'Hardest' final year exam maths question ever stumps students - try to solve it

27 October 2023 , 14:52

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The students were left seriously baffled by the exam question (Stock Image) (Image: Bloomberg via Getty Images)

You'd like to think that you could answer exam questions for school-age kids - but what about one that's been dubbed as the "hardest" ever? Students taking the most challenging Higher School Certificate (HSC) maths exam in Australia's New South Wales are meant to be stretched out of their comfort zone by the paper, but some students were left baffled beyond belief by the question they saw.

Speaking to The Sydney Morning Herald, 17-year-old Vivian Xu from James Ruse Agricultural High School said: "Questions 14 to 16 were harder than normal. I was super tight on time, and think I finished with two minutes left on the clock."

The question left people baffled

To solve the question you need geometry, advanced trigonometry and visual representations skills, making the exam question super tough. Miriam Lees, a consultant for the Mathematical Association of NSW, said questions 15 and 16 of the extension 2 paper are set to specifically challenge the best students.

Complex numbers "form the basis of a lot of our modern life", she said, including computing currents and voltages. But she admitted that she'd never seen an exam question quite as tricky as this one before.

The advanced maths paper came in for some criticism online, with one TikTok user saying it was "ridiculously hard." The pupil fumed: "NESA (NSW Education Standards Authority) what were you on when you wrote that?"

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Another man took to Twitter to write: "Seriously … 51 years ago I got in the top decile for Maths Extension 2 … but I assure you the questions were nowhere near this level", reports the Daily Mail. Another student called for "jail" for whoever made the tough exam.

Someone online thought they'd figured it out, however, commenting: "As someone who enjoys mathematical puzzles, I thought this was an interesting question and combines a fairly wide range of maths skills. To solve it you need to use de Moivre's theorem with complex numbers, algebra, limits, and graphical representation. I got that x<0, y<0, and y>x." "It's too hard for me", another added. "The answer is not numbers. You have to sketch it", someone else suggested.

But have you managed to solve the tricky question? Let us know in the comments.

Danielle Kate Wroe