GCSE Maths Questions | 7 Success Questions
GCSE Maths Questions – Introduction
In this article we are going to look at a range of GCSE Maths Questions that are suitable for the Foundation GCSE Maths Paper, but we are going to look at the short worded questions.
Within these questions you need to be able to understand what the question is asking and to determine the correct calculation that needs to be made. This calculation could be that of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division or even the use of fractions.
It is always important to be able to recognise what the keywords are within the question and from there to determine what steps are needed to solve the problem.
GCSE Maths Questions - Warm Up
Let us start with a free warm up questions:
Q1
With questions like this it is always important to deal with each sentence at a time. Work out the number of large, then you can determine how many are small by performing a subtraction.
Through multiplication you can then determine the weight of the large marbles and the weight of the small marbles.
Through addition you can then determine the total weight of the marbles as shown here:
\begin{aligned} & \frac{1}{4} \text { of } 12=3 \\ & 12-3=9 \\ & 70 \times 3=210 \\ & 50 \times 9=\frac{450}{660} \end{aligned}Q2.
You know that 1 part of the drink is orange squash and you need 9 times more water. So you can determine the amount of water that is needed.
You can then determine the total amount of drink that is available by adding the amount of squash together. You also need to remember that 1 litre = 1000ml so to find the number of 1 Litre bottles you need to divide by 1000 as shown here:
\begin{aligned} & \text { Water }=750 \times 9=6750 \mathrm{ml} \\ & \text { Total drink }=750+6750=7500 \mathrm{ml} \\ & \text { No. of bottles }=7500 \div 1000=7.5 \end{aligned}With this question the answer here is “7.5” and the question wants to know how many 1L bottles can be filled completely.
Well if you round up to 8, you would not be correct because only 7.5 bottles can be filled . This means that 8 bottles cannot be filled completely.
So only 7 bottles can be completely filled.
Be careful with questions likes this. Rounding up, is not always the best approach.
GCSE Maths Questions - Two short questions
Q3.
The keyword with this question is to seek the word “estimate”, so you need to round to the nearest 10 which will make the multiplication and division much easier.
\begin{aligned} & =\frac{800 \times 300}{50} \\ & =\frac{240000}{50} \\ & =4800 \end{aligned}Q4.
This is a “show that” question and here you need to show that the answer that is given is the correct answer.
As this is a fractions question you can see that there are mixed numbers so you need to convert these to top heavy fractions and to then perform the multiplication.
Once you have the answer as a top heavy fraction you then need to convert back to a mixed number. Converting from a top heavy fraction to a mixed number is done through division.
\begin{aligned} & =\frac{7}{3} \times \frac{15}{4} \\ & =\frac{105}{12} \\ & =8 \frac{9}{12} \\ & =8 \frac{3}{4} \end{aligned}
GCSE Maths Questions – Percentage, Ratio and Algebra
Q5.
This question is actually question 24 of a foundation maths paper and it is worth 3 marks. What you should do when it comes to doing your final exams is to do questions that you know you can do. You do not need to do questions in order and this is in fact poor exam technique.
To help you answer this question you need to find the amount of money that is made from selling all the chocolate bars.
You can then determine the profit and from there you can determine the percentage profit as shown below:
\begin{aligned} 24 \times 50 & =1200=f 12 \\ \text { Profit } & =\frac{12-10}{10} \times 100 \% \\ & =\frac{2}{10} \times 100 \% \\ & =20 \% \end{aligned}Q6.
You can see that this is a ratio question but probably not as you have seen before. You are probably used to the type of question where you need to add the ratio parts.
With this question you need to realise that you can write the fraction as follows:
a:b = 2:5
b:c = 3:4
What you need to understand here is that the value of “b” needs to be the same. So multiply a:b by 3 and b:c by 5. Doing this will make the “b” value the same and then you can answer the question.
\begin{aligned} & a: b=2: 5 \\ & b: c=3: 4 \end{aligned}\begin{aligned} a: & b \\ 2: & 5 \\ 6: & 15 \\ & b: c \\ & 3: 4 \\ & 15: 20 \end{aligned}\therefore a: b: c=6: 15: 20Q7.
This is a two part question with part a) being related to rearranging formula and part b) being related to indices.
For part a) you need to isolate the variable (letter) that you want so you need to do the opposite of what you see. On the right you will see “+7” so to remove it you need to do the opposite which means subtract 7. Then you need to divide by 6 to get the letter q on its own.
For part b) you need to remember your rules of indices to help with this particular question. The rule here for this question is that you multiply the powers together. Remember that two negative numbers give a positive number.
All the questions done so far are not that bad but it shows what type of maths you need to be doing especially if maths is not your strongest subject and you are looking to hit that grade 4 as a minimum.
It is also worth noting all the questions so far have been taken from a non-calculator paper so being able to deal with questions that involve multiplication, percentages and also fractions without the need for a calculator is very important as you can see.
We have done 7 GCSE Maths Questions here from a non calculator paper. It is important that you are grasping how to actually answer these types of questions. Go over them again because these skills are assessed in all exams.
The questions may change but the process and the understanding that you have developed do not change. You need to be able to apply your knowledge and a variety of situations and this is what the GCSE Maths paper is trying to achieve.