Multi Manager Funds - Hargreaves Lansdown

Dooooooooooooooonut

whiteflag wrote: »

Sorry Deemy, can you just explain that stuff about volatility again, not sure I understand.?

!!!!

jem16

whiteflag wrote: »

Sorry Deemy,

Now there's a blast from the past.

Dooooooooooooooonut

Wait, does deemy mean something? I just assumed he chose a random screename because he was a !!!!

Lokolo

Whose deemy? I thought he was earlgrey

jem16

Lokolo wrote: »

Whose deemy? I thought he was earlgrey

Do you mean Deemy was earlgrey or Dooooooooooooooonut was earlgrey (the latter I wondered about too)?

Deemy was on this board regularly around the time i joined. His avatar was the cool smilie and he obvioulsy thought he was cool too. His manner was similar to Dooooooooooooooonut's.

Lokolo

jem16 wrote: »

Do you mean Deemy was earlgrey or Dooooooooooooooonut was earlgrey (the latter I wondered about too)?

Deemy was on this board regularly around the time i joined. His avatar was the cool smilie and he obvioulsy thought he was cool too. His manner was similar to Dooooooooooooooonut's.

The latter

Oh right! I'm still young on here then if I have no recolection!! (either that or my memory really is bad!) Alright oldies

jem16

Lokolo wrote: »

The latter

Oh right! I'm still young on here then if I have no recolection!! (either that or my memory really is bad!) Alright oldies

Yep you're still a comparative baby even though you have quite a few posts - it's these uni students with lots of time on their hands.

meester

Aegis wrote: »

Pretty high then. After all, the material in numerical a-levels and degrees is generally pretty difficult to grasp.

Surely that depends on when you did your A Levels? They get easier each year.

My recollection from when I did Maths and Further Maths (2000, 2 A's), was that they had a number of dumbing down techniques. To get an A Level you needed 6 'modules'. Modules are a dumbing down technique whereby instead of actually remembering significant quantities of information learned over two years, you just need to remember the last term's worth. In addition, if you screwed up a module, you could retake it at least twice. I got 100% on the first couple of modules, which meant that when I only got 65% on another module due to lack of study (which was a C or possibly B grade), it didn't matter because I had the points in reserve (80% was an A).

Another key technique was the use of topic shuffling. Basically certain mathematical concepts are objectively more difficult, such as advanced calculus. Rather than removing them entirely from the syllabus, they were moved into higher modules. There were six Pure modules, 4 Statistics, 4 Mechanics, and 2 Discrete modules. For a single Maths A Level you needed to take Pure 1, 2 and 3, plus 3 more. Most schools chose Statistics because it doesn't require any spatial reasoning, and is definitely easier than Mechanics. We did Mechanics. Very few schools I think had the expertise to teach Discrete Mathematics.

Anyway, the result of this was that the exam board knew that those going beyond Pure 3 would be likely to be mathematical. As a result they moved some important, but perhaps tricky, material into later modules, where it would only be tackled by the maths geeks taking Further Maths. As I recall Pure 4 had complex numbers, and Pure 5 and Pure 6 had differential equations and some other topics. Pure 6 I remember was the most challenging of all. Mechanics 4 and Statistics 4, which would surely have been taken in very small numbers given that the obvious pairings for a Further Maths A Level were 3 * Mechanics or 3 * Statistics and 3 * Pure, contained all the hard stuff. By this means the exam board kept all of the 'hard' maths on the syllabus, they just ensured that few actually had to learn it. Result of course being grade inflation.

My school was a bit duff, and they didn't teach Further Maths, so I had to teach myself. Luckily we did Mechanics in class, so had the rather less unpleasant task of teaching myself Statistics. Discrete maths looked like fun, so I got the school to buy me a book on that, read about the travelling salesman problem and so on. For Further Maths you were only required to do Pure 4 - the harder looking Pure 5 and 6 were optional. I didn't fancy them, and because I had 2 * Discrete, 3 * Statistics, I didn't have to.

The other thing the exam boards did, and still do, is compete to provide the easiest exams. Schools, as I did, want to find the easiest exams because it means better exam results, which translates into prestige for the school, a better intake, kudos for individual teachers and heads of department, etc. So schools would switch to whatever exam board had the easiest exams. This of course means an arms race of year-on-year easier exams, as they try to get back lost custom. One of the side-effects of this was the failure of the Oxford board, which didn't dumb down, quite a few years back.

The other dumbing down development I'm aware of is the 'AS' levels. While I have no personal experience of them, this is a transparent wheeze to make things easier - by teaching more subjects, depth is reduced, meaning that hard material can be removed from the syllabus.

Lokolo

I did Maths A Level 2 years ago and we had to do C1, C2, C3, C4 + either M1 and M2 or M1 and S1.

Core modules followed each other, so if you didn't know the stuff in C1 you couldn't do C2+. Same with M and S.

So it hasn't dumbed down at all tbh.

But yeh you can retake. Which is fair enough, if you are violently ill or have 6 hours of exams in 1 day then you are less likely to perform if you just have 1 exam over 1 week.

meester

Lokolo wrote: »

I did Maths A Level 2 years ago and we had to do C1, C2, C3, C4 + either M1 and M2 or M1 and S1.

Core modules followed each other, so if you didn't know the stuff in C1 you couldn't do C2+. Same with M and S.

So it hasn't dumbed down at all tbh.

:rotfl:

In the UK, A-level results have risen for twenty-eight years in a row, with a 2008 pass rate (A–E) of 97.2%