Sample
The data for this study were the responses of 2010 Junior Secondary School (JSS) form three students in paper 1 mathematics multiple choice paper. These responses were obtained from Botswana Examinations Council. The examination mathematics paper 1 was administered at the end of form three to all students in JSS schools in Botswana. The population of this study was thirty six thousand, nine hundred and thirty- nine (36,939) JSS three students out of which,18271 were males and 18668 were females. Each of the JSS students who sat for the examination had an identification number comprising the school number or the center number. All the JSS students were included in the sampling frame, and they all had equal chances of been selected. A single stagesampling was done with each student selected independently by the use of SPSS software using select"Random sample of cases" menu. The selected sample of ten thousand (10,000) was analysed by descriptive statistics using the gender variable of the students, out of which 5436 were females and 4564 were males.