Did Surds exist in early-1980s maths?

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I've been trying to help DS with his maths homework and the questions were all about Surds. I took Maths O'level in 1981 and I swear I've never heard of them before.

Have I just forgotten it or is it a new name/phenomenon?

Used to be a’level stuff. DS was doing them in yr8 or 9 and I didn’t have a clue. DH is a maths teacher so could explain it. Apparently it’s quite a new thing moving it further down the curriculum.

It was on my additional maths o level in 1981 but not regular maths.

I did maths GCSE in 1991 and I’m sure we didn’t do it!

I can’t figure out surds at all.

I've never even heard of a surd. What is it? In fact, don't tell me, I likely won't get it!

I did A level maths in 1999 and still couldn’t remember them. Ds is in year 9.

I did AS level maths in 2000 and have never heard of them.

Did A level Maths and further Maths in 1982 - don't recall surds only turds

I got an A in Further Maths in the late 90s but have never heard the term

They definitely existed in a level maths in the early 90s. Not sure whether they did in GCSEs at that time or not

I think it was on the higher GCSE paper in 2001 as my friend came out of the mock and said ‘what the fuck is a surd?’ I failed my higher mock, and did the intermediate, and I don’t remember them on that....

Having googled it, I vaguely remember our maths teacher explaining the concept but I’m 99.9 sure she didn’t call them surds. That would have been in the mid 90s.

Just googled. I remember simplifying square roots, but don't recall the word surd ever being mentioned.

They've recently been added to the gcse syllabus I think. They're pretty straightforward if explained well - they just look odd so put people off.

I remember surds from GCSE maths(I say mine in 2000), cannot remember wht they are though

Phew - looks like it's a relatively new thing rather than my aged brain.

I sort of get them (as a "simple" way of finding the square root of a non-square number) but I'm sure we managed quite well without them

I took higher maths in 2005 and I certainly didn't cover anything called surds!

I did a level maths back in the 90s. I’m becoming convinced there’s been more maths invented theses days. It’s definitely not my memory.

They existed but we never got told a name for them. We were always just told that the answer to "what is the square root of 2" is √2 - not to try to write it as a decimal.

Basically it's an irrational number that is the square root of a rational number (I think) and always written as √number.

Like e is always written as e not 2.718....

From here: www.mathsisfun.com/surds.html

When it is a root and irrational, it is a surd.
But not all roots are surds.

It sounded familiar (from maths in the 90s). Having googled it there was no light bulb moment and I'm not any clearer on what the point of it is!

DD is in Y11 and hates surds with a passion. I also don't remember them at all.

They’ve always been around- my dad (who’s 81) explained them to ds a couple of years ago. (I was pretty impressed my dad remembered how to do them).

Having helped DS with GCSE and AS-level maths, I didn't recognise the name, but did recognise the concept and their manipulation from my early / mid 1980s Maths / Additional maths / A-level maths / Further Maths progression, though i can't remember where in that progression i came across them.

Dm did them back in the 50s! I have one of her textbooks.

It was certainly on the ad maths curriculum in 1981.