They say that after leaving school people continue to have anxiety dreams about facing exams for the rest of their life. Now’s your chance to relive that horror, by tackling the type of questions set to test the mathematics knowledge of England and Wales’s 15- and 16-year-olds.
Sadly, in order to make the questions work online, we are not able to present the most complicated ones – and we have got to give you multiple choice options for the answers. And unlike real students, you do not have to show your working. Although you can always post it in to us if you feel so inclined.
Take these 10 GCSE maths questions
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What type of triangle is it?
Obtuse-angled
Scalene
Equilateral
Isosceles
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Tom earns £9.20 per hour. He works for 24 hours each week, 48 weeks each year. He pays tax if he earns more than £10,000 per year. Does Tom pay tax?
Yes
No
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The diagram shows information about the scores of Class 3A in a spelling test. A student is chosen at random from Class 3A. Work out the probability that the student's score was the mode for the class
1 in 2
1 in 3
1 in 4
1 in 5
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Anne picks a 4-digit number. The first digit is not zero. The 4-digit number is a multiple of 5. How many different 4-digit numbers could she pick?
2225
2000
1800
1600
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Mr Jones works for five days each week. If he uses his car to travel to work he drives 24.2 miles each day. His car travels 32.3 miles per gallon of petrol. Petrol costs £1.27 per litre. If he uses the bus to travel to work he can buy a weekly ticket for £19.50. Use 1 gallon = 4.5 litres. Is it cheaper if he uses his car or the bus to travel to work?
Bus. His car expenses are £21.41 per week
Bus. His car expenses are £22.17 per week
Car. His car expenses are £19.21 per week
Car. His car expenses are £18.62 per week
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The diagram shows a semicircle of radius 8 cm. Work out the area of the semicircle.
80 cm²
100. 53 cm²
131.2 cm²
201.06 cm²
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Here are two number machines, A and B. Both machines have the same input. Work out the input that makes the output of A three times the output of B.
7.5
3
-2.5
-5
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A company makes boxes of cereal. A box usually contains 450 grams of cereal. Here are two options for a special offer: Option A: 20% more cereal, price remains the same. Option B: Usual amount of cereal, 15% off the price. Which option is the better value for the customer?
Option A
Option B
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A sequence of patterns uses grey squares and white squares. Here are the first four patterns. Work out the total number of squares in Pattern 100
312
306
303
300
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When 𝜘² = 16 the only value that 𝜘 can be is 4. Is this true or false?
True
False
Solutions
1:D - An isosceles triangle has at least two equal sides, 2:A - Tom's annual earnings amount to £10,598.40 so he is over the threshold to pay tax. Whether Tom actually pays his tax, or seeks to avoid it, is beyond the scope of a GCSE Maths exam., 3:B - The mode is the most frequently occurring score, in this case 8. Nine pupils achieved this score, a third of the class in total., 4:C - A multiple of 5 must end in 0 or 5. This means that the first number can be a choice of nine digits from 1-9, the second and third numbers can be a choice of ten digits from 0-9, and the last digit can be a choice of two. 9x10x10x2 gives 1800 combinations., 5:A - Mr Jones travels 121 miles per week, which uses 3.74 gallons of petrol. This equates to 16.85 litres of fuel, costing £21.41 altogether, 6:B - For any circle with radius r, the area, A, is found using the formula A = πr². Divide this by two to get the area of a semicircle with the same radius, 7:D - If the input is -5, machine A gives an output of -39 and machine B gives an output of -13, 8:A - If we assume, to make the calculations straightforward, that the cereal costs £4.50, that gives us a price of 1p per gram of cereal. Adding 20% more cereal gives 540g for £4.50, at a cost of 0.83p per gram. The alternative option is 450g of cereal for £3.825. That works out at a slightly higher cost of 0.85p per gram., 9:C - Each pattern features a total number which is the pattern number times three, plus the initial three in the starting row., 10:B - 16 is also the square value of negative integer -4.
Scores
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9 and above.
Close but no cigar.
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7 and above.
Well done. You've remembered more GCSE maths than you probably give yourself credit for.
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1 and above.
Extra tuition for you, we're afraid.
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4 and above.
Good effort.
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10 and above.
Perfect. An A* for you. Or a 9 under the new system that nobody understands yet.
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0 and above.
Oh dear. Surely randomly clicking buttons should have got you more than this.
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All questions taken from AQA’s GCSE mathematics specimen papers published in June 2015.