I am wondering about the marks given in A-Level maths for working out: can you still get the marks if use an alternate, valid method that still gets the correct answer?
One example is question 9, part iii here:
http://www.xtremepapers.com/papers/...AS Level/Mathematics (9709)/9709_w05_qp_1.pdf
To work out the angle I used a scalar product and got the correct answer of 8.1 degress (to 1 dp), however, this was not the method used in the mark scheme:
http://www.xtremepapers.com/papers/...AS Level/Mathematics (9709)/9709_w05_ms_1.pdf
This has come up often and I think that its unreasonable to expect candidates to only use one method when there are nuerous different ways of getting the same answer, even if some are slightly longer than others.
Does anyone know what happens here?
One example is question 9, part iii here:
http://www.xtremepapers.com/papers/...AS Level/Mathematics (9709)/9709_w05_qp_1.pdf
To work out the angle I used a scalar product and got the correct answer of 8.1 degress (to 1 dp), however, this was not the method used in the mark scheme:
http://www.xtremepapers.com/papers/...AS Level/Mathematics (9709)/9709_w05_ms_1.pdf
This has come up often and I think that its unreasonable to expect candidates to only use one method when there are nuerous different ways of getting the same answer, even if some are slightly longer than others.
Does anyone know what happens here?
