Ah! Do you know what happens if you add lots of shielding to try to stop a high speed particle from causing a single bit error? :) Apparently it turns one high speed particle into a shedload of other slightly slower but still stupidly fast particles, that instead cause a shedload of bit errors. (IANARS but I knew one once, and I made the same assumption as you til he corrected me! :) )

... and for other British geeks, he was one of the folk that made the BBC Micro!

Mod this person up! As a citizen of the UK I'm usually of the same opinion (and that's after decyphering the difference between US and European understandings of political terms, such as Liberals.)

As is His Noodliness The Flying Spaghetti Monster and a giant celestial teapot floating in space.

You mean you don't think most would have wondered how on earth you'd add a letter and a number???

And how a person arrived at those conclusions would be very revealing, and might tell us something about that persons understanding of the world - much as this test is attempting to ascertain someone's understand of the equals sign, not their ability to perform solve formal algebra correctly. (I do agree with a poster above, that a ? may have been a better symbol, but perhaps what was actually on the paper was a clear blank space, perhaps underlined, equally clear - it was unlike to have been just "()".)

Mod parent up. Yes, far better way of representing the problem - that'd be clear to both us and people with a pre-algebra understanding, and would still test the understanding of equals just the same.

Because it's not a test of algebra, it's aimed at a far lower level, at people who would probably freak at seeing "x" in basic calculations. It's testing the understanding of an equals sign, and no more!

Most eloquent explanation, one of the few here who "get it" and understand what was being tested. It wasn't a test of someones ability to do algebra, it was a test of their understanding of the equals sign - far more basic! :)

I certain have, and am not happy! Unfortunately, my local area adult learning service (council run) has this problem - can't access my course materials with Firefox etc. :( When I find myself needing to use such sites, I do normally follow the complaints procedures. To be fair, I have found very with such problems few nowadays. Doesn't stop them being quite crap and with a tendancy to render poorly with anything but the most recent browsers though!

But chosing not to watch live television transmission is, I gather, surprisingly hard work, resulting in a LOT of hassle from the licensing authority, so I gather. :(

That made me giggle too. :) Joking aside, in my few international ebay auction, I've had US winners refuse to pay as they did not understand that a UK£1 is not the same thing as US$1, and yes, in US$ it was more expensive than they realised! (Even though I made it clear for them in the auction description.) Yeah yeah, I know its not a US thing - people in general everywhere are stupid. :)

Which is exactly why libraries here provide access to computers and the internet. (And yes, they're normally well used!)

Excluding motorways (for which I might agree with you) public highways are for bikes and pedestrians and buses and other transport, not just cars.

Aching for mod points to mod this person up. Right on the ball! This appears to be the problem within the BBC at the moment. :(