Tricky A-level Maths question is dividing adults – but can YOU answer it?

THOUSANDS of students have picked up their A-Level results today, but for many adults, it’s been decades since they last took a test. As pupils open the results that may dictate the rest of their lives, do you have what it takes to succeed? Thousands of students have now received the results to their A-Levels Credit: Alamy The tricky math sum was shared on social media Credit: Unknown As A-Level results are released today (August 13), one TikTok user, @freemathstutor_uk, shared a seven-mark sum typically found towards the beginning of an A-Level maths paper. Across major exam boards like Pearson, Edexcel and OCR, pupils will have to take three written maths exams, typically taking around two hours. Sign up for The Sun newsletter Thank you! Each paper is worth 100 marks and features anywhere between 13 and 16 questions divided into multi-part sub-questions. So, are you able to find the solution? Question A team game involves solving puzzles to escape from a room. Using data from the past, the mean time to solve the puzzles and escape from one of these rooms is 65 minutes with a standard deviation of 11.3 minutes. After recent changes to the puzzles in the room, it’s claimed that the mean time to solve the puzzles and escape has changed. To test this claim, a random sample of 100 teams is selected. The total time to solve the puzzles and escape for the 100 teams is 6,780 minutes. Assuming the times are normally distributed, test at the 2% level the claim that the mean time has changed. The solution According to past exam solutions, you’ll first need to define what a mean is. Most read in The Sun This is the total of numbers divided by how many numbers there are, typically used as the best measure of an average. Next, you should answer how the data is originally distributed, which should be able to set you up to calculate the rest of the question. And if you said there was evidence to show the mean time is different, you would be correct. The user, @freemathstutor_uk, told viewers: “We reject the H0 (null hypothesis) and there is sufficient evidence to show the mean time has changed.” But remember, these papers typically go by the rule of a mark per minute, so for this 7-mark question, you should have only spent roughly 7 minutes on it in total. In the comments, the video received mixed opinions. One user said: “I’m so cooked,” while another wrote: “So easy.” So, were you able to solve it, or have you left your problem- solving days strictly in the past? Comment now