Andrew

▸ A Level Maths Tutor
▸ Used to be Course Leader for an ALPS 2 Maths department.

[Andrew @AndyPMaths]

Fairly sure blue would not got 50% if 'private vote' meant you weren't allowed to incessantly virtue signal about choosing blue.

[Tim Urban @waitbutwhy]

Everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive. Which button would you press?

[Andrew @AndyPMaths]

@Sum1st @NoEducationTax @StufferSuitcase @Samfr @KingofSW6 It would depend on their business model. It's horribly complicated. The law changed a couple of years back.

Essentially, it depends on how they control their tutors. If they take the payment on behalf of the tutors, or dictate how, what or when the tutor teaches, then yes.

[Andrew @AndyPMaths]

@Sum1st @StufferSuitcase @NoEducationTax @Samfr @KingofSW6 Someone who is self-employed, but has not formed a limited company would perhaps be the simplest way to think of it.

[Andrew @AndyPMaths]

@NoEducationTax @Sum1st @StufferSuitcase @Samfr @KingofSW6 Private tuition in a subject normally taught in schools is vat exempt, provided the tutor is either a sole trader or part of a limited liability partnership (this os different from a limited company)

[Andrew @AndyPMaths]

@NoEducationTax @StufferSuitcase @Sum1st @Samfr @KingofSW6 Correct.

[Andrew @AndyPMaths]

@StufferSuitcase @Sum1st @NoEducationTax @Samfr @KingofSW6 This is not entirely correct. Private tutors who operate as sole traders are exempt from VAT, but limited companies who provide tuition are not exempt.

[Andrew @AndyPMaths]

@tm_maths @Adil11235 This doesn't look like a typical OCR mark scheme. Could you share the question and what paper it's from?

[Andrew @AndyPMaths]

@mjjtuition @mathsjem @Advanced_Maths @robotmaths @gradeAinAll @mathstutortom @NigMathTutor Interesting question. To the best of my knowledge, Part (c) has only been tested once on the new spec and that was on an MEI paper in 2019.

[Andrew @AndyPMaths]

@JamesHandscombe I could care less about these.

[Andrew @AndyPMaths]

@MathsNot @WRoberts3 A bizarre argument. If there was only private health care and someone suggested an NHS would you be here like "who's gonna run it, Bupa?". Everyone acting like this has never been done successfully anywhere else in the world.

[Andrew @AndyPMaths]

I think it depends on the question. Edexcel accepted a "meets in the middle" proof on this year's paper 2.

To be on the safe side, I advise my students to start from the LHS, as that's what the questions is likely designed for. However, if they get stuck I encourage them to write the RHS lower down the page and work up the page, which is essentially working from the RHS, but it looks like they started from the left to the examiner.

This tends to work particularly well for proofs that come before a fixed point iteration question as it's often difficult to see which 'x' they're supposed to rearrange for.

[Andrew @AndyPMaths]

@MathsNot If we're gonna teach marginal tax rates, let's do it properly. If only the marginal tax rate was 40% at the lower end of the higher rate!

https://t.co/i4fm5w5U1a

[Dan Neidle @DanNeidle]

We now realise that our analysis failed to take into account the uprating of child benefit, and in fact the marginal rate in this scenario will be 71%, not 68%.

[Andrew @AndyPMaths]

Stick 'em on some index cards and practise them every day until they're learned. Then practise them less frequently.

My personal opinion is that they are so fundamental to they A Level course that just deriving them is insufficient.

As an analogy, it's a bit like not learning your 7 times table because you could just work them out by adding 7. The one who knows the 7's immediately knows that 7 is a common factor of 56 and 63. You can't derive something like that easily because if you don't know 56 and 63 are in the 7 times table you don't think to look there.

Yes, you could get by without learning all the trig identities, but you'll end up being one of those people that sees someone else successfully completing a trig proof and thinking it's magic because they could see what to do.

When they saw '2sinxcosx' they also immediately also saw 'sin2x' or they saw sec^2(x), they immediately knew it could be rewritten in terms of tan^2(x) without having to pause and write out a load of derivations.

It's like speaking a second language. You're never going to have a good conversation if you keep having to look in your translation dictionary to find a word half way through a sentence.

[Andrew @AndyPMaths]

@knightofmaths @Whitehughes @mathsmuse The problem with deriving is that it doesn't work so well if you need to do it backwards. For example students are at a disadvantage if they are not able to see 2sinxcosx and recognise an alternate form.

[Andrew @AndyPMaths]

@melissamaths @ECR_Maths @mathsjem @KerryDunton @JohnRubinstein1 @BerwickMaths @galoisgirl @nkl_17 @ravenmaths @MuirMaths @ShawMaths Also, this was all maths students, not just further.

[Andrew @AndyPMaths]

At my college almost all students had one. We got a slight discount due to no VAT and bulk buying. Students on low household incomes were entitled to one for free. We also ran a buy-back scheme and sold these on as second-hand to new students. This essentially meant that over the two years you could use one for free.

[Andrew @AndyPMaths]

I remember it well. Rather than a couple of months of stress before exams we had it constantly throughout the two years. Always revising for the next exam and doing extra revision sessions for those resitting. I remember how we used to have to enter all students for their exams in year 10 so that they had '2 bites at the cherry'. Glad the government banned those results from counting towards league tables.

That's the only way they could make this work. Ban resit marks from counting towards the league tables. Schools wouldn't give a crap about resits then, but students could still do them if they were self motivated enough. Then it might not be quite as much the workload nightmare it would otherwise be.

[Andrew @AndyPMaths]

@MathsNot Whenever an outside organisation tries to force change onto schools I always try to consider what their motivation might be.

In this case, I'm completely stumped. Who might stand to benefit by subjecting children to considerably more exams over their school career?

[Andrew @AndyPMaths]

@MathsNot I just don't see how you could temper the cons in today's target obsessed environment. My experience is that it's much worse now than 15 years ago. There would be plenty of mandatory resits if you don't hit your target, followed by forced 'revision classes' for staff to run.