Did Surds exist in early-1980s maths?

[wineoclockthanks]

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?

I have vague memories of them.

It wasn't in our Maths O level. It was probably in the AO level pure maths (as opposed to AO Statistics). Or maybe they hadnt been invented!

I did my maths GCSE in 2009.. I got an A.. never heard of surds!

It must have been on either GCSE higher tier or A-level in the late 90’s as I definitely did them.

They were in maths A level at least 1986 onwards. In fact, I'm quite sure we did them at o-level in the mid 80s. I expect they're a pretty old device as expressing the square root of 36 as 2 root 3 would have been fairly valuable before calculators.

The square root of 36 is not 2 root 3.

Yes, I remember them! I did A-levels in 1999, don't remember if it was A-level or GCSE though.

expressing the square root of 36 as 2 root 3
What? The square root of 36 is 6. 2 root 3 is the square root of 12.

I did a level maths in 93 and we definitely did surds ( dont ask me how they work though...)

Yup, I did them for AO maths in 1986.

I did a level maths and I remember the word because I thought ‘absurd’. I kind of remember the explanations given here. I’m thinking I might have to re-do maths just so I can continue to help DD with her homework!

Unless you're Scottish and did OGrades - definitely a feature in 1990!

O’level maths 1984. No recollection of this.

I did them in the 1990s, but can't remember if was at gcse or a level.

I only remember then beacuse we used to call them turds (sophisticated)

Pretty much the first thing we did in A-Level maths 1998. Wouldn't have a scooby now

I did the higher paper in 1990. Got an A (God knows how ) I had never heard of them.

Dd sat GCSEs this year. We came across all my GCSE revision and textbooks and compared it for fun. This year's syllabus was much harder. She was most indignant that we didn't have to do surds.

I've never even heard of that! GCSE year 1997.

I did O Level in 1983 and A level afterwards. They were on my A Level but not O Level.

BUT there was a huge range of maths O Levels available. I did lots of 'modern maths' that my brother didn't do (different schools) he did loads I didn't eg I did sets and linear programming.

OP Open university MU123 is roughly equivelent to GCSE and the books have really clear introductions and explanatins, it might be worth investing in the books. Book A has surds.

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/B00AZZ3W2S/ref=dp_olp_used?condition=used&tag=mumsnetforum-21&ie=UTF8

We did them, but no special words for it. Just part of simplifying.

Maths is a huge collection of topics, many at similar levels once you get past the basics, and the curriculum has a particular choice of topics at that level, but it doesn't mean that they are necessarily easier or harder than another selection, just different (though obviously some are generally easier or harder!).

We did logarithms, more logic, matrices, inverse trig functions etc in what would have been Year 11/12 at my school (abroad), and it's not that it was harder than what they do now, just different. There will be some topics they do now that we didn't do. (suvat equations, though we did do them in physics, that formula about half-life and so on.

I did them in GCSE maths in the mid 00s.

Number squares are a complete mystery to me as well and that's primary school level!