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  Discussion about math, puzzles, games and fun.   Useful symbols: ÷ × ½ √ ∞ ≠ ≤ ≥ ≈ ⇒ ± ∈ Δ θ ∴ ∑ ∫ • π ƒ -¹ ² ³ °

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#1 Re: Maths Is Fun - Suggestions and Comments » Chess » 2017-07-22 21:23:46

Hi MathsIsFun,

I tried playing one game of easy, medium and hard.
I won against easy and medium, but lost against hard.
The game worked fine and produces a challenging skill level.
I did think that with easy and medium the move is played so quickly that
it was hard to see what move had been played sometimes, except that
there is always the text of the game below to look at which tells you what
has been played. Anyway it works very well and produces a good game.

Stephen

#2 Re: Help Me ! » Mandy Jane's Corner » 2017-02-26 07:51:57

Bob has said to me that he is not going to set you up with a course. So if you want do something
relating to maths then just go ahead and do it. On the other hand you may decide that you are
not able to achieve what you want to achieve in maths in which case I should stop.

#3 Re: Help Me ! » Mandy Jane's Corner » 2017-02-26 03:22:33

Hi Mandy. Not sure exactly, but as I have written above, he did not set you up with a maths course.
I am not sure how the functional skills thing works and I think that someone had not got back to
Bob Bundy about something and that he decided not to proceed any more.
I think we had better wait until Bob Bundy is back on the forum.

#4 Re: Help Me ! » Mandy Jane's Corner » 2017-01-12 03:50:06

Okay good idea. Yes I hope it is soon because you two could do with exchanging some messages to make
sure that there has not been a misunderstanding. Bob has been rather busy with other things lately.

EDIT: To Mandy: I understand that Bob Bundy has stopped trying to set up a functional skills course for you.
He has had difficulty with it and also you have gone away from the forum so he has assumed that you have
lost interest. As for whether it is a good idea to do a GCSE maths course it is your life and you have to decide
what is best for you. If it were me I would not try to get a GCSE in maths in your situation because I would
probably think that it would not give me a good thing for the CV because employers seem to be increasingly
wanting to see work experience and extracurricular activities on an applicant's CV. Also you perhaps start
off with good intentions, but at a certain point you give up and lose interest which puts doubt over whether
you could continue for the necessary period of learning to get a GCSE in Maths. Finally you seem not to
have adequate understanding and learning ability in Maths to get a good grade. To be fair a lot of this is
down to dyslexia I should think which is just something you are born with and there is no magic solution
to its' effects.

#5 Re: Help Me ! » Mandy Jane's Corner » 2017-01-12 03:03:17

The point that I was trying to make was that if you have already tried to do those courses and failed to complete
them then there is a danger that you will do the same again. Also since Bob may very well have started off the
process of trying to do the initial stages of setting himself up as a teacher and you as a student
(I am not sure what he has done though so far) you really must not book yourself on any other course.
If you do Bob will be angry about it because he will have to cancel what he has done and will have wasted time on it.

#6 Re: Help Me ! » Mandy Jane's Corner » 2017-01-12 01:50:15

My advice is don't do either of those. Bob is trying to set you up with doing a functional skills course.

#7 Re: Help Me ! » Mandy Jane's Corner » 2017-01-10 23:35:45

Hi Mandy. Sorry about this, but I don't know how you sign up for a functional skills course.
We had better wait until Bob B. comes back onto the forum.
Bob has said that there needs to be a 'teacher' who has registered a 'class' first.

#8 Re: Help Me ! » Mandy Jane's Corner » 2017-01-10 04:32:06

Hi Mandy. What did you think of the functional skills idea ?

#9 Re: Help Me ! » Mandy Jane's Corner » 2017-01-09 04:48:45

This isn't an official maths course. We were both coming up with exercises/questions for you to try that were based upon
a syllabus of an exam board. You will probably find that, apart from minor variations, that it is standard practice for the
topics and sub topics specified to be like that in any GCSE maths exam board syllabus in the UK.
There is a way that you could transfer the questions that we ask on to paper if you have a printer that is compatible
with your laptop computer. You could copy and paste them into Microsoft Word, perhaps increase the font size by
selecting the text and adjusting it, and use the print facility with the software. However if you don't have a printer then
this will not be possible.

#10 Re: Help Me ! » Mandy Jane's Corner » 2017-01-09 02:37:04

Okay Mandy. I will visit the site later today. It looks like you have got some homework to do.

#11 Re: Help Me ! » Mandy Jane's Corner » 2017-01-08 22:55:44

Another exercise for Mandy:

G1A

cDu2GyE.jpg

Above is a four sided polygon. I have sketched in markings which make the interior angles 90 degrees.

So angle DAB, angle ABC, angle BCD and angle CDA are all 90 degrees in size.

Question G1A1: What term beginning with "p" could be used to describe lines AD and BC ?

Question G1A2: What term beginning with "p" could be used to describe lines AD and DC ? (This is not the same as G1A1.)

Question G1A3: Assuming that lines AD and DC are not of equal size, what is the name of this shape ?

Question G1A4: If lines AD, DC, CB and BA were all equal in size what would the name of the shape be
(that is different to the answer to G1A3) ?

#12 Re: Help Me ! » Mandy Jane's Corner » 2017-01-08 21:22:37

If Mandy is happy about starting with Geometry and Measures then 'G1' in the syllabus describes the first thing that she needs to learn.
It says:
"use conventional terms and notation: points, lines, vertices, edges, planes,
parallel lines, perpendicular lines, right angles, polygons, regular polygons
and polygons with reflection and/or rotation symmetries; use the standard
conventions for labelling and referring to the sides and angles of triangles;
draw diagrams from written description"
So the first thing would be to teach Mandy any of that that she does not already know about - probably most of it is new to her.
By the way Mandy:
Parallel lines means lines that they are an equal distance apart at each point.
Perpendicular lines means that the two lines are at 90 degrees to each other.

What Mandy might like to do as an exercise is google search each of those terms and read up on what they mean.
For questions on this perhaps we should have a diagram and then ask Mandy a few questions based on the diagram.

She can also go back to my post from earlier where I said:
"An exercise for you might be to draw a triangle with the points A, B, and C and pick one of the 3 interior angles and write down the notation for the angle chosen.
Also do the same for one of the sides. Try to make it clear on your diagram which angle you are writing the notation for and which line.
If you are able to then I suggest you do an exercise along those lines and produce a picture of it and put it up in a post using Imgur and a link."

#13 Re: Help Me ! » Mandy Jane's Corner » 2017-01-08 07:56:07

I think that Bob's email was to tell you what all of the things were that you had to learn - the syllabus.
To have actual questions to answer is a different matter. There can be a huge range of questions that can be asked for each sub topic.
I am usually capable of thinking of questions on a particular topic, however you might want something that is both professional and official.
I have seen on this website: http://qualifications.pearson.com/en/qu … -2015.html
that there are specimen papers and material. I also know that there are books like "GCSE Maths Complete Revision & Practice with online edition - Foundation"
and "GCSE Maths Workbook - Foundation the Basics"  with answers in "GCSE Maths Foundation Answers (for Workbook) - The Basics".
I could do with knowing what Bob Bundy thinks about this so DO NOT BUY ANYTHING YET.
The books that I have quoted are not very expensive - however we may not be able to discuss those specific questions online.
A better thing might be for myself and Bob to make up questions based on the syllabus and get you to try and answer them.
If we have made up the questions ourselves then we can discuss them freely. I am not sure about ones from a book !!

#14 Re: Help Me ! » Mandy Jane's Corner » 2017-01-08 01:21:18

Okay. I will check the forum later today. Bye for now.

#15 Re: Help Me ! » Mandy Jane's Corner » 2017-01-07 23:07:37

I am going to work through an example and give a report of each step that I take. I have used GeoGebra to make the picture.

(1) First I have installed GeoGebra from https://www.geogebra.org/download (Windows option) and run it and selected 'Geometry' from the list of options.
[Of course if you are doing this on pen and paper then you just need to make the drawing take a photo of it and load the
photo on to your computer. Skip past step 1 if you are doing it this way and go ahead and photograph and load in your picture.]
I have then selected from the tool bar at the top five icons along the "polygon" option which has an icon of a triangle.
I have selected 3 points using the mouse, ending with selecting the first point to tell it that I want a 3 sided polygon.
I have then right clicked on the mouse and selected 'show label' for each point/vertex.
I have taken a "print screen" using the prt sc key in the top right of the keyboard.
I have loaded up "Paint" from the windows accessories, and selected "paste", then cropped the image using "select" and "crop"
so that only the bit needed is chosen.
I have saved (Save As) the picture as a JPEG.

(2) Having got a picture in a suitable format saved on the hard disk somewhere such as in a "documents" area on the computer
I will go to http://imgur.com/ and 'Sign In' using my username/email address and password. I am assuming that you have an account.

(3) From the menu at the top right of the screen I have selected "images" then selected the button "Add Image", and then gone to
the documents place on the hard disk and selected the saved picture file.

(4) I have then selected my new picture.

(5) I have selected "Copy" from "BB Code". (This is the second last option on the right of the screen after selecting the picture.)

(6) In the Math Is Fun Forum post logged in,  I then paste in the image link text using "ctrl" and "V" on the keyboard or paste from the right click menu.

The result is this:

Here is the code with [ replaced by open square bracket and ] replaced with closed square bracket.

open square bracket img closed square bracket http://i.imgur.com/shOaCNH.jpg open square bracket /img closed square bracket

Here is the finished image of a triangle:

shOaCNH.jpg

#16 Re: Help Me ! » Mandy Jane's Corner » 2017-01-07 02:51:19

Hi Mandy. I presume that you know what a point is because that really is just a dot in a particular place. Often co-ordinates are used to specify a point.
For example (3,4) might be a point meaning 3 units across (to the right) from the origin (0,0) and 4 units vertically upwards.
A straight line is another fairly self explanatory concept which is a line connecting two points.
What about vertices? A vertex is a point where two lines meet.
'Vertex' is the singular form and 'vertices' is the plural form (for more than one vertex).
I should think that you know what an edge is.
It is used usually to mean either all or part of the outer lines or line of a 2 dimensional shape often referring to a line that connects two vertices.
In 3 dimensions an edge is the line where two planes meet, or once again the line that connects two vertices of a solid polyhedron.
A polyhedron is a solid object with a certain number of faces and where each face has several edges.
A polygon is a 2 dimensional shape made up of a number of edges.
It must be a closed shape, in that if you start at one of the vertices and trace around all of the edges you must get back to where you started.
All of the edges are straight lines and there must be a finite number of them.
A regular polygon is a polygon in which all of the edges are of equal length and all interior angles at the vertices are equal.
A 3 sided regular polygon is a equilateral triangle in which each angle is 60 degrees. All of the edges are the same length.
A 4 sided regular polygon is a square - it has 4 interior angles of 90 degrees, and all of the sides are the same length.
Let us suppose that you have a triangle and the points of the vertices are labelled A, B and C. The 3 vertices are simply A, B and C.
Angles would be written so that you have an angle sign which is two lines meeting at a point with the point on the left,
one horizontal line to the right and one line diagonally up and to the right followed by three letters with the MIDDLE letter
referring to the vertex of the angle and the other two letters would be the two edges that go away from the middle lettered
vertex to form the start and finish of the angle.
For instance the interior angle of vertex A would be angle CAB or angle BAC.
I cannot create the character for the angle (although some Latex might help) so I will write "angle" for this instead.
A line would be either AB, BC, CA, BA, CB, or AC. For most uses the order of the two letters does not matter with lines unless direction needs to be shown.
I remember that when I was doing GCSE maths an arrow would be put above the two letters, but we could just write "line AB" an so on.
An exercise for you might be to draw a triangle with the points A, B, and C and pick one of the 3 interior angles and write down the notation for the angle chosen.
Also do the same for one of the sides. Try to make it clear on your diagram which angle you are writing the notation for and which line.
If you are able to then I suggest you do an exercise along those lines and produce a picture of it and put it up in a post using Imgur and a link.
(If you have forgotten how to produce and display a picture then let us know which bit you are stuck on.)

#17 Re: Help Me ! » Mandy Jane's Corner » 2017-01-06 03:42:29

I suggest that you look back to post 1877 where Bob says
"use conventional terms and notation: points, lines, vertices, edges, planes,
parallel lines, perpendicular lines, right angles, polygons, regular polygons
and polygons with reflection and/or rotation symmetries"

Which of these terms do you understand already and which don't you understand? We can discuss the ones that you don't know.

#18 Re: Help Me ! » Mandy Jane's Corner » 2017-01-06 00:46:50

Hi Mandy. Yes I am here. I can help with some topics. If it requires a lot of diagrams I will have to remind myself how to do them because
it is a long time since I have done that sort of thing. I will have to download GeoGebra (or whatever) and I think there is a website where
you can post an item and put in here a link to it. I suggest that you make sure you don't spend too long on the topics: if there are 94 of
them then you really should stick to 5 days on each one.

#19 Re: Help Me ! » Area and Volume of Prisms and Pyramids » 2015-10-20 20:46:41

Yes I agree with you Bob, you get two different results for the length of GD so the information is over-constrained.

#21 Re: Help Me ! » Mandy Jane's Corner » 2015-07-20 00:24:34

Hi Mandy it's nice to hear from you.

Edit: One of the problems with you learning maths at a serious level is that you often stop suddenly.
You will probably find that you forget quite a lot of what you learn if you stop for a long time.
I recommend that you re-read post 1853 and attempt the exercise and also attempt the exercise
further down this page. You are welcome to return and do some more maths on this thread.
Regarding the daily diary idea that you had, there is no need to make it every day,
but perhaps every so often you should give us a bit of feedback including what you are stuck on,
your attempt to any exercises that we have set, and any thoughts on how easy
or difficult you are finding the exercises.
You can also start off a discussion which might lead to you getting a better understanding
of the maths that you are trying to do.

I could continue to give you exercises on various topics and discuss any areas where you are having difficulty.

A few thoughts on what topics to do are:
(1) Finish off graphs and point plotting
(2) Do some work on arithmetic involving negative numbers
(3) Powers and indices (squares, cubes, 4th powers etc)
(4) Approximations and rounding
(5) Prime numbers, factors and fractions

Obviously there are many other topics that you would have to do for GCSE maths.

#22 Re: Puzzles and Games » Mate in three? » 2015-03-23 04:10:16

That variation results in Qxa4+

as in:
1. Qb5    Rxc5
2. Qd7+  Kc4
3. Qxa4+ (checkmate)

#23 Re: Puzzles and Games » Mate in three? » 2015-03-23 03:09:53

If you mean T to mean the rook takes c5 then:

1. Qb5   Rxc5
2. Qd7+ Kxe5
3. Ng4+ (checkmate)

Or if you mean the knight takes c5 then:

1. Qb5  Nxc5
2. Ng4  c1=Q
3. e3+  (checkmate)

#24 Re: Puzzles and Games » Mate in three? » 2015-03-23 00:02:11

I couldn't have solved it myself, but my chess computer can mate in 3 against any defence.
It gives the main line as:
1. Qb5  d1-Q
2. Nxb3  axb3
3. Qd5+ (checkmate)

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