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#EdexcelMaths

#EdexcelMaths

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Updated Sep 07, 2016 at 03:06PM EDT by Brad.

Added Jun 09, 2015 at 01:14PM EDT by Don.

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About

#EdexcelMaths is a Twitter hashtag associated with various jokes and complaints regarding a perplexing statistics problem known as “Hannah’s sweets" which appeared in the United Kingdom’s General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) Math exam distributed by the Edexcel exam board in June 2015.

Origin

On June 4th, 2015, Twitter user @bethdedwards_[3] posted a tweet in anticipation of taking the GCSE Math exam[1] later that morning, including an image macro of an elderly man talking to a doctor in a hospital bed accompanied by the hashtag #EdexcelMaths (shown below).


no do u think ur honna make it Beth @bethdedwards Follow #Edexce!Maths today: 2:30 AM- 4 Jun 2015 わ 42 161 ★265

The exam included a math problem for determining the probability of taking two orange sweets from a bag, which was subsequently referred to as "Hannah's sweets" (shown below).


19 There are n sweets in a bag. 6 of the sweets are orange. The rest of the sweets are yellow. Hannah takes at random a sweet from the bag. She eats the sweet. Hannah then takes at random another sweet from the bag. She eats the sweet. The probability that Hannah eats two orange sweets is (a) Show that r-n-90=0

Spread

That morning, many United Kingdom-based students began complaining about the exam's difficulty and mocking the Hannah's sweets question on Twitter, accompanied by the hashtag #EdexcelMaths.[4]


な 塩Follow brittany @tehvaccines I'm going to stab myself in the eye with all of those pencils john bought for the conference #edexcelmaths わ ★ RETWEETS FAVORITES 1,607 1710 6:06 AM - 4 Jun 2015 Follow @nxjibah who feels personally victimised by Hannah #Edexce!Maths RETWEETS FAVORITES 1,353 1,545 9:40 AM-4 Jun 2015

The same day, a petition requesting that Edexel "reduce grade boundaries significantly" was submitted to Change.org[2] (shown below, left). On June 5th, Twitter user @themaine4_ever[5] posted a photograph of the "Hannah's sweets" solution written on a piece of notebook paper (shown below, right).


Petitioning LOWER THE EDEXEL MATHS GRADE BOUNDARIES I hereby request Edexel to reduce their grade boundaries significantly. Bella Edward United Kingdom EDUCATION > Sign this petition Students vent their frustration at Edexcel GCSE maths exam 151 supporters 49 needed to reach 20 First name Last name Email United States Firstly,let me tell you why this is important: thousands of young people who sat the exam today found the paper disastrously hard and especially unfair considering how reasonable papers were during the previous years. This isn't due to lack of effort but due to the extent of sheer difficulty in the paper. Fair enough, the first half was alright however there on it goes quite downhill proving impossible even for the most able students. On a personal note, this is affecting our ability to focus on our other exams due to the thought of how atrociously the Maths paper went Street address Zip code I'm signing because (optional) C) f Share with Facebook friends Sign Maya ★ ☆40 @themaine4一ever Follow #EdexcelMaths To all the idiots crying over the Hannah's sweets question, maybe y'all should have stopped panicking Lo RETWEETS FAVORITES 85

News Media Coverage

In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the Twitter hashtag, including Metro,[6] BuzzFeed,[7] The Huffington Post,[8] Gizmodo,[9] BBC,[10] Telegraph[11] and The Guardian.[12]

Search Interest

External References

[1] Pearson – GCSE Mathematics

[2] Change.org – I hereby request Edexel to reduce their grade boundaries significantly

[3] Twitter – @bethdedwards_

[4] Twitter – #EdexcelMaths

[5] Twitter – @themaine4_ever

[6] Metro – #EdExcelMaths is an incredibly confusing hashtag

[7] BuzzFeed – Teens Have Turned Their Awful GCSE Maths Exam Into A Hilarious Meme

[8] The Huffington Post – GCSE Students Are So Traumatised By Their Edexcel Maths Exam, They Got It Trending On Twitter

[9] Gizmodo – Could YOU Answer Today's Edexcel GCSE Maths Questions?

[10] BBC – Tricky GCSE maths exam sees pupils take to Twitter

[11] Telegraph – the GCSE maths problem that had students going crazy with frustration

[12] The Guardian – Student protest against unfair GCSE maths question goes viral

[13] The Guardian – How to solve the maths GCSE question

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Top Comments

Windy
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Windy

The probability you pull out an orange sweet is 6/n. After she pulls the first sweet there are only 5 orange ones left and n-1 in total. The probability of 2 independent events being occurring is the product so the probability she gets 2 orange sweets is (6/n)*(5/n-1) and we are told it equals 1/3. Should of learned that basic fact if not figure it out yourself with an example. All the question is asking you to do is to rearrange the equation so it looks like n^2-n-90 = 0. Pathetic.

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