Maths Extension 2 Discussion 2017

[RuiAce]

Enough of that pain already!!! But how was it?

The exam is here!

<<<CURRENT STATUS: Done and dusted..>>>

Multiple Choice

Question 11

Question 12

Question 13

Question 14

Question 15

Question 16

<<<Click on any images to rescale them>>>

Commentary
Most of the questions in this year weren't too bad. What was bizarre was how the very last question ended up being a mix between perms and combs, with induction.
It was actually not that bad if you didn't get intimidated by it and you figured out the previous part out, because you just followed the same line of working out. But being real, 4U is hard enough as is, so add some exam stress and it's very easy to just get intimidated by all of that stuff.

Q14 was really interesting this year. Some of the results were really nice and it was more "fun" than the average Q14 in HSC MX2.

What I worry about this paper is not the difficulty, but rather the length. I feel as though after quite a few years of not running into this issue (because they introduced M/C), this is the first year since then that the paper wasn't as easily finishable. Questions such as Q16b, Q14c iii and Q14b iii were all perfectly manageable, BUT some students would probably have lacked the time to develop the intuition/methods to actually solve them. Even Q13b ii, whilst being a very nice mix between polynomials and harder 3U inequality proofs, could've stumped people if they didn't see how part a was to be used. And perhaps Q16a ii, if people forgot the fact that \( |z| = 1\implies \overline{z} = z^{-1} \).

Last year with the whole derangements stuff I was very unsatisfied with what they put into the exam (especially with recurrence relations and what not to follow). This year, whilst the question was more bizarre, at least the combinatorics question was more akin to the scope of the course.

So in all, I feel as though most of the complaints were either invoked by the weirdness of the questions (unable to find intuition) or the length. The difficulty of the questions themselves wasn't what was to blame.
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So I feel as though this paper will be looking around the same E4 cutoffs as last year. A lot of students would need to have been defeated by the paper if the cutoff was lowered to anything below 69/100, but I think anything close to 71 is a fair call.

[pikachu975]

Pretty hard I think. Harder than past years

[RuiAce]

Pretty hard I think. Harder than past years

Damn it. I last minute predicted that would happen when I started driving earlier. What was dodgy about this year?

[johnk21]

I thought it wasnt that hard, dont get me wrong it was hard, but i liked the exam. But me ranting about its hardness is totally different to my actual performance...

[RuiAce]

I thought it wasnt that hard, dont get me wrong it was hard, but i liked the exam. But me ranting about its hardness is totally different to my actual performance...

Ehh don't worry too much about performance.

It's always a good thing if you find it decent regardless of how others found it everyone has different strengths and weaknesses and that impacts a single paper's relative difficulty a lot

[pikachu975]

Damn it. I last minute predicted that would happen when I started driving earlier. What was dodgy about this year?

I think the overall paper was harder in general

[RuiAce]

I think the overall paper was harder in general

I mean, I wouldn't be surprised, given 2014 was so-so, 2015 was easy and the only dodgy thing about 2016 was the derangements. Quite unfortunate though.

(I haven't seen it for myself yet. Paper's still in transit.)

[lilliana.rose]

I personally found it easier than the previous years, then again I could've gotten it all wrong

[Natmo243]

I found it to be alot harder than previous years. Im still mad at myself for stuffing up most of the paper, including the easy stuff like the partial fractions and especially when I screwed up the integration of xtan^-1x despite glaring at the solution in my workbook right now

[RuiAce]

I found it to be alot harder than previous years. Im still mad at myself for stuffing up most of the paper, including the easy stuff like the partial fractions and especially when I screwed up the integration of xtan^-1x despite glaring at the solution in my workbook right now

[Natmo243]

Yep. I feel really dumb about it too. Its such an easy integral and I managed to screw it up. Only got through the first line before forgetting to split up the second integral

[Stardus]

coudlnt do last part of circle geo
skipped last 4 marks of q 16
skipped the hyperbola ellipse question and yeah.

[RuiAce]

Yep. I feel really dumb about it too. Its such an easy integral and I managed to screw it up. Only got through the first line before forgetting to split up the second integral

Damn, very unfortunate sorry to hear that

coudlnt do last part of circle geo
skipped last 4 marks of q 16
skipped the hyperbola ellipse question and yeah.

The hyperbola and ellipse were all on the same graph..?

[pikachu975]

Damn, very unfortunate sorry to hear thatThe hyperbola and ellipse were all on the same graph..?

Yep same graph and they had same foci

[Stardus]

Damn, very unfortunate sorry to hear thatThe hyperbola and ellipse were all on the same graph..?

yeah they were, what about it?