Scottish Standard Grade Credit Maths Practice Tests

Shane Bonetti1

These are nine practice tests (seven half-hour and two one-hour) for the Scottish Standard Grade
Credit maths syllabus. There are selected answers. The coverage of the questions includes solving
linear simultaneous equations, quadratic equations, surd expressions, power expressions and basic
trigonometric functions, area and volume and growth calculations, mean and standard deviation
calculation, and the trigonometry of right-angles and irregular triangles.

1
(c) the author and aceinthehole productions. The author can be contacted at shane.bonetti@gmail.com. Not
much correspondence will be entered into.
 Mini- Paper Number 1
(number of marks and number of minutes is in brackets. Record the number of
minutes each question takes you. You have 30 minutes in total)
1. Solve for x: (2 marks) (36/x) – 12 <0
2. Solve for x: (2 marks) (x/2) – (1/4) < (7/4)
3. A man watches a pub door. Each day drunks walk out of the door.
Sometimes they fall down. Over a week the numbers of falling drunks were:-
0 2 1 4 7 10 3
Find the mean and standard deviation for this data. (4 marks)
4. (a) A husband and wife own a sundial made of rare metals. The sundial is a
flat disc with radius ten centimetres. They split the dial between them on their
divorce, by cutting it in half. What surface area does each receive? (2 marks)
(b) The husband and wife are both killed in an alien invasion before the divorce
settlement is complete, and before the sundial has been cut up. If the sundial
is shared equally between their five children, what surface area does each child
receive? (2 marks)
5. Solve the equation 4x2 + 7x – 2 = 0 (4 marks)
6. Simplify and then solve the equation 3x 2 + 9x – 12 = 0 (3 marks)
7. (5 marks) A busker plays his flute badly, on the street, for money. All he
gets are 1 penny and 2 penny coins. Let x be the number of 1 penny coins and
y be the number of 2 penny coins he gets: (a) There are 45 coins in total. Write
down an equation in x and y to illustrate this information. (b) The total value of
the coins is 65 pence. Write down an equation in x and y to illustrate this
information. (c) Hence find the number of 1 penny and 2 penny coins received.
8. (2 marks) The busker occasionally gets verbal abuse from passers-by. Over
the Easter weekend, he records the number of times he is abused each day.
The number of abuse episodes is 5, 6 and 10. Calculate the mean and standard
deviation.
9. Solve for x: (2 marks) (x/6) – (2/3) < (4/3)
10. Solve for x: (2 marks) (3/x) – (2/3) < (1/3)
 Mini- Paper Number 2

(number of marks and number of minutes is in brackets. Record the number of

minutes each question takes you. You have 30 minutes in total)

1. (5 marks) Solve for x and y:

(a) x = 3–y x = 5–2y

(b) 4x + 2y = 20 y = –x + 7

(c) 2x + y = 4 y = x +1

(d) 3x + 2y = 17 y = x+1

(e) x+y = 3 2x + y = 4

2. (3 marks) Solve for x by factorisation.

(a) x2 – x – 6 = 0

(b) x2 +2x – 15 = 0

(c) 12x2 – 6x – 6 = 0

3. Solve for x: (2 marks) (x/3) – (1/8) < (7/8)

4. (6 marks) (a) Thieves steal some platinum bars. They melt them, and cast a
single cube. The cube has sides of length 20cm. What is the volume of the
cube?

(b) The thieves wish to smuggle the platinum, in a didgeridoo, which is a long
tube. The didgeridoo has diameter 4 cm. The thieves recast the cube as a tube.
How long must the didgeridoo be to contain all of the platinum?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC9w4KWEgJE

5. Solve for x where 0 < x ≤ 360: (4 marks)

(a) 2 sin x0 -4 = 0

(b) 2 cos x0 + 4 = 8

(Have a glance at http://www.mathsrevision.net/gcse/pages.php?page=39)

6. (2 marks) A dice is rolled and a coin is tossed. What is the probability that
the coin comes up heads and the number on showing is an even number?

7. (6 marks) Eight bald blokes walk into the pub. The hairs on their heads are
counted. The count was, in order: 0, 0, 4, 4, 4, 15, 25, 100.

What is the: (a) median (b) mode (c) range (d) lower quartile (e) upper quartile
(f) interquartile range.

8. (2 marks) The 3 blokes with 4 hairs die, suddenly and simultaneously. That
leaves blokes with number of hairs 0, 0, 15, 25, 100. Calculate the mean and
standard deviation.
 Mini- Paper Number 3

(number of marks and number of minutes is in brackets. Record the number of

minutes each question takes you. You have 30 minutes in total)

1. (4 marks) Over five months a student is excluded from school in total ten times,
with the observations in each month 1, 5, 0, 2, 2. What is the (a) mean (b)
standard deviation (c) median (d) mode.

2. (4 marks) (Solve for x using the rule, not factorisation).

(a) x2 – x – 6 = 0

(b) x2 +2x – 15 = 0

3. Solve for x where 0 < x ≤ 360: (4 marks)

(a) 12 sin x0 -3 = 0

(b) 6 cos x0 + 3 = 7

4. (8 marks) A gardener has a weird triangular garden (see diagram). It has a

path, two triangular flower beds, two triangular ponds. Write down an
expression for:-

(a)The total area of the garden

(b) The area of each pond

(c) The area of each flower bed

(d) The area of the path

(e) If the total area of the garden is 8m2, solve for x.

5. (10 marks) A farmer has a field. It is a circular field of radios 100 metres and
in the very centre of the field there is a circular pond of radius 10 metres (see
diagram). Calculate:

(a) the surface of water

(b) the surface area of the whole field including the lake

(c) The surface area of the field excluding the lake

(d) The farmer wishes to fence the field and the lake. What total length of
fencing is required?

(e) Each year the farmer leaves fallow two areas of land as indicated, of arc 40
degrees each (see diagram ). What is the surface area of land left unploughed
each year?
 Mini- Paper Number 4

(number of marks and number of minutes is in brackets. Record the number of

minutes each question takes you. You have 30 minutes)
1. Simplify the following expressions (3 marks)

(a) 2 √20 – 3 √5

(b) 3√24 – 2 √12

2. Expand the following expressions (3 marks)

(a) √n (3+n3)

(b) n3/2 (n+n3)

3. In the attached right-angled triangle AB = 4 metres, BC = 3 metres (3 marks).

(a) Calculate the angle x

(b) Calculate the distance AC using Pythagoras’s Theorem

(c) Calculate the distance AC using trigonometry

4. (5 marks) I watch out the window for dogs and cats. Over a four hour period, each hour, I see 1, 2,
1, 2 cats and 0, 5, 2, 8 dogs.

(a) Calculate the mean and standard deviation of cat appearances

(b) Calculate the mean and standard deviation of dog appearances

(c) What can we say about the number of dog and cat appearances from these four calculations?

5. (2 marks) Solve for x: ¼ x – ½ < 10

6. (8 marks) 1000 cm3 of water is to be contained in various shapes. In each case, what is the radius?
(a) cube (b) sphere (c) hemisphere (d) tube of length 15 cm

7. (2 marks) 100 milligrams of a pain-killing drug are administered to a patient. The amount of the
drug in the patient’s bloodstream decreases by 10% each hour. After four hours, how many
milligrams are left in the bloodstream? (hint: 60 milligrams is not the correct answer)

8. (3 marks) A university student lives entirely on x pints of beer and y packets of crisps each week.
The total number of pints of beer and packets of crisps consumed in a week is 50. The total cost of
the beers and crisps is 70 pounds. The price of a pint of beer is 2 pounds, the prices of a packet of
crisps is 1 pound. How many pints of beer and packets of crisps does the student consume during
the week?
 Mini- Paper Number 5

(number of marks and number of minutes is in brackets. Record the number of

minutes each question takes you. You have 30 minutes)

1. (2 mark) Factorise and solve for x: x2 -2x - 24 = 0

2. (2 mark) Using the rule solve for x: 3x2 -14x - 8 = 0

3. (2 marks) An investor buys an antique clock for £10,000. Such clocks increase in value by 8% per
year. What will the clock be worth after five years?

4. (2 marks) There is a triangle with sides 45cm, 60cm and 95cm. Is it a right angled triangle?

5. (4 marks) A strange old woman keeps pets, cats and spiders. Cats have four legs, spiders eight. In
total she has 30 pets, and in total these pets have 200 legs. How many cats and how many spiders
does she have?

6. (6 marks) The strange old woman keeps record of pet deaths per month. Over five months the
observations were 0, 3, 5, 3, 4. Calculate (a) the mean (b) the standard deviation (c) the mode (d) the
median

7. (3 marks) Solve for x: 8x3 -24x2 = 0

8. (2 marks) Solve for x where 0 < x ≤ 360: √3 sin x0 - 1 = 0

9. (2 marks) Solve for x: ¼ x – ¼ > ¼

10. (5 marks) There are three solids, each with volume 100 cm3. They are a cube, a sphere, and a
tube of height 5cm.What is the radius of each solid?
 Mini- Paper Number 6
1. To make perfect lemon meringue pie mix takes five cups of sugar for every three lemons. I have
75 cups of sugar and 30 lemons, how many perfect lemon meringue pie mixes can I make, and how
much sugar or lemons will I have left over?

2. There are three towns, imaginatively named A, B and C. B is 15 miles from A, on a 30 degree
bearing from A. C is an unknown distance in miles from A, on a 100 degree bearing from A. The
distance from B to C is 20 miles. What is the distance from A to C?

3. There are three entirely different villages, in a different country, again called A, B and C. B is 100
kilometres due South from A. C is 40 kilometres on a bearing of 45 degrees from B. What is the
distance from A to C?

4. Consider the irregular triangle ABC. The known side lengths are AB = 15 metres, AC = 9 metres.
The angle BAC is 75 degrees. What is the area of the triangle ABC? What is the length of BC?
 Mini- Paper Number 7

(number of marks and number of minutes is in brackets. Record the number of

minutes each question takes you. You have 30 minutes)

1. Solve for x: (2 marks) ¾ x – (2/3) > 0

2. (4 marks) Consider the irregular triangle ABC. AB = 5 metres. BC = 7 metres.

Angle ABC is 60 degrees. Find (a) area (b) angle BAC (c) angle BCA (d) distance
AC.

3. Use the formula to solve x2 – 2x – 8 = 0

4. (4 marks) Men walk by. I count their tattoos. The count for the first three men is 1, 3, 5. Calculate
(a) mean (b) standard deviation (and get the formula right) (c) median

5. (4 marks) A bowl (in the shape of a hemisphere) contains 100 m2 of water when full. Calculate
the radius.

6. (2 marks) A right-angled triangle ABC has hypotenuse AB = √36 and side length BC = √20. Calculate
the length of side AC.

7. (2 marks) A right-angled triangle ABC has hypotenuse AB and sides AC = 1 metre and BC = 3
metres, and the angle BAC is 30 degrees. Calculate (a) the area of ABC (b) the length of AB.

8. (2 marks) A brawl begins. Initially 10 men are fighting. The number of men involved grows by 60%
per minute. After 4 minutes, rounding to the nearest man (which is how this all started) how many
men are fighting?

9. (4 marks) A one-legged man buys shoes (x) and socks (y). Each shoe costs £10, each sock costs £1.
He keeps the useless (to him) right shoes and right socks (a “My Name is Earl” joke) in a bag. After
five years, he dies. His relatives find the bag, and in it are 100 items, and a note from the dead one-
legged man saying he spent £190 on the contents of the bag. Calculate x and y.

10. (3 marks) A woman has £15,000, and the stupid habit of playing fruit machines in pubs. She loses
25% of her money each month. After one year, how much money does she have left?

[Calculator Hint: 0.7512 = (0.754) 3]

 Mini- Paper Number 8

(number of marks and number of minutes is in brackets.

You have 60 minutes)

1. Solve for x: (1 mark) ¾x >0

2. Solve for x: (1 mark) ¾x >½

3. Solve for x: (1 mark) ½ x + (1/8) > ½

4. Solve for x: (1 mark) ¼ x + (1/8) > ½

5. Express as a single fraction (2 marks) (2/x) +(4/y)

6. Express as a single fraction (2 marks) 2/(m+1) + 4/m

7. Express as a single fraction (2 marks) m/(m+1) + 4/m

8. Express as a single fraction (2 marks) 2/(m+1) + 4/m2

9. (2 marks) A brawl begins. Initially 250 men are fighting. 25% of the men are
knocked unconscious each minute. After 3 minutes, rounding to the nearest
man how many men are still fighting?

10. (2 marks) Simplify √32/√20

11. (2 marks) Simplify √42/√2

12. (2 marks) Simplify √75/√3

13. (2 marks) Solve for x and y: x+y = 4, 3x + 2y = 9

14. (2 marks) Solve for x and y: x+y = 4, 3x + 2y = 10

15. (2 marks) Solve for x and y: 2x+3y = 5, 6x + 4y = 10

16. (3 marks) Solve for x where 0 < x ≤ 360: √3 sin x0 - 1 = 0

17. (3 marks) Solve for x where 0 < x ≤ 360: √3 sin x0 + 1 = 0

18. (3 marks) Solve for x where 0 < x ≤ 360: 2 cos x0 - 1 = 0

19. (3 marks) Solve for x where 0 < x ≤ 360: 2 cos x0 + 1 = 0

20. (3 marks) I fish three times. I catch 0, 2, 4 fish. Calculate mean and
standard deviation.

21. (3 marks) When I fish I also catch plastic bags. On average I catch 3 plastic
bags with a standard deviation of 0.5. What can we say about the pattern of
appearance of fish and plastic bags from these statistics.

22. (3 marks) A triangle has height 2x and base (x+3) and area 18 m2. Find x.

23. (3 marks) A rectangular lawn has width x and length (x+1) and area 20 m2.
Find x.

24. (10 marks) 100 m3 of concrete is to be contained in various shapes. In each

case, what is the radius? (a) cube (b) sphere (c) hemisphere (d) tube of length 2
m (e) regular pentagon of height 2m
 Mini- Paper Number 9

(number of marks and number of minutes is in brackets.

You have 60 minutes)

1. (2 marks) Solve for x: (2/3) x + (1/4) >1/6

2.(4 marks) A man watches a dog play with its owner. The dog is occasionally
disobedient. Over five days the numbers of episodes of disobedience were:-

1 2 1 4 7

Find the mean and standard deviation and median for this data.

3. (3 marks) Solve by factorisation: x2 + 3x – 4 = 0

4. (2 marks) Solve for x where 0 < x ≤ 360: 3 sin x0 - 6 = 0

5. (2 marks) Simplify the following expression 3√24 – 2 √12

6. (3 marks) Expand the following expressions

(a) √n (n3) -2

(b) n3/2 (n+n2)

7. (3 marks) 1000 milligrams of an anti-cancer drug are administered to a

patient. The amount of the drug in the patient’s bloodstream decreases by
15% each week. After three weeks, how many milligrams are left in the
bloodstream?

8. (3 marks) A cat has two kinds of toys in its toy basket, balls of wool (x) and
balls of wood (y). The balls of wall cost 20 pence, the balls of wood cost 50
pence. In total the cat has 30 toys, and the total cost of the toys was £9. How
many of each does the cat have?

9. (3 marks) To make a perfect concrete mix requires five bags of concrete for
every three buckets of sand. I have 100 bags of concrete and 75 buckets of
sand. How many perfect concrete mixes can I make, and how much concrete
or sand will I have left over?
10. (4 marks) There are three buoys at sea, named A, B and C. B is 20 miles
from A, on a 20 degree bearing from A. C is an unknown distance in miles from
A, on a 160 degree bearing from A. The distance from B to C is 50 miles. What
is the distance from A to C?

11. (2 marks) A right-angled triangle ABC has hypotenuse AB = √50 and side
length BC = √34. Calculate the length of side AC.

12. (3 marks) 50 m3 of radioactive waste is to be contained in a tube of length

3 metres. Calculate the radius of the tube.

13. (4 marks) The Scottish Government sets up a national park, an irregular

triangle in shape, defined by the triangle ABC. AB = 10 miles, AC = 20 miles, and
the angle BAC is 50 degrees. What is the area of the park? What is the length
of BC?

14. (2 marks) Solve for x: 5x3 -10x2 = 0

15. (2 marks) A triangle has sides 49 metres, 56 metres, 84 metres. Is it a right-

angled triangle?

16. (3 marks) Use the formula to solve x2 – 7x +12 = 0

17. (3 marks) Use factorisation to solve x2 – 7x +12 = 0 (to check you did Q16 right)

18. (5 marks) An attack missile is fired from A. An interceptor missile is fired

from B. B is 15 miles due South from A. The attack missile fired from A is fired
on a bearing 80 degrees. The interceptor missile fired from B is fired on a
bearing 30 degrees. The interceptor hits the first missile at C, destroying it.
How far did the attack missile travel? How far did the interceptor missile
travel?

19. (4 marks) A man owns a swimming pool with a lawn beside it. The lawn has
length 2x and width x. The swimming pool has length 2x and width ½x. Write
down expressions for the area of the lawn, for the area of the pool, and for the
total area of lawn and pool combined. If the total area of pool and lawn
combined is 48m2, how wide is the pool?

20. (3 marks) For 0<x<90 calculate the unique solution to the equation ½tan x 0
-6=2
Selected Answers

Mini-Paper Number 2
1. (a) x = 3–y x = 5–2y (x,y) = (1,2)

(b) 4x + 2y = 20 y = –x + 7 (x,y) = (3,4)

(c) 2x + y = 4 y = x +1 (x,y) = (1,2)

(d) 3x + 2y = 17 y = x+1 (x,y) = (3,4)

(e) x+y = 3 2x + y = 4 (x,y) = (1,2)

2. (a) x = 2 or-3

(b) x = -5 or3

(c) x = - ½ or 1

3. x<3

4. (a) 8000 cm3 (b) 636.6 cm, a suspiciously long didgeridoo.

6. 1/4

7. (a) median = 4 (b) mode = 4 (c) range= 100 (d) lower quartile = 0 (e) upper
quartile =25 (f) interquartile range = 25.

8. Mean = 28 and standard deviation = 41.62.

Mini-Paper Number 4
1. (a) 2 √20 – 3 √5 = √5 (b) 3√24 – 2 √12 = (3√2 – 2) √12 = (6√2 – 4) √3

2. (a) √n (3+n3) = 3√n + n7/2

(b) n3/2 (n+n3) = n5/2 + n9/2

3. (a) x = tan-1 (3/4)

(b) 5 m

(c) sin x = (3/H) so H = 3/sin x

4. Over a four hour period, each hour, I see 1, 2, 1, 2 cats and 0, 5, 2, 8 dogs.

(a) mean = 1.5 cats and standard deviation = 0.58

(b) mean = 3.75 dogs and standard deviation = 3.5

(c) On average there are more dogs, but there is more variability in dog appearances.

5. x < 42

6. (a) cube, 10 cm (b) sphere,15.45 cm (c) hemisphere, 21.85cm (d) tube of length 15 cm, 4.6 cm

7. 100 (0.8) 4 =40.96

8. 20 pints of beer and 30 packets of crisps.

Mini- Paper Number 5

1. x = -4 or 6

2. x = 2/3 or 4

3. value = 10000 (1.08)5 = £14 693.28

4. It is not a right-angled triangle because 452 + 602 = 5626 which is not equal to 952 = 9025.

5. Let cats be c and spiders be s. Then c+s = 30 and 4c+8s = 180. The solution is c = 10, s = 20.

6. Mean = 3. Standard deviation = 1.87. The median and mode are 3.

7. If 8x3 -24x2 = 0 then factorise 8x2, 8x2 (x -3) = 0. Therefore either 8x2 = 0 so x = 0, or x-3 = 0 so x =
3.

8. x= 35.30, 144.70

9. x > 2

10. cube radius 4.63 cm, sphere radius 4.89 cm, tube radius 2.52 cm

Mini-Paper Number 6
1. The 30 lemons require 50 cups of sugar at the 5:3 ratio, leaving 25 cups of sugar to spare.

2. In our usual notation we know that a = 20 miles, c = 15 miles and angle A = 70 degrees. You can
use the sine rule to calculate angle C. And then you can calculate angle B from the fact the angles in
a triangle add to 180. Then you can use the sine rule again to calculate the distance AC. This is a very
tough question!!

3. The distance from A to C is found using the cosine rule:-

b2 = a2+c2 – 2ac cos B = 1002 + 402 – 2 x 40 x 100 cos 45 = 11 600 – (8000 x 0.7071) = 11600 – 5656.8
= 5943.2.

Taking the square root gives AC = b = 77.1 km

4. The area is found using Area = ½ bc sin A = ½ x 9 x 15 x sin 75 = 65.2 m 2

The length of BC is found using the cosine rule a2 = b2+c2 – 2bc cos A = 152 + 92 – 2 x 15 x 9 cos 75 and
so a2 = 225 + 81 – (270 x ) = 306 - 69.88 = 236.12. Taking the square root gives a = 15.37 m.

Mini-Paper Number 7
5. The formula for the volume of a sphere is:-

V = (4/3) π r3

So the formula for the volume of a hemisphere is half that:-

V = (2/3) π r3

Set V = 100 and solve for r:-

r = (150/ π)1/3

8. Denote the number of men fighting as F then:

F= 10(1+0.6) t = 10 (1.6) t

where t is the number of minutes which have elapsed. Setting t = 4 gives:-

F= 10 (1.6) t = 10 (1.6)4 = 10 x 6.5536 = 65.53 men

And rounding up that gives 66 men fighting.

Mini- Paper Number 9

1. x >-1/8

2. mean = 3, standard deviation = 2.55. median = 2.

3. x = 1 or -4

4. sin x0 = ½ etc ...

5. 3√24 – 2 √12 = 3√6√4 – 2 √3√4 = 6√6 – 4 √3

6. (a) √n (n3) -2 = n1/2 n-6 = n-11/2 (b) n3/2 (n+n2`) = n5/2 + n7/2

7. drug remaining = 1000 (0.85) 3 = 614 milligrams

8. x = 20, y = 10
9. Pretty obviously, we have too much sand, or not enough concrete. 100 bags
of concrete and 60 buckets of sand gives 20 concrete mixes and leaves 15
buckets of sand over.

10. We have AB = 20 miles, BC = 50 miles and angle BAC = 140 degrees. Use the
sine rule to find angle BCA. Use the fact that the interior angles of a triangle
sum to 180 to find angle ABC. Use the sine rule to find AC.

11. Using Pythagoras’ Theorem AC = √16 = 4.

12. The radius is 2.30 metres.

13. Using the area rule, Area = ½ 10 x 20 x sin 50 = 100 x 0.766 = 76.6 miles 2.
Using the cosine rule BC 2 = 100 + 400 – 2 x10 x20 x cos 50 = 500 -400 cos 50 =
500 – 257.12 = 242.88 miles

14. 5x3 -10x2 = 5x2 (x-2) = 0 therefore x = 0 or 2.

15. No. Using Pythagoras’ Theorem, 492 + 562 = 5537 < 842.

16. x = 3 or 4.

17. x = 3 or 4.

18. The angles of the triangle are CAB = 100, ABC = 30, therefore ACB = 50. The
missing lengths are given by the sine rule, using AB = 15 miles.

19. Area of lawn = 2x2, Area of pool = ½x 2 . Total area is (5/2) x2. Set that equal
to 48 and solve to given x = 4.38 metres, and therefore the width of the pool is
½x = 2.19 metres.

20. tan x0 = 16 etc ...