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One of England’s biggest exam boards has been forced to apologise after pupils were set an impossible question in an AS-level maths paper.
OCR promised to take the error into account when marking the exam, amid students’ concerns that the mistake could affect their university places.
The question, which was worth eight marks and 11% of the paper, was impossible to solve due to a miscalculation of an equation.
Students were presented with a diagram showing a network of tracks in a forest. The distances between points on the network were also set out.
Students were then asked to find the shortest route to walk along every track, starting and ending at the same point. The given length was supposed to be equal to an equation set out in the paper.
But OCR admitted that it failed to calculate the length properly – meaning the shortest route failed to match the mathematical equation.
Brasilia – In another laughable embarassment involving official books sponsored by the Brazilian Ministery of Education and Culture, a mathematics book distributed to more than 400,000 students in public school teaches that 10 minus 7 is equal to 4. The wrong equation is the latest scandal for the Ministry in charge of editing and publishing books that are used in the whole nation, and tarnishes the official institution in charge of education and culture.
