Tom Bowler

I think that describes a large proportion of teenagers studying A-Levels. To some extent, you can't blame them when they are in school for 30-40 hours a week already!

Stop marking it. Tell the pupils you will set a class test after each topic and tell them what they should do to prepare. I found when I did this a few years ago, overall they did more independent practice because they wanted a good test result. You can't cheat if I'm watching you do the work!

I love this question, perfect for Year 7 to Year 13!

😭

Hard for the little people to get justice against the big machine that is Pearson! How much are they worth again? Bizarre that other exam boards are charities.

I'd love to know how they dodged that particular bullet! I'm hoping Ofqual did take action but it isn't yet published. Surely there was at least another hefty fine for Pearson (as there was last year).

I like the link with Geometric series and these factirisations. Amazing how many students don't realise they can already factorise 1-x^n.

Dr Frost Learning Dr Frost provides an online learning platform, teaching resources, videos and a bank of exam questions, all for free.

That time of year again...

Please share the below booklet with any pupils thinking of studying maths at universities that use interviews as part of the admissions process.

www.drfrost.org/downloadable...

#MathsToday #AlevelMaths

We were happy to stop at 2x2, but appreciate we could go further!

I posted the below yesterday and derived the unique 2x2 determinant from these properties.

Mostly my experience on Bluesky has been very positive and people have engaged well. Character limit means I often don't flesh out a context, but also I like people to ask. It's like starting up a conversation in the maths office.

I think the 3x3 expansion looks ugly.

You may prefer my #MathsToday post from today.

I'm coming at this an educator of young people likely to embark on university degrees in the UK. Many will be presented with ugly notation and I want to give them the skills to decode it. I can also discuss the drawbacks of such notation at the same time. My description to the class was 'hideous'.

That was my second approach after I realised that finding the gradient in terms of x and y was ugly! I did as an aside find another point, where the gradient was unique in terms of x (I could do that much more easily as dx/dt is at the point in question).

My approach for S would be to note that the gradient is multi-valued.

Year 13 FM using the key properties of determinants to derive the 2x2 case (and think about how that scales to 3x3 case).

This was always planned to follow yesterday's breakdown of Leibniz formula!

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The point of the exercise was to unravel the hideous notation, rather than gain insight into determinants. The number of times I had lecturers present something like that at university without much explanation was high, so I want to help my students deal with that.

This has had some very strong reactions. Interesting how people haven't stopped to consider, or ask, the context in which this was delivered.

#MathsToday #AlevelMaths

Or you discuss such things in a supportive environment so that when they inevitably come across such things in the future, they don't panic.

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That's what comes next after it's unpacked!

This was the introduction to the determination for the class. We discussed this as a point of interest, and then we moved on to something more palatable as you describe.

Unpacking it was an interesting exercise. Students often struggle with the transition from A-Level to degree level because of notation (amogst other things).

I find it odd how sparse A-Level textbooks are when it comes to determinants. For example, there is typically no mention of when a determinant of 0 occurs (as in a row/column is a linear combination of other rows/columns).

Year 13 FM unpacked the following Determinant definition today.

I didn't display the 3x3 case at first!

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No such luck!

Back to being in the prime of my life 😁

#MathsToday

Can you solve it? The simple T-puzzle that fools everyone (at first!) Staggeringly simple, tormentingly tough

Love the interactive T puzzle below!

www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Year 12 FM Fun:

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