Every year, the usual suspects (usually your dad) complain that exams are getting easier and kids these days have it easy.

Pupils say this year's exams were in fact too difficult and complaints have been made to the Scottish Qualification Authority (SQA).

So who is right? STV decided to put the rival theories literally to the test. We chose the National 5 maths paper, which is usually sat by fourth year pupils and has been hugely controversial this year.

A petition is calling for the pass mark to be lowered, calling the paper "catastrophic and disastrous".

With most journalists being utterly incompetent when it comes to numbers, it took a long time before somebody brave and numerically literate enough to tackle the fiendish test stepped forward.

Mary McCool is a 26-year-old digital journalist at STV News. She obtained an A in Higher mathematics at St Stephen's High School in Port Glasgow, making her the best qualified for this job on the whole online desk.

Ten years on, she described opening the National 5 exam paper as "traumatic".

The 2016 National 5 maths exam, sat by Scots pupils aged 15 or 16. The non-calculator version was chosen as we couldn't find a scientific calculator in the office.

It's fair to say the actual paper was a mixed bag for our journalistic guinea pig.

After a storming start when she took full marks on a questions about vectors, the first four or five questions saw her chart a course from calculating radii to simplifying equations with consummate ease.

Hopes were raised that we could be looking at a soaring pass at the halfway point, with 11 points out of the first 13 correct.

In analysing where her valiant attempt hit the rocks, we have to pinpoint question five, where stress began to show.

A cattle farmer was weighing some calves , and decided a scattergraph and finding the line of best fit was required for an excruciatingly specific bovine assessment.

Mary decided that drawing a picture of a cow would distract from her incomprehensible answer, and then refused to even attempt the next question.

Question six gave brief respite but the seventh, when Mary was asked to find the length of a pyramid, was the beginning of the end for this particular attempt to match the mathematical skills of the average 16-year-old.

By question nine, the exam was over as a contest, with our subject flailing around desperately trying to cling on to any recovered mathematical memories from her academic history.

We can see clearly this did not work. After her blinding start, the last five questions garnered a devastating zero points, leaving her result on a knife-edge.

"I walked out of my Higher maths exam overjoyed that I would never need to look at a quadratic equation again. It definitely wasn't my favourite subject - in fifth year my top priorities included Cathouse unders and the release of the next Harry Potter book.

"Opening the N5 paper was traumatic. It could have been a foreign language for all I knew, and I felt my 16-year-old self hanging her head in shame at all those hours of studying completely wasted.

"My strategy was to ignore the words I didn't know, try out a few sums and hope my maths teacher doesn't have an aneurysm if she ever reads this article.

"And hey, it turns out the first few questions were doable - I had visions of finishing this paper, self-esteem relatively intact.

"Then came the equation of the line question, and I was completely put off by the context. A cattle farmer records the weights of his calves, using a scatter graph.

"I didn't have a clue how to attempt it and ended up demoralised. I lost interest in attempting the questions I didn't know. More frustratingly - there were questions further on in the paper that were actually familiar - like finding the length of a hypotenuse - but not enough for me to get any points. Whatsoever.

"The whole paper was much harder than I expected and I would say the whole thing proves that if you don't use a subject you lose it, very easily.

"No disrespect to people who are actually interested in studying maths but I have no intention to learn from this experience or brush up on my standard deviation. I haven't used much maths since I left school and don't intend to start now. Good luck to anyone sitting their exams - the battle is almost won."

Mary finished the exam with a score of 16 marks out of 40. This adds up to a percentage of 40%.

The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) marking scheme is somewhat fluid but according to standard exam grading a mark of 45% is required for a D, the lowest pass mark.

Mary's exam is thus likely to be a fail but still comfortably the highest of any available journalist in the STV newsroom.