Review Maths P2 Higher

Faerie

Funkstard wrote:

The old maths course was alot harder. I'm not sure what sort of maths it taught (whether it encouraged relative thinking or whatever), but they had to change the syllabus I think because it was just too hard. Maybe the Irish are just too stupid.

Well actually the leaving cert exams are probably the most difficult final exams in the world. My English teacher told us that our standard of higher English in this country is equivalent to about third year in a College degree in English in America. I imagine the standard of higher maths is pretty high too.

casanova_kid

What was bad about the maths paper is that it it was more a test of your ability of a mathemitician than your knowledge of maths. This annoyed me, as i can do maths pretty well and know my formulas and how to do most of the questions but i'm not able to figure out problems i've never seen before on the day of a high pressure exam. I still passed the thing, but I think it was fairly disgraceful.,

lost_soul

Am in the only person in the country who thought that q5 was the easiest question on the paper. Alll you had to do was look at your log tables and transfer it onto a graph. i am by no means an A student and i found ther rest of the questions really hard and i will be lucky to get more than an D2 overall. That question didnt require a lot of matamatical thinking!!!!!

casanova_kid

lost_soul wrote:

Am in the only person in the country who thought that q5 was the easiest question on the paper. Alll you had to do was look at your log tables and transfer it onto a graph. i am by no means an A student and i found ther rest of the questions really hard and i will be lucky to get more than an D2 overall. That question didnt require a lot of matamatical thinking!!!!!

I think that was fine but the parts 3 and 4 of Q5(a) were impossibel.

Faerie

I agree, I mean where did the asymptotes come into it? I totally made up the last part. I just tried stuff out on my calculator and then put it down based on that! I mentioned that tan90 goes to infinity because it's in the logtables!
Actually what was the shape of your graph?

DonaldDuck

casanova_kid wrote:

I think that was fine but the parts 3 and 4 of Q5(a) were impossibel.

Part 4 was very very straight forward.Saying that,I did it wrong because of an overlook
I said it was 0<tank<90 instead of -90<tank<90

Feral Mutant

The thing in the paper was complaining that graphing route 3 was "an impossible task for leaving cert students". Pfft. I just put it into my calculator, got one point something and graphed that.

DonaldDuck

Feral Mutant wrote:

The thing in the paper was complaining that graphing route 3 was "an impossible task for leaving cert students". Pfft. I just put it into my calculator, got one point something and graphed that.

Thank god,thats what I did and after reading the paper I was thinking I'd done my graph completly wrong :eek:

Funkstard

Was that the answer to the -tank(tank) thing? I put down something about tan pie/2 being undefined because it was 1/0 because that's all I could think of.

My graph was wrong I know what, i was just putting in -pie/3, -pie/6 for the negative x values, i should have been taking them away from 2pie.

I'm more pissed off at other stuff I got wrong in the paper that I shouldn't have. Like in further calculus and series c), I did the limit -> oo of the second general term, then as the examiner was telling us to stop realised I'd forgotten to fcuking put in the x! I had focused too much on the n! stuff.

Oh well, I presume everyone was going mad over that and I kind of knew what I was doing with the tests for divergence/convergence/incinclusive so I should get some of the marks.

JCB

Overall though what are people thinking they're goin to get? I've blown an A1/A2 deffo B1 (hopefully) So I guess i'm on the waiting list to have the marking scheme bring me to an A1 (some hope!) Were many of ye also lookin for A1's?

Funkstard

JCB wrote:

Overall though what are people thinking they're goin to get? I've blown an A1/A2 deffo B1 (hopefully) So I guess i'm on the waiting list to have the marking scheme bring me to an A1 (some hope!) Were many of ye also lookin for A1's?

I'm *looking* for an A1, but it's just that I've fecked away my chances of it. From my calculations I'm in B2 territory which isn't the end of the world, but considering the work I put into maths...

Raphael

Teachers say yesterday's paper 2 was designed to put rote learners - and those who had learned off grind-school notes - at a disadvantage over those who can employ independent mathematical reasoning.

Y'know it really highlights the flaws in the Irish education system that that's viewed as a bad thing

I think I got my A1, had no trouble with either paper. Then again, rote learning isn't my thing.

caesar

NADA wrote:

That's the problem. Most people think honours maths is hard where as if they actually learn what happens it will be easier. I know they think it's earier to just learn stuff off but understanding makes that much more easier. OF course it's easier to learn by rote in the short term were as if you understand something you will never forget it.

I agree but by the time i realised this it was too late. When i was studying i found that i wasn't happy if i didn't understand the theory behind the maths and i started trying to understand it but this was only about 3 weeks ago and it was too late. It becomes so much easier when you understand the theory behind. However, the end result for me is that i just about passed. Changing teachers at the beginning of sixth year didn't help either.

Attractive Nun wrote:

Personally I think the department are absolutely right to encourage independent mathematical thinking.

But they should actually tell us they want to do that, and teach us how.

Agreed. The thing is that we weren't expecting a paper where we were going to face the idea of independent mathematical thinking. For god sake it was a 2 1/2 hour exam where we had to do 6 questions. Our teachers started the course with us in 5th year and they had to get the course done. Most of them didn't go through the theory because a)there wasn't enough time b)once their students knew how to do it, the exam papers were the next focus. Once you had them covered you expected the question to take that format in the exam, thats the only reason why we use them. And look at the paper they gave us.

I'm for the idea of independent mathematical thinking but i don't think the examinations commision should have decided to introduce it without warning.

Raphael

Aye, changing it without warning people was a bit unfair on the departments side.

Feral Mutant

In the Further Calculus and Series part c, I got (i)R=x (ii)R=x/4. For both I said that for x>0 it diverged, x=o inconclusive and x<0 converges. Anyone else get this?

Funkstard

It's inconclusive if |x|=1

What I did was get my value, then put in |x|<1 to test for the range of convergence, |x|>1 to test the range for divergence and |x|=1 to test the range for inconclusive...ness.

Raphael

That's wrong....

Firstly, it's then -1<R<1 that it converges
Secondly, you should have subbed what you got into that, i.e. -1<x/4<1 ; -4<x<4

Not sure about the actual numbers though, can;t remember what I got.

Feral Mutant

Oh yeah, crap

blah blah blah

I feel like an idiot. a lot of people are talking about not getting their A1s while i'm hoping I at least passed....well i'm pretty sure i did......is it really wrong of me to blame my teacher for some of it?:(

whassupp2

blah blah blah wrote:

I feel like an idiot. a lot of people are talking about not getting their A1s while i'm hoping I at least passed....well i'm pretty sure i did......is it really wrong of me to blame my teacher for some of it?:(

Welcome 2 boards

blah blah blah

shucks

casanova_kid

blah blah blah wrote:

I feel like an idiot. a lot of people are talking about not getting their A1s while i'm hoping I at least passed....well i'm pretty sure i did......is it really wrong of me to blame my teacher for some of it?:(

Hey, i have as much chance of getting an A1 as England do at winning the world cup.ie.0. I'll be looking to pass.

sariane

yeah i was hoping for an A1 def down in the B terrritory now! so dissapointed!!!!

blah blah blah

we can bond over our crapness, although i'm sure you're not as crap as you make out

blah blah blah

sariane wrote:

yeah i was hoping for an A1 def down in the B terrritory now! so dissapointed!!!!

SHUTUP! .....what me jealous ....never.....

anna.fun

Faerie wrote:

Well actually the leaving cert exams are probably the most difficult final exams in the world. My English teacher told us that our standard of higher English in this country is equivalent to about third year in a College degree in English in America. I imagine the standard of higher maths is pretty high too.

It's not like that with maths... I know that in Germany, Norway, etc. they are doing a lot more in Maths especially concerning Differentiation, Integration, Probability and Statistics, etc.
My friend in Germany (she's in 6th year there) had to calculate things in a sphere and they would be doing differentiation and integration in 4th year and then move on to Probability, which is at the minimum standard of q.9... and then they have another question which takes q.11 as minimum standard..

Zoodlebop

Raphael wrote:

Y'know it really highlights the flaws in the Irish education system that that's viewed as a bad thing

I think I got my A1, had no trouble with either paper. Then again, rote learning isn't my thing.

Exactly. Are we supposed to learn and get an education, or is the leaving cert about stuffing as much information as you can fit into your brain? I don't really see why the higher maths paper shouldn't been challenging. I did find it different to the past papers, but I got everything out in the end. Did we expect the exact same questions as in the 2003 paper, just with different numbers??

I think the most important factor is your teacher. If he/she is uninspired and doesn't love maths, then he/she will not give you good understanding of the material, just an overview of the syllabus. Sure we could do that ourselves!
Luckily for me I have an older brother doing maths in uni. who loves it. Without him I'd prolly be in the E/D range

Zoodlebop

anna.fun wrote:

It's not like that with maths... I know that in Germany, Norway, etc. they are doing a lot more in Maths especially concerning Differentiation, Integration, Probability and Statistics, etc.
My friend in Germany (she's in 6th year there) had to calculate things in a sphere and they would be doing differentiation and integration in 4th year and then move on to Probability, which is at the minimum standard of q.9... and then they have another question which takes q.11 as minimum standard..

How many subjects would she be doing?

whassupp2

The level of education of leaving cert students is excellent compared with other countries. British colleges accept Irish students with basic requirements. But each subject alone, might not be of a high standard. maths is a perfect example.

JoseJones

I might still scrape an A1. Almost perfect paper 1, and on paper 2, 1(c)(ii), 2(c), 3(c) are the only ones I didn't get, and I will at least get attempt marks for them.