This page is trickier than it might first appear. Question 16a asks, ‘How many snacks were chosen by more girls than boys?’ which is a clumsily worded question which could be misinterpreted. It requires looking at the columns to see which have more of the light shading than the dark shading. This happens on the nuts column and the fruit bar column so the answer is 2. Look out for children who interpret this as how many more nuts the girls chose than the boys and the same with the fruit bars. (Nuts: 7 girls and 4 boys; fruit bars: 9 girls and 8 boys making totals of 16 girls and 12 boys and a difference of 4.) Question 16b also requires looking at the two shaded parts of the column and realising that the scale goes up in twos. Many children will guess the third part of the question rather than counting and then seeing which has twice as many. Go to Maths SAT Paper A 2011 question 16 Go to Maths SAT Paper A 2011 answer 16