Maths skills: angles, area, volume and material costs - Intro

Every cutting list hides four jobs of maths. Find the angle. Find the area. Find the volume. Then add up the bill. Slip on a unit and the answer lands a hundred times out, or a thousand. Forget to round the right way and a part hangs off the sheet. Here's what matters most in this chapter, and which video to press first.

These four build on each other, and the last one uses the ones before it, so they work best in order. Begin with angles, triangles and tessellation. It gives you the test for which shapes fit together with no gap, and why a regular pentagon always leaves a gap on a floor. Next comes area and circumference: rectangles, triangles and circles. One examiner's report calls changing square units the hardest part of a question, and in another, many candidates forgot to halve for a triangle. For boxes, pots and blocks, go to surface area and volume: cuboids and cylinders. Surface area is the material a hollow product needs, volume is the material a solid part needs, and cubic units are where marks slip. If your exam is close, jump to calculating material quantities and costs. Some version of how many parts fit a sheet, and what a batch costs, is set by every board. A common slip is costing one item when the question asks for the whole batch. Whichever you start with, write every step down and put the unit on every answer. Method marks are given for correct working, even when the last step slips. You can search for any video by its name or its code, and the codes are right there on the list. The quickest way is the scholafly.com website, which lists every video in every subject.

Next in the chapter is Angles, triangles and tessellation. Hopefully that's next in your feed - but if not, search for ScholaFly D T oh two, oh one.

For more, visit scholafly.com, or watch the next video.