Is the Leaving Cert (so far) FAIR this year?

OctavarIan

*derails thread*

smemon wrote:

in football, you could dominate the match, have 20+ shots on goal, 70% possession and still lose due to 1 mistake or area you've never focused on i.e. a free kick.

That's happened to me quite a few times in Pro Evo, and it kills everytime.

Funkstard

smemon wrote:

we'll i wouldnt let such a situation arise. tbh i don't like maths and couldnt be bothered spending time on it so i did ordinary. Paper 1 was trickier than expected, a few new things but i didnt care, what am i going to to about it? what CAN i do about it?

Answer; NOTHING only sit and complain and mouth off about how i was hard done by. get on with it, you can't change the paper now or influence your corrector...

if the state examination commissn come out and say "yes, it was too tough, we're sorry" then i'll eat my words. but that probably won't happen as reality is, it was in line with the syllabus and there are people who will still get A1's.

in football, you could dominate the match, have 20+ shots on goal, 70% possession and still lose due to 1 mistake or area you've never focused on i.e. a free kick.

Bang, 1-0, game over. even though you deserve to win or draw, you end up with nothing. doesnt usually happen, and it's unlucky if it does. but thats life.

There'll still be the same averages, because they'll have to change the marking scheme. Thats a 'we'll hold our hands up and admit wrongdoing' for me.

How would you not 'let' such a situation arise? Have you not just been saying that it's impossible to prepare for every eventuality?

You still think I'm arguing that I deserved an A1 by the way

nedward

And, em, continuing the footy metaphor, if the ref starts making up rules and sends off your two best players, well, maybe the team should have trained harder, or bought Ronaldinho? Is that what you're saying? I'm sick of talking about Honours Maths, but that paper just wasn't fair.

TiM_rEAPeR

smemon wrote:

tbh i don't like maths and couldnt be bothered spending time on it so i did ordinary

Go away, why are you on this thing all day trying to pretend your someone else, have you convinced yourself yet? You dont didnt do the Maths, on your fist post you made it clear you werent too bothered about these exams so dont educate anyone on a subject you didnt take. It seems like your just resentful of those that do well in these exams. Have you got revenge on hard workers yet?

DemonOfTheFall

smemon wrote:

tbh i don't like maths and couldnt be bothered spending time on it so i did ordinary

You didn't even do the exam, why do you keep posting about it ?

You didn't sit down to Honours Maths this year because you weren't arsed to take the workload onboard, so how about you stop giving out to everyone about their OPINIONS on the exam ?

I'm not whining because I think I failed or anything, I'm hoping for an A2, or a B1 at worst. Just saying that your comments on it are really grinding on me and probably very many others.

GrumPy

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

You didn't even do the exam, why do you keep posting about it ?

You didn't sit down to Honours Maths this year because you weren't arsed to take the workload onboard, so how about you stop giving out to everyone about their OPINIONS on the exam ?

I'm not whining because I think I failed or anything, I'm hoping for an A2, or a B1 at worst. Just saying that your comments on it are really grinding on me and probably very many others.

Dont let him annoy you, its what he wants

smemon

so it was a tough paper. deal with it. it's a sad day when you can predict a paper which is what you lot are saying.

"oh its not fair, some new stuff came up we never seen before" :rolleyes:

Nichololas

I predicted the paper.

carlrac

Maybe its your fault that the exams didn't go well:D . I found maths paper 2 and history quite hard, but i know that if i had studied i would have easily been able to cope with both of these papers. Stop trying to blame the paper cause its probably your fault you didn't do too well - i know its certainly my fault anyway!

:|

smemon wrote:

so it was a tough paper. deal with it. it's a sad day when you can predict a paper which is what you lot are saying.

"oh its not fair, some new stuff came up we never seen before" :rolleyes:

The stuff wasn't on the syllabus, therefore its perfectly fair that we complain about it being on the exam

smemon

carlrac wrote:

I found maths paper 2 and history quite hard, but i know that if i had studied i would have easily been able to cope with both of these papers.

welcome to my team carlrac

thats my view, however these guys are trying to say they had all aspects of the course covered and the paper was just too hard. it's my view they're trying to deflect the blame onto other people.

sure, i dont do higher maths, but i do 6 other HL subjects, i know how it rolls with them. i would never dream of blaming a paper, teacher or school for MY failings. you're entitled to have a pop every now and then out of frustration but it's not on when you genuinely believe you're not responsible for your own poor result.

had the paper been as handy as english or something, there wouldnt be a word about it because it was 'as expected'.

had no females or no irish poets come up there would be uproar, but i couldnt complain, people would have no case and them rules aren't set in stone. yeah, it'd be bad luck, but you can't always have luck on your side.

over 7/8 subjects, it evens itself out.

smemon

wrote:

The stuff wasn't on the syllabus, therefore its perfectly fair that we complain about it being on the exam

how come there are people who are happy with the paper then?

i know a few in my class who said it was tough but do-able. exams are set according to the syllabus, with the syllabus in hand.

as i said before, every year people complain about maths. it's boring. what do you expect to gain from it?

abetarrush

Exactly. its over! [for me anyways]

So dont bother moanin about it, theres nothin u can do now!

Kovik

smemon wrote:

how come there are people who are happy with the paper then?

i know a few in my class who said it was tough but do-able. exams are set according to the syllabus, with the syllabus in hand.

as i said before, every year people complain about maths. it's boring. what do you expect to gain from it?

Some people said it was fine because they had those few sections that DID come up covered. The course is arranged so that you decidedly don't have to/shouldn't cover everything. Those of us that followed this advice that came directly from the department ended up, for the most part, pretty fecked.

So yes, we are entitled to complain. If we don't, nothing will be changed and the nonsense system that's in place will remain in the same terrible state its in.

smemon

Kovik wrote:

Some people said it was fine because they had those few sections that DID come up covered. The course is arranged so that you decidedly don't have to/shouldn't cover everything. Those of us that followed this advice that came directly from the department ended up, for the most part, pretty fecked.

So yes, we are entitled to complain. If we don't, nothing will be changed and the nonsense system that's in place will remain in the same terrible state its in.

that's the same in every course - you can leave out bits and pieces and get away with it. but if you want an A, you can't leave out anything imo. it's taking risks. and if those riskd back-fire, well tough luck.

the dept can't change the paper now :rolleyes: it's over. give up. *drags moaners into padded cell kicking and screaming*

carlrac

all this bickering isn't really going anywhere, so i think its easiest to agree that the paper was a little unfair, but we could perhaps have been better prepared. After all, we should know by now that the department of education likes to give one tough paper each year.

Also as smemnon said, if youre expecting an A1, you really should know the entire course inside out, which would leave you prepared for anything - even that trig question, which in my opinion wasn't as hard as everybody made it out to be, although asymtotes and such should strictly be kept to their respective papers.

Anyway maybe we should be studying for other exams instead of bitching like this, and that includes me... well i'm off to study physics. Good luck everyone!

nedward

smemon wrote:

welcome to my team carlrac

Jesus, smemon, how many accounts do you have?

Kovik

smemon wrote:

that's the same in every course - you can leave out bits and pieces and get away with it. but if you want an A, you can't leave out anything imo. it's taking risks. and if those riskd back-fire, well tough luck.

the dept can't change the paper now :rolleyes: it's over. give up. *drags moaners into padded cell kicking and screaming*

It's not taking risks when the department TELLS YOU TO DO IT.

It was a massive ****up on their part. So stop preaching nonsense and interfering with genuine discussion. You might also want to listen to those of us that know what we're talking about.

carlrac

nedward wrote:

Jesus, smemon, how many accounts do you have?

Hey Nedward im not on anybody's team - I just agreed with that point Smemnon made. I was just as annoyed at those papers as everyone else, only i didnt blame the papers for my disappointing result.

You can't expect to be questioned on the specific topics you studied cause the course is bigger than that, am im betting that the trig question is in fact on the syllabus, as a really obscure question or something. So even though it may have been a deliberately tricky question, we were expected to know it.

As well as this, there are 7 questions in section A, and we only have to do 5, so there's an easy solution here, which probably doen't need to be pointed out to you...

Good luck with the rest of your exams anyway

MKay

I have to say when the department start to create patterns in subjects, for example, ruraiocht and fiannaiocht comin up consecutively every year, its only natural for ppl to go with those patterns and depend on them. Its pretty hard not to.

Smemon, uve made urself out to be the ideal student, who can learn the entire coursework for 6 subjects at least, well for some(most) ppl thats just impossible, whether they want an A or not. I know about 5 people repeating to do medicine and even they depend on predictions and patterns. Be realistic.

"i would never dream of blaming a paper, teacher or school for MY failings". I bet ud thank a good teacher for gettin u good grades, but u wont criticise a bad teacher for gettin u bad ones?!

Its good to know u know "how it rolls with them" tho, let us know how u get on!

smemon

MKay wrote:

Smemon, uve made urself out to be the ideal student, who can learn the entire coursework for 6 subjects at least, well for some(most) ppl thats just impossible, whether they want an A or not.

"i would never dream of blaming a paper, teacher or school for MY failings". I bet ud thank a good teacher for gettin u good grades, but u wont criticise a bad teacher for gettin u bad ones?!

im not the ideal student. nor do i study 24/7 and cover all aspects of the course.

i banked on Hardy in english. banked on newgrange in art. banked on danta gra in irish. i got 2/3 of those.

had none of them come up, i would have been raging, but couldnt have blamed anyone but myself.

i also won't criticise a teacher who has covered the whole course - that's their job done. the rest is up to me. if i want to be lazy and take short-cuts and bank on a few things coming up, well then that's MY choice - i then must accept MY result. i don't go blaming other people.

Rockerette

Kovik wrote:

It was a massive ****up on their part. So stop preaching nonsense and interfering with genuine discussion. You might also want to listen to those of us that know what we're talking about.

aah how odd. in any other place i've read about the exam, on here, amongst angry pissed off students, is the only place where i hear that apparently questions "werent on the course".

how strange.


other people, from outside the student circle, have no problem with it, just pointing out the emphasis on the "lateral thinking".





In the paper today there was something about the maths exam, and some guy was saying that for one for one of the "controversial" trig questions, the basis for answering it was junior cert theorems and leaving cert trig.



Now dont shoot me here guys, im just saying what i read....
im no honours maths student, and never claim to be.. it just seems like its students and their parents, and no doubt some teachers who have such problems with it.. when in reality it was a perfectly decent question.



but what would i know?!
i do Simpson's Rule and questions on Phone Bills

Funkstard

smemon wrote:

i also won't criticise a teacher who has covered the whole course - that's their job done. the rest is up to me. if i want to be lazy and take short-cuts and bank on a few things coming up, well then that's MY choice - i then must accept MY result. i don't go blaming other people.

Jesus that's not the first time you've used that argument and I've refuted it before. If you bother reading stuff properly you'd see that no one is pissed off because they took chances. Go back up to a previous post of mine, I'm not bothered going through it again

Rockerette, that's all very well and good, but try being given something absolute ridiculous and foreign in an exam when you're already completely stressed out. All we're supposed to be able to do is recognise the graphs of inverse sin, cos and tan. Manipulating them and drawing the asymptotes is something we do on a basic level in calculus, not trigonometry, and especially not a 'complicated' graph like inverse tan

godfather69er

HONOURS MATHS IS HARD NOT EASY

you must be very naieve if you expected it to be easy. you obviously werent up to it, i took it and yes it was hard i found paper2 very fair compared to how hard paper1 was,if you looked at the chief examiners report for 2005 all the stuff he wasnt pleased with came up again,
as for q5 a i was expectin a q like that on paper 1!!! i saw it somewhere before and remembered how to do it, tan inverse is also in my text book, it was a hard paper if i fail its my own fault not the examiners.

smemon

Funkstard wrote:

Jesus that's not the first time you've used that argument and I've refuted it before. If you bother reading stuff properly you'd see that no one is pissed off because they took chances. Go back up to a previous post of mine, I'm not bothered going through it again

so your telling me that you covered every single question that ever came up and remember how to do every last detail of it?

if so, which i highly doubt - fair enough. BUT did you also read through and learn & understand every single page of your textbook?

so you did that too, eh? how about studying the marking scheme and reading the syllabus?

if you did all of that, you've got a case. if you left out 1 single page out of that, you've got no case. hell, you were mighty unlucky, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

also, there were choices, so if you've done all of the above and just missed out on a page, you'll obviously stay away from the stuff you dont know

Funkstard

smemon wrote:

so your telling me that you covered every single question that ever came up and remember how to do every last detail of it?

if so, which i highly doubt - fair enough. BUT did you also read through and learn & understand every single page of your textbook?

so you did that too, eh? how about studying the marking scheme and reading the syllabus?

if you did all of that, you've got a case. if you left out 1 single page out of that, you've got no case. hell, you were mighty unlucky, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

also, there were choices, so if you've done all of the above and just missed out on a page, you'll obviously stay away from the stuff you dont know

As I said previously, every revision question, notes on every chapter, every single past paper question back to 1994 sample paper answered. Twice. I can prove this with the ridiculous amount of A4 pads I've gone through in Maths. I understood every single thing on the course. Marking scheme I obviously know, how else would I have guessed my marks? I can tell you nothing has ever come up like it, after 12 years of the course.

If anyone's interested - the answers to both the honours/maths papers are up on leavingcert.ie. I think I've done better than I thought I did. I should get most marks for the crazy trig question.

Some of the answers that were right were even stupid. I panicked when I got p as 0 or -12/35 for b)ii) of the circle question, it turns out I was right. With such a weird answer I definitely thought I was wrong

caesar

Funkstard wrote:

Some of the answers that were right were even stupid. I panicked when I got p as 0 or -12/35 for b)ii) of the circle question, it turns out I was right. With such a weird answer I definitely thought I was wrong

I have to agree, that kinda stuff put me off. I thought i was going wrong when i wasn't and i lost valuable time. Anyway it's done now. Hope you get the A1 Funkstard, you worked hard enough for it anyway.