AIBU to ask for help with an A-Level Maths question?

[ALevelQuestion]

DD is doing a remote learning A-Level Maths course. She is stuck on a question (attached).

Does anyone have any ideas about how to tackle this?

Thanks for any advice.

Not sure about the vectors personally, but I use quite a lot of maths in sewing, mostly geometry and a bit of trig.

E.g. circle skirts to get the waist and length correct.

I use basic maths a lot at work as I’m an account.

There was a very interesting TED Talk about how it’s not necessary to teach higher maths to most people if they aren’t interested.

I’ll see if I can find a link.

I obviously like maths so would’ve done it further but I do remember how torturous some people found it.

michelle1504 this is definitely relevant in engineering and physics in lots of ways. I did double maths A level (a long time ago!) and have used virtually all of it (or relied on the results from it) at various points professionally since - I've worked in tech/engineering. The only part of A level further maths I haven't used was the last module which was abstract proofs. This definitely isn't being taught for the sake of it (unlike KS1 English - fronted adverbial, anyone?).

The first three are just basic algebra, simplify the equations.

The fourth one, I'm not sure if there's a "proper" way to do it, but I saw that if we want to get rid of j, then a = 1/3 . You can then calculate as + r = 2 2/3 i + 2 2/3 k , which is indeed parallel to i+k, or to put it another way i and k are multiplied by the same amount.

@Merryoldgoat ah yes, the geometry/trig etc, I can see how that would be useful in many areas.

It's more the...erm... 'sums' for want of the correct terminology....as in the question in the OP's post. Looking at some pp's working out of it...I'm baffled to be honest! It looks like complete gobbledeegook to me! Basic arithmetic, fine. This, impossible!

Thank you @bathorshower I've often wondered who on earth would use this kid of stuff bar a university maths professor!

Bastarding vectors.

They were the 14 point final question on my GCSE Maths paper. And I'd been off due to meningitis when they finally crammed the entire topic into one week.

That is why I only got a B. Bastarding things.

Maths (especially algebra) is beautiful - even when it has no immediate use.