Bryn Jones

Thanks to everybody who came along to my session at Maths Conf 33. You can download all the slides and resources here:

Warning: Very Geeky If you’re here because you want some nice datasets to use, then head here. I wanted to see if it was possible to write some code in R that would randomly create a dataset suitable to perform a t.test, cor.test or prop.test on. I’ve not got much coding experience but I thought … Read more

High Hopes The Hayward report has finally been published. Here is a quick summary: Assessment in Scotland is in need of radical reform. The Hayward report gets it spectacularly wrong. A Harmful Substance To begin we need to talk about the worst part of our assessments: National 4. Students do not value it. Parents do … Read more

Higher Applications – Computer Help! My presentation for the Scottish Maths Conference 2023 can be found here! https://www.applyingmaths.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/SMC-Files-2023.zip It includes two worksheets, a PowerPoint with videos covering Goal Seek and R Studio, as well as a data set. The original dataset can be found here: https://corgis-edu.github.io/corgis/csv/coffee/. Information about, and a sample of, the Leckie textbook … Read more

Anybody who’s spoken to me about maths will have quickly learnt that I’m obsessed with multi-link blocks. In fact the last time I had a job interview, I inadvertently spent 15 minutes talking about them and the Cbeebies programme ‘Numberblocks’. In moments of insanity I have claimed that every topic taught in high school maths … Read more

The SQA have release the pre-release data for the 2023 exam. Here are some example questions based on the pre-release. A bit of a health warning: I’ve made this to use with my students next week. Normally I’d road test any resource before sharing it here, but given the tight timings between the pre-release and … Read more

I’ve often wondered what the simplest proof for the Pythagorean theorem is. By ‘simple’ I mean it contains the fewest steps, with the least amount of prerequisite knowledge. I’ve always liked the James Garfield proof (I’ve even made a worksheet for students to complete based on it), but it does have a few bits of … Read more

The Hayward interim report has been published and the brief summary is this: Fewer external assessments across senior phase, more evidence to be collected during senior phase, more digital assessments, and a senior leaving certificate. I think this would be a big mistake. To begin with let’s consider how teacher assessments work at the moment. … Read more

You’ve given your students information about the Higher Apps project, showed them the SQA examples, and pointed them in the direction of the best sites for downloading data. But they’re struggling to come up with a research question. Maybe they’ve found a great dataset, but don’t really know how to begin. Here is some advice … Read more

I’ve been thinking about brass instruments quite a bit recently. I took my daughter to a workshop by Travelling by Tuba, and it got me thinking about the lengths of various brass instruments compared with their length. A French Horn, for example, is well over 3 meters of pipe nicely wound up. There’s a clear … Read more