Dan F
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finlaymaths.bsky.social
Dan F
@finlaymaths.bsky.social
51 followers 56 following 20 posts
Northumberland based. Oxford Maths graduate. Ex teacher. Enjoy seeing maths questions from different counties.
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finlaymaths.bsky.social
And notes for the new WJEC Double Award GCSE in Maths & Numeracy are now live too!

Great work by the maths team!

www.savemyexams.com/gcse/maths/w...
Save My Exams WJEC GCSE Maths & Numeracy (Double Award): Higher Revision Notes 2025
Revision notes for the WJEC GCSE Maths & Numeracy (Double Award): Higher syllabus, written by the Maths experts at Save My Exams.
www.savemyexams.com
December 1, 2025 at 4:38 PM
finlaymaths.bsky.social
My team has just produced revision notes for Scotland's National 5 Maths course. It was a lot of fun to review these notes!

Applications of Maths notes will be published very soon too.

www.savemyexams.com/national-5/m...
Save My Exams SQA National 5 Maths Revision Notes 2023
Revision notes for the SQA National 5 Maths syllabus, written by the Maths experts at Save My Exams.
www.savemyexams.com
December 1, 2025 at 4:36 PM
finlaymaths.bsky.social
Does anyone have any good tips for revising for AQA Level 2 Further Maths? I am writing an article and want to get as much first-hand experience as possible.
#furthermaths
October 24, 2025 at 2:26 PM
finlaymaths.bsky.social
Any accounting teachers on here?
#accounting #igcse #alevel #sqa
October 15, 2025 at 2:22 PM
finlaymaths.bsky.social
Also this method for factorising a non-monic quadratic. It turns it into a monic quadratic but in terms of a different variable.
Lots of students would write y^2-2y-120 and factorise, change for 8x and divide by 8. But they didn't really know why. This was always the missing jigsaw piece for them.
Method for factorising a non-monic quadratic by turning it into a monic quadratic in terms of 8x
September 29, 2025 at 4:41 PM
finlaymaths.bsky.social
Had a great get-together with my team on maths. Even found time to discuss different methods.
It reminded me of a method to factorise a monic quadratic without having to magic up two numbers. One of my previous year 12 students loved it as it took the guesswork away.
Method for factorising a monic quadratic using completing the square and difference of two squares.
September 29, 2025 at 4:37 PM
finlaymaths.bsky.social
Does anybody else find the decimal points annoying on WJEC papers? They look like multiplication dot signs.
August 21, 2025 at 7:03 AM
Reposted by Dan F
catrionaagg.bsky.social
I did pretty much the same lesson today with Y10, although much quicker. It worked really well - we were able to recap all the index laws they knew and explain why they work, and then move onto negative and fractional powers. #MathsToday
catrionaagg.bsky.social Catriona Agg @catrionaagg.bsky.social · Mar 26
Started indices in Y8 #MathsToday.

Our previous topic was sequences, so we began by comparing two that I’d made in a spreadsheet.

And then we moved onto power tables, using the jumps method that I stole from @blatherwicksam.bsky.social. By the end of the lesson they were using fractional powers!
A spreadsheet with powers of 2 in column A and multiples of 2 in column B. It has been annotated with similarities in blue and differences in green. The powers of two from the previous slide with questions alongside that use index notation. A power table, annotated in several colours with patterns that students had spotted. Each column in the table contains powers of a different base. A power table that has lots of arrows drawn on. These are the remnants of working from a number of different questions which have now been erased. 3 questions are currently shown: 16^4, 16^(½) and 81^(¾)
July 10, 2025 at 5:04 PM
finlaymaths.bsky.social
I love these kinds of debates. They show that there are still some ambiguities in maths around some symbols.

How would you view it if it were 6÷2(x+1)?
What about 6÷2x?

If it were 6÷2×(1+2), I think a lot of the ambiguity would disappear.
6 ÷ 2(1+3) is it 1 or 9
July 9, 2025 at 10:08 AM
Reposted by Dan F
nathanday.bsky.social
In #MathsToday, Year 10 enjoying having a go at this Quadratics Always/Sometimes/Never task (which I did as a card sort in pairs).

It was really interesting to tease out the subtleties, look at different edge cases, and keep bringing things back to the graphs.
Always? Sometimes? Never? x^2 + Ax + B = (x+c)^2+8 1. C is less than A. 2. The vertex has an x-coordinate of 8. 3. B is less than A. 4. If C is an integer, so is A. 5. If A is an integer, so is B. 6. B is greater than 8. 7. If you know B, you can work out A and C. 8. The quadratic has two roots. 9. The minimum value of the quadratic is 8. 10. If you know A, you can work out B and C. Printable version of the activities, to be cut up and used as a card sort.
June 25, 2025 at 4:36 PM
Reposted by Dan F
unsolvedmre.bsky.social
Each of the relations below has non-zero area in ℝ².
Which has the greatest area?
Which has the least area?
How do you know?
#iteachmath
P = {(x,y):⌊x⌋²+⌊y⌋² = 98} Q = {(x,y):⌊x²⌋+⌊y²⌋ = 98} R = {(x,y):⌊x²+y²⌋ = 98}
June 13, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Reposted by Dan F
ap-trevor.bsky.social
The 2025 AP Statistics Exam scores:
5: 17%; 4: 21%; 3: 22%; 2: 16%; 1: 24%
June 20, 2025 at 5:14 PM
finlaymaths.bsky.social
This is from this year's AP Calculus BC exam. I wonder if A Level students would be able to tackle it.
May 23, 2025 at 6:48 AM
Reposted by Dan F
catrionaagg.bsky.social
For the next stage of our trig lessons, we looked at the unit circle and introduced sine and cosine as a way to generate a reference triangle for any angle. At this stage they’re still then using similarity and ratio tables to find the missing sides. #MathsToday
We have seen these numbers before... On the left is a picture of the unit circle with an angle of 30 degrees and the sine and cosine lengths marked on. On the right is a triangle with side lengths of 1,0.5 and 0.866 which is labelled 30 degree reference triangle. The ultimate reference triangle: a right angled triangle with an angle a and side lengths of 1, cos(a) and sin(a) Using your reference triangles, write down the value of 1. sin (35) = 0.574 2. cos (35) = 0.819 3. sin (20) = 0•342 4. Sin (5) = 0•087 5. cos (40) = 0.766 6. cos (15) = 0.966 7. cos (10) = 0.985 8. Sin (60) = 0•866 9. cos (80) = 0.174 10. cos (55) =0.574 11. cos (25) = 0.906 12. sin (85) = 0.996 A triangle with sides 22 and an and an angle of 64.5 degrees. Next to it is a ratio table which has been used to set up an equation to find a
May 19, 2025 at 4:22 PM
Reposted by Dan F
studymaths.bsky.social
A slight change of wording is a quick win to ask more engaging questions.
Instead of simply asking pupils to "work out" the answer to a problem, try rephrasing the command to a more interesting alternative. Instead of "calculate the following"...​"Which of these have the same answer?"​ Instead of "complete the addition pyramid"​..."how many ways can you make the top brick equal to 20"?​ Instead of "calculate the perimeter"...​"Which piece of string is the longest?"​
May 17, 2025 at 7:45 AM
Reposted by Dan F
desmos.com
With a high degree of confidence, we can confirm new inference tests are now live! 🎉

🗒️ Learn more in the Desmos Help Center: help.desmos.com/hc/en-us/art...
#mathsky #iteachmath #statistics
May 14, 2025 at 11:23 AM
Reposted by Dan F
kityates.bsky.social
No BBC a change of 7 degrees C is not a change of 45 degrees F, it's a change of 7x1.8 = 12.6 F.

Similarly a change of 13 degrees C is not a change of 55 degrees F, it's a change of 13x1.8 = 23.4 F

You don't need to add on the 32 when you're talking about *changes* in temp.
May 1, 2025 at 8:08 AM
Reposted by Dan F
dwekselgreene.bsky.social
Launch for tomorrow's polynomial division lesson. #iteachmath #MTBoS
Can you solve the puzzle? What goes in each blank of the area model? A 2 row by 3 column array is shown. To the left of the array, a 2x is shown in row 1 and a 3 is shown in row 2. A 10x^3 is shown in the 1st row, 1st column cell. The rest of the cells and the 3 spaces above the first row all have question marks. Under the array, the total area is given as 10x^3 + 23x^2 – 4x – 24.
May 1, 2025 at 1:52 AM
Reposted by Dan F
catrionaagg.bsky.social
Y12 have found proof by contradiction really hard! We did some practice at just writing down the opposite statement first (pink in first 2 pics), and then I’ve been scaffolding the proofs fairly heavily.
Does anyone have a good bank of examples for more practice?
#ALevelMaths #MathsToday
If n is an integer and n^3+ 5 is odd, then n is even [in pink] There is an odd integer k for which k^3+ 5 is odd Underneath a proof has been written out, using the following sentence starters which are in a different colour. Suppose that... Then k can be written as... So k^3+5 = which is a contradiction because... So there is no... Therefore… A similarly scaffolded proof that if a is an integer and a^2 is even, then a is even. Pink text reads: There is an odd integer k for which k^2 is even A similarly scaffolded proof that if a is rational and b is irrational, a+b is irrational A diagram to represent the logic behind proof by contradiction. Pale coloured text underneath the diagram reads: If this were true, this would be true, and this would be true,... And this would be true, but I know it can't be. Since my chain of reasoning is watertight, the problem must be at the very beginning, so the initial statement is false.
April 28, 2025 at 4:43 PM
Reposted by Dan F
catrionaagg.bsky.social
I was finally organised enough to write out a worked solution in advance rather than doing it live. I think this worked well - need to do it more often! #ALevelMaths #MathsToday
Worked solution to an exam question about C+iS sequences, with the lines numbered Study the worked solution, and then answer these questions. 1. Explain why line 2 is equivalent to line 1 2. Explain why line 3 is equivalent to line 2 3. What is happening at line 5, and why? 4. Which trigonometric identity has been used, and in which line(s)? 5. Line 12 is missing. Complete the working. 6. Why is it important that a is a real number with |a|< 1? 7. Where would you allocate the 8 marks for this question?
March 31, 2025 at 4:42 PM
finlaymaths.bsky.social
This is a 2 mark question from CBSE Grade XII Applied Maths paper. I'm not ashamed to admit I had no idea how to integrate that!
April 19, 2025 at 11:40 AM
Reposted by Dan F
mrwhatleymaths.bsky.social
In my role of KS5 Maths Coordinator, a passion project of mine over the last 3 years has been to launch A-Level Statistics at my school. I successfully launched and now have two cohorts studying towards their A-Level Stats. As is known, there aren't a lot of resources out there so ... #alevelmaths
February 23, 2025 at 3:30 PM