What fresh hell is this maths GCSE question?

[Lex345]

Please can someone help? We have textbooks for the GCSE syllabus, teacher has not been helpful explaining this to my daughter- I don't remember this from school either-

Work out an estimate for the value of

√63.5 <->0.17

DS did GCSE maths got a 9 and is now doing A-level. He doesn't know what this means.

No idea

Can you.put it jnto.youtube or a search engine to see if it can work.it out?

It's a misprint of √63.5-0.17

Oh no there are 2 of these questions on her mock exam and we are completely confused! Glad its not just us!

Can you put a picture of the question here - no idea what the sign in the middle is supposed to be!

During typesetting the arrows are used to lengthen the - sign but something has gone wrong

When we googled it, logical equivalence came up-but this doesn't seem to be covered and we have the Pearson AQA textbooks (higher)

Oh!

According to AI

9I’m sorry, but I’m not sure what you mean by “<->0.17”. Could you please clarify? If you’re looking to evaluate the square root of 63.5, you can use a calculator such as Mathway’s Evaluate Radicals Calculator to get the exact value. Alternatively, you can use the following approximation:

63.5
≈
7.97
63.5≈7.97
Please note that this is an approximation and not the exact value.
Let me know if you have any other questions!”

Maybe it's a test by the teacher to see who cheats and uses ai?

Its the top one-daughter said teacher said it might mean multiply (this is a big ? But explains her notes below

Not sure if I am missing something but I would have said 8 or a closer guess 7.6 or something as 8 is the square root of 64.

Does a friend in the same class have a less faded copy?

Hi, I'm a maths teacher.
The square root bit estimates to the square root of 64 so 8. 0.17 estimates to 0.2 (estimate to one sig fig). Overall, 8-0.2 = 7.8.
They might want -8 - 0.2 = - 8.2 as an alternative answer

When we googled it, logical equivalence came up-but this doesn't seem to be covered and we have the Pearson AQA textbooks (higher)

< and > are indeed logical operators /inequality signs.
<-> is, afaik, meaningless.

I agree with others it's probably meant to be estimating the value of the square root of 63.5 and subtracting 0.17

Tend to agree with this. Or could be a typo for +/-

There is a similar symbol in logic (it’s an alternative to ≡, and means “if and only if”), but that wouldn’t apply here unless you have left part of the equation out - the square root of 63.5 is not 0.17.

I knew mumsnet would have the answer-you are fantastic thank you- this is the other question which I am guessing again is the same issue?

Just to add to my post and others above Im not sure what the arrow symbol means either!

I have decided that the answer is 0.17.

Oh - the square root sign is over the whole lot so whatever needs doing to the 63.5 by the 0.17 needs doing before estimating the square root.

Sorry stupid question as the entire sum is under the square root sign- do we do this bit first? Trying to remember BODMAS!

Yes - whatever it is meant to be, it needs doing first

The second question she got right-but she has essentially multiplied them together- 5 3/5

Do the sum first, then find the square root.

So assuming the mystery sign is a typo for minus:

63.5 - 0.17 = 63.33

Sq root of 63.33 = 7.958