek mythology is rubbish

Same.

 

[jefmcg]

I used to get to sleep by counting binary, but I too used the last zero to guess the answer. In an actual exam, I would work out the entire number to be sure.

When I used to do multiple choice exams, I used to always work out the answer first, before looking at the options. And then if I had time, I would work out what errors each other answer was trying to catch. In physics, at least, the wrong answers were not random, but were the answer you would get if made predictable mistake (ie used the wrong formula, or forgot to convert km to metres). This approach didn't help me with the mythology one, and "Hecuba, I've heard of her. Hamlet talks about her" didn't help me

 

[Profpointy]

7/7

I was just about to add 128 to something else in my head to get the answer when I spotted that obvious giveaway.



It's not a classics question, although I did read Aeneid book 4 for A level. It might be a music question - I'm sure I studied the Purcell opera at some stage for O-level; Dido's lament "when I am laid" is a canonical example of a ground bass, as well as being a smutty joke.

(No prizes for guessing what teenagers turn "Dido and Aeneas" into...)

OT now, but there was a hoo-ha about the core "classical" music syllabus having a start date after the true greats of earlyish British music - so no Purcell, Tallis, Byrd, then a modern cut-off to miss out Vaughan-Williams, Britten etc leaving essentially no top name British composers eligible for study. Ironically this was the same lot with their "traditional" approach that was pushing "britishness" (really Englishness) as central to any study of histtory.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Boo 6/7
Did the Aeneid at school for my Latin O level. Got a C.

 

[glasgowcyclist]

In that case you should donate half your point to me, as I guessed too but without luck? That'd get me up to 5.5

You can have the whole point then we'll both be on 6, win - win.

GC

 

[jefmcg]

pah! UK exams are easy. In Australia you have to describe the role that BattleTech Marauder robots had on the storming of the Winter Palace.

 

[Starchivore]

You can have the whole point then we'll both be on 6, win - win.

GC

You sir are a gentleman, but I couldn't possibly. I will be more than happy with 5.5