By NAOMI LARKIN
Mathematics students sitting their School Certificate exam this week would have been stumped to find one plus one did not equal two.
Question 19 in the multiple-choice section of the paper asked students to pick the correct option in a question about quadratic functions.
But the answers were all wrong.
Students
had to choose from four graphs in Monday's exam - A, B, C and D.
Linda Smith, head of mathematics at Avondale College, said they would have been confused as none of the graphs was drawn correctly.
The examiners had assumed that option C was the correct answer because the graph had the right turning point, and most students would follow this reasoning, she said.
But students taught to look for the intercept on the y axis would opt for option A and therefore get it wrong.
The correct option would have the intercept at negative one instead of positive one, she said.
A Qualifications Authority spokesman, Bill Lennox, said last night that the manager of examinations and the chief marker admitted the answers provided had a "minor error."
"We do consider it's not good enough and it doesn't reach our quality standards," he said.
But the question was worth one mark out of 150 - the equivalent of two-thirds of a percentage point - and NZQA did not consider any injustice had been done, he said.
Option C would be marked as correct.
"The chief marker has looked at some papers, and considers that the candidates who understand the concepts will be choosing option C and there shouldn't be any injustices done."
Dr Bill Barton, head of the University of Auckland's mathematic education unit, said the question was bad, as many students would be led to option A because it was the only one where the graph went below the x axis.
But the paper did ask pupils to "decide which one answer you think is best," and option C was clearly the best choice of the four options - although not the right one, he said.
"I think the person who set it probably didn't think all the details through. C is nevertheless the best answer."
