How do you stay on top of your Maths game?

reznov

I do HL Maths and mostly get As in it, but I notice I forget material I was able to successfully complete after several months. It comes back quick enough, but still wastes time. How do you maintain technique?

edgez

You don't, it stays on top of you.

reznov

That is not promising I assume constant practice of exam papers will aid?

equivariant

reznov wrote: »

That is not promising I assume constant practice of exam papers will aid?

Understanding the concepts is the key to long term retention I think. There is not much on the leaving cert course that you can't work out easily for yourself if you really understand the underlying concepts. If you are getting As regularly, that should be well within your reach.

An easy example: don't just memorise the quadratic formula (I'm sure that you have done that), understand how to derive it (its not that hard). By understanding that, not only will you never forget the formula, but you will understand quadratic equations a lot better and you will see ideas that can be applied in other situations.

Another example, take the standard recipe for writing down the equation of a line given two points. Make sure you understand how to derive that.

Another example: the sine rule: a/sinA = b/sinB = c/sin C. Everyone memorises this easily. But, make sure you know what that common value means (its the diameter of the circumcircle, (why?) ). There are always things like this to help reinforce understanding. For an A student, I think that this is the best way to go

bscm

Keep doing papers, I'm not sure how the new course will affect you in that regard but I found last year that doing 12-14 years of papers helped greatly. You'll learn of repetitive questions/formulae/approaches and eventually break out of the "class work" mentality and into the "exam" mentality.

I found myself getting decent marks in class tests but barely scraping by in Christmas exams. Then I started doing papers and my marks in the broader exams (full papers in exam conditions) went up. Also you do notice an increase in your ability to do well in an unseen paper that you might have barely been able to start previously.

Canard

I am the exact same OP. What I've started doing is when I revise a topic, I do every type of question and write in red pen exactly what I'm doing and why. Helps it come back faster and helps me retain it longer.

For JC I understood all the concepts behind things but never did much revision because I didnt really get how to revise maths, still got a B in the exam. I dont get the underlying concepts anymore though except in things like Probability. :pac:

reznov

I'm an idiot for not doing that from the start Patchy. Solving questions wasn't difficult, so I thought I wouldn't forget how to solve them! But here I am now :rolleyes: thank you everyone for your advice =]