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kuiperbelt | 11:38 Wed 05th Apr 2023 | Science
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A man buys a horse for £70. He then sells the horse for £80. He then buys back the horse for £90. Once again he sells the horse for £100. How much did the man make or lose? Or did he break even?
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Of course, had he an ounce of sense he would have bought at £70 and sold for £100.
11:50 Wed 05th Apr 2023
He made £20 ?
He has made 2 transactions each of which brought him £10.

But isn't that obvious ?
Of course, had he an ounce of sense he would have bought at £70 and sold for £100.
He spent £160 (£70 + £90) buying the horse and got £180 (£80 + £100) selling it so he made £20 profit.
He now has no horse so has lost the original £70.

He made £10 on the first sale, cancelled by the extra £10 he paid when he bought it back.

When he sells the horse for £100 he is now £30 in profit.

Total profit £30
Course it is £20, please ignore my stupid previous answer.
I have put my dunce's cap on and retreated to the corner
I think it's time you did your own homework kuiperbelt!
80 - 70 = first £10 profit

100 - 90 = second £10 profit - but first profit went towards the £90

Thus £10 profit
This is fairly straightforward mental maths., which even I (definitely not a mathematician) can do.

Why are you asking these?
TUVOK, imagine you have a thousand pound

You buy the horse for £70 so now you have £930 left.

You sell it for £80 so now you have £930 plus the £80 giving you £1,010.

You buy it back for £90 and you now have £920.

You sell it for a second time for £100 so the new figure is £920 plus the £100 in your hand and you have £1,020, which is £20 more than you had at the start.
Poor horse doesn't know whether it's coming or going.
He'll be OK - I've backed him each way.
:-)
Did he feed the horse? Have you any idea how much hay cost?
This is not a stable horse. I don't think it got fed.
No wonder it was so cheap if it was not stable.
Talk about flogging a dead 'un.
Question Author
roslyn\I think it's time you did your own homework kuiperbelt!\

This is for my grandson. He is determined to get a grade 8/9 in his GCSE math. He has a bunch of past exam papers dating back to 2014 accompanied with mark scheme answers.
The problem is best described from the 2 links below, question and mark scheme respectively.
I think you'll agree (in some cases) the mark scheme answer is not enlightening and does not help the child to progress.

https://ibb.co/YdwTDYR

https://ibb.co/SnCkkSg

Also my grandson will not be 16 until very late August. One of his class mate's will be 17 in early September, making him very nearly one year older. I just think my grandson is disadvantaged because of his very late B'day. His 'brain development' is playing catch up with some of the other pupils!!

\had he an ounce of sense he would have bought at £70 and sold for £100\
BA to OG for trying to earn an extra buck LOL
I guess what you're saying OG, he was lacking horse sense!! LOL
// This is for my grandson. He is determined to get a grade 8/9 in his GCSE math. ... I think you'll agree the mark scheme answer is not enlightening and does not help the child to progress. //

I don't disagree at all, but then the mark scheme is for the marker rather than the student. It isn't clear to me either that these detailed answers, presented by people who presumably either instantly saw the right thing to do or, at any rate, didn't discuss their failed attempts, are that useful either. I always worry that "here's every single step laid out" answers have the disadvantage that they skip the part about how you *knew* to do that.

I'd quite like to see what attempts your grandson has made to solve these, where he's going wrong, or what he's doing if/when he isn't sure where to start, etc. That, however, might go beyond the scope of AB because, at the very least, it's asking for you to share your grandson's working (which he may not be keen to do in a public setting), and might even stray into asking "are you interested in private tuition?"

At any rate, I hope it's proving useful, but this piecemeal approach I fear simply shows that *we* can do GCSE maths, and doesn't necessarily show your grandson how to.
Question Author
Clare \I'd quite like to see what attempts your grandson has made to solve these\
He is revising 12 GCSE subjects. Exams are less than 6 weeks away so he doesn't have time to show you his work.

Give him a right angle triangle with one side and an angle or with 2 of the sides given, he will successfully apply Trig and Pythag respectively to find correct answers. His problems tend to lie in
those questions which are written without a diagram, or hidden within the diagram which rely on the techniques above, but he hasn't spotted it. His predicted grade is 5/6 (grade 4 is deemed what we would have called an O level). He is selecting what he considers are the more difficult questions to enable him to get a grade 8/9. He realises, albeit an O' Level, grade 5 might be satisfactory for someone wanting to become say a checkout assistant but would probably be frowned upon in other occupations.

One further gripe that he and his classmates have, his excellent math teacher took ill. Although the math teacher continues to provide planned lessons from his sickbed, the last 4 weeks of lessons have been delivered by a teaching assistant. The TA has struggled to answer queries raised by pupils during class and at times, not made the subject matter very clear. So grandson feels best line of attack is doing past exam papers!!

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