Student section: Examiners' Reports — December 1984 Available to Purchase

Many students were weak in basic techniques. They were unable to calculate a mean, standard deviation, confidence interval, index number, or median to the extent not merely of arithmetical errors but also of incorrect method. After calculating a numerical answer, some students do not apparently then consider whether it looks to be of the right order of magnitude. For instance after dividing by 100 to simplify the calculations, it is easy to forget to re‐multiply the answer if you do not then look back to the original data to see if the answer is reasonable. For a range of data from £4,000‐£10,000 a number of students gave the value of the median as £560.