Project Maths - what is your biggest problem with this?

Sunny!!

spurious wrote: »

I place the blame for that squarely at the door of 'educational' businesses and institutes.

Unfortunately, many newer teachers have fallen into the easy trap of teaching to the exam instead of teaching the syllabus and now you see the trouble it is causing with the Project Maths syllabus.

I love the way you always seem to blame the grind schools? Why should they be scrutinised here? I suppose its their fault we get rain. They are there for a purpose and clearly do good jobs.
A lot of my teachers were like that in my previous school, could never get my head around it.

frozenfrozen

I'm glad I didn't do any work until this year. I won't be experiencing any problems switching to the new course :pac:

rebel girl 15

iLikePiano99 wrote: »

are they going to be bringing out Sample Papers? Anyone know?

Pretty sure schools got sample papers before the midterm - I know the LC teachers in my school got them, it was mentioned to me

Luno

Checked out the marking schemes for the 2011 projects maths today, seems alot more stricter!

eamonn4321

Some great responses there!
Lack of exam questions seems to be a big bugbear, also the fact that it is being introduced at Senior Cycle for people who haven't seen it at Junior Cycle, also some people seem unhappy with the textbooks.

amacachi

Jesus, if one of the issues is students not knowing what "causality" means then I don't think Maths is the subject with the biggest issue at the moment.

eamonn4321

Isn't that just another word for correlation?

Random_Person

I have a lot of problems with Project Maths and these are the ones which just keep coming up when talking to people.

First of all, the SEC have plain and simple made a complete balls of introducing it. They decide to throw in a little now, a little bit next year and so on.. It would have been so much more simple to just introduce the completely new syllabus to 1st years and go from there, not change everything for 6th years who have been doing it the old way for all their school years. It's a joke that the SEC can just play around with the course without a care for the students who have to deal with their crappy organisation.

Secondly, the delay in recieving the sample papers and the complete lack of marking schemes for these papers! Who was the smart ass who decided "Hmm, lets give them the papers but not tell them what we'll give them marks for! Oh, that'll be a laugh!" It's been said by Spurious that we don't need Exam Papers and that back in the day, we didn't need them and so on. Things have changed and with the way questions are phrased in exam papers today compared to the textbooks, they're a neccessity. You could sit for months practicing textbook questions then go into the exam and be completely confused by the question as it's phrased completely differently and has some excess element which you're just expected to know. But at the moment we have nothing to go on, sure we can practice the sample papers but no answers? Ah, they're not important anyway... or so the SEC think.

Oh and the comment that students are annoyed that they can't just learn stuff off? If you learn stuff off for maths, you'll get nowhere. You can learn every formula, every little detail by heart and still be baffled by the questions. For most of maths, you need to understand it to be able to answer it, you might be able to wing it a small bit without understanding it but understanding the concepts are key and anyone who is serious about doing well in maths already knows that and has known that well before Project Maths came along so don't start saying that students don't want to understand it, we do and have been trying to understand it for a long long time and Project Maths has had nothing to do with it.

Ehh, I've just realised how long I've been going on for so I'll shut up now..

MathsManiac

One thing that I've noticed in this thread and elsewhere is that so many people seem to think that the SEC is responsible for all this, as in the following comments:

Namlub wrote: »

...
The underlying problem is what a mess the SEC have made of implementing it - incoming first years should start with the whole new course rather than bits and pieces of it being inserted into the curriculum for current sixth years.
...

Random_Person wrote: »

...
First of all, the SEC have plain and simple made a complete balls of introducing it. They decide to throw in a little now, a little bit next year and so on.. It would have been so much more simple to just introduce the completely new syllabus to 1st years and go from there, not change everything for 6th years who have been doing it the old way for all their school years. It's a joke that the SEC can just play around with the course without a care for the students who have to deal with their crappy organisation.
...

But surely it's the NCCA that put these proposals together, and the Dept and/or Minister who decided to implement them? The SEC's job is to examine whatever syllabus they're told to examine, isn't it?

Also, I find it a bit strange that people think that they haven't got enough exam material to work on. With any syllabus change that I've seen in any subject before, there was just one sample paper before the exam and that was it. No official solutions or marking schemes, and nobody was especially bothered. Yet now we more or less have four official papers at each level to go on (the sample papers that arrived just before mid-term, along with the real paper 2s that the pilot schools did in 2010, the sample papers that they got for 2011, and the real papers that they did in 2011). And there are marking schemes for two of these sets of papers (i.e., the real ones). There's also a big report about how the students in the pilot schools got on when they tried out an earlier version of these papers, and that includes solutions and marking schemes, and examples of what marks students got for different efforts at various questions.

So, basically, what I'm saying is that I've never seen anything like this much exam preparation material before for a new syllabus. And people are still complaining!

I think that if teachers and students just do what the syllabus says they should do, with all the investigation, discussion, problem-solving, and so on that is required to build understanding, they'll be well prepared for the exam.

For those who are particularly exercised about marking schemes, here's something that I have noticed about practically every maths marking scheme I have ever seen:
- If you give a correct solution, you get full marks for the question.
- If you write nothing, you get no marks.
- If you do something reasonably relevant, you'll get some marks. Usually, the better the effort, the more marks you get.

So what else do you need to know?

Anonymo

M&S* wrote: »

Checked out the marking schemes for the 2011 projects maths today, seems alot more stricter!

Afraid you lads were always going to get a stricter marking schemes. Often the first couple of exams for a new syllabus are easier than the average. And there is no doubt that the standard of the first couple of project maths papers was a bit low. One thing that remains true is that the best students in the old syllabus should remain the best ones at the new syllabus -- by-and-large. I'd agree with others here that it's ridiculous that the SEC/NCCA sample paper wasn't ready for the start of the year. Nonetheless there are quite a few papers to go off - 2010 LC paper, 2011 LC paper, 2010 SEC sample paper, 2011 SEC sample paper and the 2010 NCCA sample paper. If you need more practice there are four sample papers available in the educate.ie exam papers. So that's 9 papers - although of course since the educate.ie papers are not official it might not be what people are looking for. Nevertheless practice is practice.

crayon1

Is there anywhere online you can see the sample paper that was released recently?

TingTong

I did my exams in the 80's and we had past papers and marking schemes!

lestat21

crayon1 wrote: »

Is there anywhere online you can see the sample paper that was released recently?

http://projectmaths.ie/exam-papers/sample.asp

The sample papers for 2010 are relevant to students sitting their exams this year. The sample papers for 2011 are relevant to students currently in 5th year. Be aware that these were the sample papers for project schools and changes to the papers could have been made since marking exams in those schools.

With regard to marking schemes, IMTA branches have been holding sessions looking specifically at the marking schemes so some teachers should have information on this. I was unable to attend these sessions though, any chance anyone on here was in attendance and has information to pass on??

magicianz

To anyone doing project maths who wants to go into any course with maths, I wish you good luck and you will need every last bit of it. It is going to cause the drop out rate for all maths courses to explode in a few years =/

thetonynator

Project maths is bloody great, it's so much easier than having to learn off methods of doing stuff, you actually understand all the probability stuff. The problem here is that everyone resists any sort of change.

Canard

I agree a bit tbh. Statistics is so easy but then Normal Distribution which is basically abstract statistics makes no sense to anyone in the class. :pac:

mathsgrinds

All the past papers and marking schemes are available in one spot here:

http://www.themathstutor.com/Past_Exam_Papers.html

and here

http://www.themathstutor.com/Marking_schemes.html

Hope it helps.

mathsgrinds

Correction:

All the past papers and marking schemes are available in one spot here:

http://www.themathstutor.ie/past-exam-papers.html

and here

http://www.themathstutor.ie/official-marking-schemes.html

Hope it helps.

Togepi

My biggest problem is that anyone who does project Maths now, and wants to do Maths in college hasn't a hope. Any other problem is fairly irrelevant in comparison.

What I do like is the whole idea of understanding, and the fact that, because it's so much easier than before (from what I can see so far), I actually have a chance of getting a C or D in Maths now.

Each and every one of the twenty-five extra points are also quite beautiful.

In terms of getting points it's fantastic, but if you want to be able to do Maths after school it's absolutely hopeless, but I think the old course was the same because students were rarely thought to understand the topics.

chomps_x

I HATE the little grid you have to write in :mad: I structure an answer a certain way and there just isn't enough space! Grrrrr

magicianz

Project Maths:

Helps slackers and people who are very mathematically challenged get more points.

Punishes people with actual maths ability by not preparing them properly for college.

Ive done only 1 basic calculus module in college so far, got 50% in the exam.

Leaving Cert - A1.

My prayers to the maths gods are with next years college entrants, drop out rates will unfortunately climb higher =/

AdamD

Pretty sure project maths has the exact same calculus in it as the old maths course..

Togepi

AdamD wrote: »

Pretty sure project maths has the exact same calculus in it as the old maths course..

Then the course has been taught wrong for the past few years. It's just worse now because project Maths seems to be easier. Either way Maths lecturers haven't too much praise for the Leaving Cert, to say the least.

Ericaa

I think Project Maths is awesome

shlong

How has nobody stated what the main issue for most of my classmates is- Those who thrive at maths tend to be (note the word tend) not too amazing in languages. People who thought they were guaranteed an A are now doubting themselves just because they might struggle to either a: understand what's actually being asked or b: know what examiners are looking for in an 'opinion' answer.
Another thing... My sister's studying maths and has said to me on many occasions that ,since college lecturers are very anti project maths, very few are going to be willing to give us 'catch up' time for basic requirements in their courses. Be warned.... We will be lacking.:mad:

doc_17

AdamD wrote: »

Pretty sure project maths has the exact same calculus in it as the old maths course..

It does for this year. The Projects Maths Syllabus is being phased in over 4-5 years. This year paper changers partially. 2013 sees an entire new Paper 2.

Calculus will escape the change for current 4/5/6 year students but will in time change.

Tradceol

Not a fan of project maths at all. I'm liking the idea of 25 extra points but starting in fifth year is just a joke! Imo its not proper maths now with all the explaining and stuff. I personally don't think this was properly thought through, the book we are using wasn't even out until the middle of October! My teacher hardly understands it and is convinced that we will be moving back to the old course very soon. Anyone else confused by the little boxes we have to write in?

professore

Patchy~ wrote: »

I agree a bit tbh. Statistics is so easy but then Normal Distribution which is basically abstract statistics makes no sense to anyone in the class. :pac:

Well finished secondary myself, but the normal distribution should be very easy to understand. Have a look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqw9cLRMPL0

You kids have great resources at your fingertips, we had nothing like youtube or google back in the 80s, you were stuck with the teacher and the textbook and that was it.

professore

shlong wrote: »

How has nobody stated what the main issue for most of my classmates is- Those who thrive at maths tend to be (note the word tend) not too amazing in languages. People who thought they were guaranteed an A are now doubting themselves just because they might struggle to either a: understand what's actually being asked or b: know what examiners are looking for in an 'opinion' answer.
Another thing... My sister's studying maths and has said to me on many occasions that ,since college lecturers are very anti project maths, very few are going to be willing to give us 'catch up' time for basic requirements in their courses. Be warned.... We will be lacking.:mad:

I have always found that the best engineers, programmers and scientists are generally not the ones who got A1's in exams but the ones who can interface between the non-techies, understand what they want, and implement it.

In the real world, you will need to be able to talk to people who waffle on forever about what they want but can't describe it in any meaningful technical sense. So Project Maths sounds to me more like the real world than the fantasy academic world.

I did a Maths degree with pass Maths for the LC, as did a few of my college buddies - and outperformed a lot of my honours Maths classmates. So there must be something wrong with the old LC.

Edit: On second thoughts the major problem with LC Maths - at least in my day - were:

1. Bad teachers
2. Bad textbooks with examples for the easiest 1 or 2 problems and then 40 much harder problems with new concepts thrown in and not explained.

Judging by my daughter's 2nd year maths book nothing has changed.

doc_17

Yeah whoever it was that said they had difficulty with the normal distribution should maybe give one more look with a fresh perspective and an open mind. And the link above is pretty good too.

Like some other posters said I resent the fact that there are now spaces to write your answer into. I think that is a step back.