GCSE Functional Maths Questions
Introduction
More and more maths questions are becoming worded. You still get your calculation questions, but there are more reasoning questions which means that you need to extract the necessary information from the question and to perform the appropriate calculation.
Such GCSE Functional Maths questions are referred to as functional maths, which is essentially applying all the knowledge that you know to a question that involves a practical everyday scenario.
This could be from designing a garden to working out how many people can sit around a circular table.
GCSE Functional Maths Skills At Work
Take a look at the following question:
What makes GCSE Functional maths questions like this challenging is that it is not always clear what needs to be calculated. You need to read the question very carefully in order to pick out any clues.
So what information exists in the question that can be used?
First there is the patio and its dimensions. Now you want to know how many tiled slabs will fit inside the patio. It would make sense to then work out the area of the patio.
Area of patio = 3.6 x 3 = 10.8m^2
Because the area of the patio has been worked out, you could also work out the area of each tile, but you should convert the length in metres.
Dimensions of tile = 60cm = 0.6m. Area of each tile = 0.6 x 0.6 = 0.36m^2
Since you want to find out how many tiles will fit inside the patio area, this can now be done by division.
Number of tiles = 10.8 ÷ 0.36 = 30.
And because 32 tiles were purchased, this will be enough to cover the patio.
This question was about the area, even though the question does not tell you to find this.
Working With A Circle
Take a look at the following question:
Again the GCSE Functional Maths question does not tell you specifically what needs to be calculated or the steps that are needed. Again you need to pick out the clues from the question.
The third line states “fencing around the edge”. The edge of a circle is the circumference and the formula for this is:C= πd.
In this question the circumference is 3.14 ×5=15.7m and this is the length of the fencing that will be used.
The fourth line of the question gives the cost at £1.80 for every metre.
You know the total length of the fencing and you can find the total cost by15.7 ×1.80=£28.26.
Question Practice
Try the following GCSE Functional Maths question on your own before looking at the solution.
Question Practice Solution
So how did you get on? Hopefully you found the answer to be a water meter.
This question involves comparing two costs together.
Without a water meter involves no calculations and this is £107 per year.
There are calculations that need to be calculated if a water meter is in place. You need to make sure that your calculation is that for a whole year so you can make a comparison.
180 litres of water are used each day and there are 365 days in a year. The total amount of water used is 180 x 365 = 65,700 litres.
Again you will need to convert the number of litres just found into cubic metres because that is how the pricing works. Every 1000 litres is 1 cubic metre, so by division, 65,700 ÷1,000 = 65.7 cubic litres.
Also the conversion has now been done and the final part is to determine the cost.
There is a fixed charge of £28.20.
The cost of the water is 91.22p for each cubic metre used. So the cost of water is 65.7 x 91.22p = 5,993.154p. Do not forget that this amount is in pence. The cost of the water in pounds = £59.93.
So the total cost with a water metre is £28.20 + £59.93 = £88.13.
Clearly, having a water metre is more cost effective.
With these types of practical questions it is important that you are showing all your working out and to be reading the question carefully and to show all your working out. These functional maths questions appear on the foundation paper as well as the higher paper so it is important that as a part of your worded GCSE maths problems revision you are practising these types of questions as much as possible.
These types of questions can and do test literally anything and everything within a question. You can be tested on areas such as percentages, ratio and also algebra.