Hints

• Is your answer reasonable ?

• Calculations It is important that your answers are laid out properly and clearly. This is not just for the benefit of the marker, but also for your own benefit. You need to understand what you have done for the purposes of checking your answers, and this is even more important if you imagine looking at your work again at sometime in the future.

  • Show working

  • State any formulas you are using

  • Start a new line for each line of calculation

  • Do not round too early, you may introduce rounding errors

  • In general, your answer should not consist of just figures, but also some explanation of what these figures represent. Retracing your calculation to find a mistake, or just to check your calculations, is going to be much easier if you can understand the procedure you used. In general, a page of figures with no explanation tends to be no use at all.

  • Check your answers as you proceed

• Watch units

  • It's a common error to forget to change pence to pounds, etc.

• Take note of the advice in the 'Estimation' module - having a rough idea of the answer beforehand will enable you to reject totally-wrong answers, or answers where you have put the decimal point in the wrong place.

• Watch when reading values from scales

Home Books referred to in the Modules Hints Definitions Basic Arithmetic Rounding Estimation Negative Numbers Factors and Multiples Fractions Decimals Percentages Ratios Time Bar Charts Pie Charts and Pictograms Line Graphs Histograms Averages - Mean, Median and Mode Formulas Finance Currency Conversions Angles and Trigonometry Scales Powers (Indices) and Roots Units of Measurement Measurement Extended Exam Questions past questions which cover a range of topics