Most of us account [dyswidt?] math-anxiety an unfortunate outcome for any system of education. Some adults struggle making change from £5, or sawing a 8ft = 2400mm 4x2 into three equal parts. When I was in school, we were just moving out of rote-learning our times-tables and grinding through obviously artificial 'problems' that filled the pages of Pendlebury's New School Arithmetic [my edition is 1924]. Didn't make me no differ, I was 'good at maths' and institutionalized biddable, so the medium of teaching was largely irrelevant. I remember wetting myself when I cracked a code that was printed on the cover of the SMP text-book series that was the basis of math-ed at my school. But I gotta admit that teaching math there-and-then didn't light any fires. It wasn't FUN.
Gdau.I is in secondary school in England and "good at school" like me, and quite competitive: unlike me. With encouragement from her teachers, she signed up for an extra-curricular math jam called Kangaroo Math run by The UK Maths Trust, "the leading charity that advances the education of young people in maths". The programme is derived from Kangourou sans Frontières which in turn owes a debt to a programme started in Australia by Peter O’Holloran and Peter Taylor in 1978: hence the Kangaroo label. Gdau.I's parent shared a link to Past Papers [2015-2026] from the UKMT scheme: grey kangaroo is for younger kids while pink kangaroo is aimed at "A" Level = last two years of secondary school. As I say above, I was great at the tricks to get good marks in tests [incl "A" Level] for The Calculus and other advanced math stuff.
Kangaroo is attempting, like so many school-math reforms, to go beyond instilling basic numeracy in the populace. They are hoping to bring more kids over the threshold into math can be diverting and intrinsically interesting and maybe even inspiring; rather than a merely functional, doubtfully useful, skill. As the least competitive person I know, I could wish this was achieved without pitting children against each other. Because if there are winners, there are losers and that gives people's self-esteem a biff.
But, out of solidarity with the young herself, I've been plugging away at some grey kanga past papers . . . as an alternative to sudoku, like. The set-up is for each paper to have 25 multiple choice questions: starting easy and getting harder. It's good fun (for the likes of me) and I can, with furrowed brows, motor through Q1-Q15. Beyond that, I have to mobilise a pencil&paper. But, because it's recreational, I give up on the last tuthree [difficult for 15 y.o.s] Qs because my life doesn't depend on getting 100%.
2016 Q12 Two kangaroos Bo and Ing start to jump at the same time, from the same point, in the same direction. After that, they each make one jump per second. Each of Bo's jumps is 6 m in length. Ing's first jump is 1 m in length, his second is 2 m, his third is 3 m, and so on. After how many jumps does Ing catch Bo?
2019 Q9 In the diagram, PQ = PR = QS and ∠QPR = 20◦. What is ∠RQS?
Possible answers A [50°] B [60°] C [65°] D [70°] E [75°]
Don't know about you, but these Qs seem a bit more fun than Pendlebury's equivalent 100 years ago:
99. A ship 600 miles from shore springs a leak which admits 6 tons of water in 20 minutes. 60 tons of water would suffice to sink her but pumps can throw out 70 tons in 4 hours. Find her average rate of sailing that she may reach shore just as she begins to sink
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