Best buys

Sample Best buys questions

A few of the 54 questions, from easier to harder. Choose your exam board and tier to practise them, with every answer marked.

1. Question 11 markGrade 3
   Tom is tiling a floor. The floor is a rectangle with length 600 cm and width 240 cm. Each tile is a square with side 40 cm. Tom uses this method to work out the number of tiles he needs: Number of tiles that fit along the length = 600 ÷ 40 = 15. Number of tiles that fit along the width = 240 ÷ 40 = 6. Total number of tiles needed = 15 + 6 = 21. Give a reason why Tom's method is wrong.
   Show the worked solution

   The floor needs to be covered in both directions - 15 tiles across and 6 tiles down forms a 15-by-6 grid, so the total number of tiles is 15 × 6 = 90, not 15 + 6 = 21.

   Adding the two counts only makes sense for a 1-dimensional situation, not for covering a 2-dimensional area.
2. Question 23 marksGrade 4-5
   Saj wants to go to all 19 home games at a football club. For each game, a ticket costs £28. A season ticket costs £379 and gives entry to all 19 home games. In total, how much does Saj save by buying a season ticket?
   Show the worked solution

   Cost of 19 individual tickets: $19\times£28=£532$

What are the common mistakes in Best buys?

When a pupil makes one of these on Revision Workshop, the marking engine names the mistake and explains it, instead of just marking the answer wrong.

• Compares total prices rather than price per unit when judging which item is better value

  Chose Pack A because it has the lower total price, without working out the price per g for each pack - the cheaper total price doesn't always mean better value if the pack sizes are different

• Judges "better value" by comparing raw total prices instead of computing and comparing the price per unit

  Chose the pack with the cheaper total price instead of comparing the price per unit - Pack A costs less overall but is worse value per gram/ml

• Leaves a money answer in pence instead of converting it to pounds

  Correctly works out the saving as 1234p - 750p = 484p but leaves the answer as 484 instead of converting to £4.84.

Quick answers about Best buys

How many Best buys practice questions are there?

There are 54 self-marking GCSE and IGCSE Maths questions on Best buys, written for AQA, Pearson, OCR, Pearson International GCSE Maths A (4MA1), Cambridge IGCSE Mathematics (0580), Cambridge IGCSE (9-1) Mathematics (0980) across Foundation and Higher and Core and Extended tier. Each one is marked instantly and has a full worked solution.

Do I need an account to practise Best buys?

No. You can start practising Best buys straight away without an account. A free account keeps your results across sessions, so you can see your progress on this topic over time.