5th Year Higher Level Maths

Reillyman

In 5th year at the moment and currently doing HL Maths. We're currently finishing binomial theorem and induction. I don't know if the chapters are in the same order in other textbooks (ours is "discovering maths") but i'd say we're about half way through the course. Was just wondering how far along everyone else is on the course and what they think of it?

Delta Kilo

You seem to have a fairly good amount of the course done so far but there are a lot of loose ends to tie up at the end of the course, and these take time. Section B of paper 2 is one example of this. We are putting all our eggs in one basket and focusing on one of the four topics, which is kind of a gamble but we are spending loads of time on it to perfect it.

My advice is to work particularly hard at algebra and calculus because if you can do these well, you pretty much have the whole course covered because everything else is a subsidiary of these.

We are using text and tests, which isn't much good, imo. We only discovered in September of this year (6th) that there was a second book!

straight_As

We're going pretty slowly. I think the teacher just wants to make sure we fully understand the fundamental aspects of the course. Personally though, I'd prefer if we went a bit faster, but meh.

So far, we've done:

- all the algebra for the first two questions.
- all the trig, including the differential trig, for two other questions.
- all the differentiation (no integration yet) so that's two more q's.

Atm, we're finishing up on induction/binomial expansions, etc.

I think we're planning on doing integration, the circle and co-ordinate geometry before the end of the year.

How much have you guys done?

Fringe

We had fourth year as well to do some maths so that helped. We've finished the course now. Our teacher was crazy though. We spent the whole Christmas term revising previous chapters and then up to the mocks finished 4 topics but we were doing 3 topics at once at one point.

With the option though, most people do the calculus one since what happens most of the time is that people just pick the calculus one all the time. Teachers don't bother teaching the rest because of this as they don't want to waste a few weeks on something that's not going to be used. Also, doing the calculus option builds on from the other things you do whereas the rest are a lot more abstract.

pljudge321

Fringe wrote: »

We had fourth year as well to do some maths so that helped. We've finished the course now. Our teacher was crazy though. We spent the whole Christmas term revising previous chapters and then up to the mocks finished 4 topics but we were doing 3 topics at once at one point.

With the option though, most people do the calculus one since what happens most of the time is that people just pick the calculus one all the time. Teachers don't bother teaching the rest because of this as they don't want to waste a few weeks on something that's not going to be used. Also, doing the calculus option builds on from the other things you do whereas the rest are a lot more abstract.

It's also the statistically worst answered question on either paper though. I think the forth option or the probability one would be the best bet to getting full marks. That said I found the calculus option quite easy when I did my leaving, but calculus would have been my main strong point.

caroline1111

We're using texts n tests and are moving fairly slow. So far we've done Algebra 1 and 2, Differentiation, Calculus, Matrices, Triginometry 1 and half of Trig 2.

Reillyman

So far we've done:

1) Algebra and equations
2)Equations and Inequalities
3)Cubics, indices, logs and identities
4)Trigonometry
5)Coordinate geometry-The line
6)Coordinate geometry-The circle
7)Probability and statistics
8)Binomial theorem and induction

I think we're doing pretty okay. BTW, does anybody know what the **** you will ever use binomial expansions for?

jfrmbray

Our teacher is just touching on inductions as it will be covered properly in 6th year.I wasnt in for 3 days straight and missed the entire explanation,I am verrrrrrrrry scared:(

Des23

Expansions can be used in the further probablility question, and I'm sure, as in most things on the maths course, that they have many other uses. Alas, I'm far too tired from finishing my DCG project to get a better explanation.