#EdexcelMaths
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About
#EdexcelMaths is a Twitter hashtag associated with various jokes and complaints regarding a perplexing statistics problem known as “Hannah’s sweets" which appeared in the United Kingdom’s General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) Math exam distributed by the Edexcel exam board in June 2015.
Origin
On June 4th, 2015, Twitter user @bethdedwards_[3] posted a tweet in anticipation of taking the GCSE Math exam[1] later that morning, including an image macro of an elderly man talking to a doctor in a hospital bed accompanied by the hashtag #EdexcelMaths (shown below).
The exam included a math problem for determining the probability of taking two orange sweets from a bag, which was subsequently referred to as "Hannah's sweets" (shown below).
Spread
That morning, many United Kingdom-based students began complaining about the exam's difficulty and mocking the Hannah's sweets question on Twitter, accompanied by the hashtag #EdexcelMaths.[4]
The same day, a petition requesting that Edexel "reduce grade boundaries significantly" was submitted to Change.org[2] (shown below, left). On June 5th, Twitter user @themaine4_ever[5] posted a photograph of the "Hannah's sweets" solution written on a piece of notebook paper (shown below, right).
News Media Coverage
In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the Twitter hashtag, including Metro,[6] BuzzFeed,[7] The Huffington Post,[8] Gizmodo,[9] BBC,[10] Telegraph[11] and The Guardian.[12]
Search Interest
External References
[1] Pearson – GCSE Mathematics
[2] Change.org – I hereby request Edexel to reduce their grade boundaries significantly
[3] Twitter – @bethdedwards_
[4] Twitter – #EdexcelMaths
[5] Twitter – @themaine4_ever
[6] Metro – #EdExcelMaths is an incredibly confusing hashtag
[7] BuzzFeed – Teens Have Turned Their Awful GCSE Maths Exam Into A Hilarious Meme
[8] The Huffington Post – GCSE Students Are So Traumatised By Their Edexcel Maths Exam, They Got It Trending On Twitter
[9] Gizmodo – Could YOU Answer Today's Edexcel GCSE Maths Questions?
[10] BBC – Tricky GCSE maths exam sees pupils take to Twitter
[11] Telegraph – the GCSE maths problem that had students going crazy with frustration
[12] The Guardian – Student protest against unfair GCSE maths question goes viral
[13] The Guardian – How to solve the maths GCSE question
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