A student thinks of a number - OCR - GCSE Maths - Question 9 - 2021 - Paper 1

Let the number the student is thinking of be represented by the variable $x$.

According to the problem, when the student squares this number and adds 6, the result is 295. This can be represented mathematically as:

$x^2 + 6 = 295$

To isolate $x^2$, we first subtract 6 from both sides:

$x^2 = 295 - 6$ $x^2 = 289$

Next, we take the square root of both sides to find $x$:

$x = ext{sqrt}(289)$ $x = 17$

Thus, the number that the student is thinking of is 17.