GCSE Maths students create viral storm after struggling with Edexcel question

The teaser asked: 'There are n sweets in a bag. Six of the sweets are orange. The rest of the sweets are yellow. Hannah takes a sweet from the bag. She eats the sweet. Hannah then takes at random another sweet from the bag. She eats the sweet. The probability that Hannah eats two orange sweets is 1/3. Show that n²-n-90=0.”

Students also mocked other probability equations when they were asked to calculate how much a child had raised for charity, one where they had to calculate which garden centre sold the cheapest plants and another where they had to work out whether two bits of cheese were the same volume.

The hashtag#Edexcelmaths has been a top trending item across the UK and one student used twitter to say: "My mum works for an accountancy company and it took 4 accountants 2hrs to answer the sweets Q. They have maths degrees."

What #EdexcelMaths were thinking whilst making our exam paper pic.twitter.com/9Vg4g0qXKW

— 蜂王☟ (@MollyRoberts33) June 5, 2015