Eleven-Plus Preparation Specialists
As part of the 11+, you’ll need to understand simple algebra. Depending on the school that you’re applying to, there may be a need for more complex work too – however, this is to be expected of more selective schools. This article focuses on the simple algebra that you’ll need for any 11+ examination.
You should be aware of, and able to use, simple formulae to solve common problems. An example that you should be aware of is:
1/2bh – this is ½ * base * height, which is used to find the area of a triangle.
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A linear sequence is a group of numbers, which are ordered according to a particular rule. A linear sequence is one that increases by the same amount each time, like 3,6,9,12. A non-linear sequence might increase or decrease by a different amount each time, like 1,2,3,5,8,13 (where we are adding the previous two numbers). Whilst you can expect both types of sequence in the 11+, you’d be expected to represent only linear numbers using algebra. To represent numbers in sequences, we use the term n, where ‘n’ represents the term. As an example, the rule ‘2n+2’ would give the following:
4,6,8,10, etc
Looking at this from another angle, the numbers
1,3,5,7,9 would be represented by the rule 2n-1
A simple way of working out these problems whilst learning how to do them is to use a table, in which you write the value of n in one column and the value of the part of the sequence that it represents in the other column.
You may need to find specific numbers in a sequence. As an example, you might be given
1,3,5,7,9, and then asked to find the 12th term in the sequence. You would therefore use 2n-1, and multiply 12 by 2, before subtracting 1; you therefore find that the 12th term is 23.
Imagine that you are told that x+y = 10. With no more information, what could x and y be?
Possible combinations of values are therefore 1,9 ; 2,8; 7,3; 6,4 ; 4,6 ; 3,7 ; 2,8 ; 1,9
Remember the numbers must be different as they are represented by different letters.
You must also be able to do slightly more complex iterations of this that involve e.g. 2x, or 2y.
If you are told that a number of dogs, all of whom have four legs, have a total of 32 legs, and are asked how many dogs there must be, you should be able to understand that this can be written
4x = 32
Therefore x = 8
As we have used x to represent the unknown – in this case, the number of dogs.
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