Main Statement

..we are unable to find any questions which are even remotely similar.....

See the full letter from Newcastle University containing these words here

Although I have started with this letter, it did actually take five years and five months after my initial complaint to get this far. My complaints over the years had included photocopies of the questions I was referring to you etc, so no-one could have been in any doubt as to which questions I was referring to.

Note also the threat of legal action if I continued to make these claims. The very fact that you are reading this now tells you that I have indeed continued to make these claims many times.

Note also the paragraph at the top of page 2 (which I have circled as no 3). This appears to be a deliberate attempt to confuse any third parties - it is most certainly a red herring, hopefully for obvious reasons - you can no more take a Part 2 Maths course without taking the corresponding Part 1 course, than you can study a Part 2 German course until you have acquired the knowledge of a Part 1 German course.)

Naturally, this response sent me through the roof and I did make a few statements of 'disbelief' to one or two people without addressing Nicholson (the sender of the above letter) directly. Nevertheless, unsolicited, a letter arrived from him two months later, which you can read here.

Take into account while reading this letter that Newcastle had ignored God knows how many letters from me for five years and five months, and then they send me one unsolicited, only two months later.

Also, note that I had stated that these 'easy' questions were inserted because students could not answer the rest of the questions on the exam. And then this letter makes implications to some brainbox who has the idea that if I couldn't do these (what I have called 'easy') questions, then there were other questions on the paper I could have answered. As Tolstoy says of one of his characters in War and Peace:-

All that intelligence and no brains

Further, for the benefit of people who don't live in Britain, I can tell you that there would be little chance of the official exam bodies in this country responding to allegations of irregularities with individual questions (as they have had to do several times) by adopting an attitude of 'well, there were other questions on the paper you could have answered instead'.

Attempting to garner support from farther afield, I went to my MP (Member of Parliament), Mike Hancock (Portsmouth South) . His reply is here. The letter does mention a 'Senior Lecturer at Southampton University' but it turns out (from Hancock's verbal statements) that it is actually a professor of Maths who is a personal friend of Hancock's, but I do not know his identity (any information on the said identity would be gratefully received: - email .

As you can see, this letter doesn't do me any favors, but at least I can garner some comfort from the fact that it is completely wrong!

As you can see from the letter, it states that the questions are different because

The second year questions asks for the general solution which involves a standard technique. The third year questions asks for the characteristic congruence, which would suggest that the solution would be more geometric involving characteristic curves which thus has an added degree of sophistication.
One of the second order equations is homogeneous, and the other is inhomogeneous. The calculations for the inhomogeneous are more extensive than those for the homogeneous equation.

These statements are incorrect because

It is actually the second year question which has an ‘added degree of sophistication’, but not much. Finding the characteristic congruence is one of the steps on the way to finding the general solution.
The ideas of homogeneity / inhomogeneity are, quite simply, not applicable to partial differential equations, at all. It is absolutely ridiculous to suggest that they are.

It is worth noting that for those differential equations where the concept of homogeneous / inhomogeneous is a factor ( i.e. those ordinary ( not partial ) differential equations that are met at A-Level ), the amount of time needed to learn how to solve inhomogeneous equations, once you have learnt how to solve homogeneous equations, is minimal ( an hour should do it, if that ). The solution of both types of equations have a lot in common and are most certainly not separated by a year in difficulty. I stress this last point because although I am dealing with identical equations, just imagine if the questions had been different, just slightly, and how much harder it would be to prove, in that case, that the questions were rather similar

In an attempt to elicit comment from Southampton University, I received this letter from Professor Ray D'Inverno , which is a rare example of a more positive response.

When I sent Ray D'Inverno's letter to Mike Hancock, MP, he just ignored me, and then, when I forced the issue, he took the opportunity to treat me like a complete idiot. Dealings with Hancock became a series of surreal events in itself - further information is cataloged here. I should say here that he did become very agressive at one stage - to the extent of shouting at me and using the word 'fucking'. He advised me that I should gather together all my papers and documents related to this case and throw them in the bin. I even had one of his supporters ringing me up and calling me 'a bit of an idiot'. The stance taken on Higher Education by one of Hancock's Liberal Party colleagues is rather different - see here.

The Head of Department at Southampton, Professor Adam Webber has been very evasive. Professor Landsberg, Professor of Applied Mathematics, send me this email.

A response from Professor Roy Maartens of Portsmouth University can be viewed here.

Another mathematician at Portsmouth, Dr David Coule , decided to tell me verbally that the questions were different.

Dr. D. Coule, did tell me that the questions were different for the following reasons :-

The first–order questions are different because one is a quasi-linear equation and the other one isn’t.
The second-order questions are different because one contains a cross-term and the other doesn’t.

These statements are incorrect because

Both equations are quasi-linear. A first-order partial differential equation

is classed as quasi-linear if a, b, and c are functions of x,y and u.
A cross term introduces no extra problems whatsoever. The principal part of the equation contains, in general, the two second derivatives w.r.t. each of the two independent variables, plus the cross term. This principal part of the equation is transformed to the form

which is the canonical form for hyperbolic partial differential equations (or one of them anyway, the other canonical form being the “wave equation” form.)
When I presented my own worked solutions to Dr. Coule, he stated that I had answered the questions in ‘a strange way’, without being able to point to how or where I had answered them in ‘a strange way’, and without giving the slightest indications as to what the ‘correct way’ is.

Professor Mehrdad Tamiz of Portsmouth University told me that I ‘did not have much of a case’. Despite several requests for clarification of the specific reasons as to why I ‘don’t have much of a case’, he has continued to just ignore me.
Next are responses from teachers at my old school, Quarry Bank in Liverpool, now known as Calderstones. I have a response here. which I hesitate to publish because I found the response to display a good attitude and I don't think the sender still believes the statements contained there. What is of main interest is the statement that several recent Mathematics graduates, colleagues of his son, do think that the questions are different.
The headmaster, Brian Davis (not the same headmaster as when I was there), on the other hand has adopted a very different and agressive attitude. Because I don't have the full software, Davis's letter is spread over two documents. See Page 1 and Page 2. At the beginning of his letter, he mentions a ‘thinly veiled threat’. I can assure you that nothing I have written warrants a reaction like that.

For the second-order differential equations, he has given specific reasons for this belief, but these reasons are to do with statements along the lines that the numbers are different, which does not contradict my (previously-given) definition of ‘identical questions’.
For the first-order differential equations, he states that the ‘tasks set are different’. Reference to my worked solutions will show that this statement is wrong.

This is a classic letter from Newcastle University.

So I have tried to elicit assistance from M. Hancock MP, and not only has he refused but he has actually somehow got in touch with Newcastle such that Newcastle make use of his attitude against me. What a way for a Member of Parliament to look after the interests of his constituents!
The letter above mentions letters from the Department of Mathematics. In reality, one of the surreal aspects has been that I have sent god-knows-how-many letters to the Department of Mathematics but received not one single reply. The reference to 'MPs you have consulted' is to be viewed in the same vein - I did contact the local MP when I lived in Newcastle (as mentioned elsewhere on this site) but it is very unlikely that the University was explicitly aware of this. It wouldn't make any difference if they were aware of this - I am just trying to emphasize the characteristics of the letter. Having said all this then the nature of the letter should give you an indication of how useful the all letters fron 'this Office' have been.

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