Maths Extension 2 Discussion 2017

[RuiAce]

What do you think a 94ish raw would scale to?

97 or 98. I got 93 in my year and that went up to 97 and I feel as though my year was easier than this.

I'll be addressing all other queries soon

[RuiAce]

What do you think the e4 cut off will be for this year? Thanks for posting the answers so quickly by the way!

Hey!

Thanks for your speedy solutions! How do you think this paper ranked among the rest? Any estimates for the E4 cut off?

So here's what I think about this year's paper, and then the E4 cut-off.

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.

[Stardus]

so what will 86ish round to

[RuiAce]

so what will 86ish round to

Most likely somewhere around 94

[pikachu975]

I agree it was the length of the paper. Like finding A and B in 14a, the conics perpendicular question, the 1 mark Find i1 for the reduction, 16a, so much writing...

[RuiAce]

I agree it was the length of the paper. Like finding A and B in 14a, the conics perpendicular question, the 1 mark Find i1 for the reduction, 16a, so much writing...

Yep. Those two were some of the ridiculous ones with length

[pikachu975]

Yep. Those two were some of the ridiculous ones with length

Yeah lots of writing I was short on time. Hoping they give me 1 out of 2 for the arg(z/w) question I mind blanked and tried pi - tan^-1 (2+sqrt3) after finding the x+yi form of z/w. Also hoping for 2 out of 2 for the values of a in 16b and hoping they neglect the negatives.

[RuiAce]

Yeah lots of writing I was short on time. Hoping they give me 1 out of 2 for the arg(z/w) question I mind blanked and tried pi - tan^-1 (2+sqrt3) after finding the x+yi form of z/w. Also hoping for 2 out of 2 for the values of a in 16b and hoping they neglect the negatives.

Ouch. Hate those mind blanks.

I think all of us are hoping they neglect the negatives really. I know I would've if I sat that paper.

[samanthachoy]

Yes! I completely agree about the length. When reading the questions, I was so happy cause there was nothing insanely bizarre like last year'a q16. But I struggled to finish the exam because I didn't anticipate time to be much of an issue

[tripat23]

do you think a raw 75-77 should scale up to an e4? and approximately how much do you think?

[toasted]

Hey!

Any predictions for what I would need to get like an aligned 83-85?

P.S Thanks for the speedy solutions Rui, you're a legend 

[RuiAce]

Yes! I completely agree about the length. When reading the questions, I was so happy cause there was nothing insanely bizarre like last year'a q16. But I struggled to finish the exam because I didn't anticipate time to be much of an issue

It's been the first time in a while since length has ever been a problem so yeah, I think several candidates would've been unsuspecting of that problem

do you think a raw 75-77 should scale up to an e4? and approximately how much do you think?

75's always been enough to at least scrape E4.

You might get a 91 (or if lucky 92) though.

Hey!

Any predictions for what I would need to get like an aligned 83-85?

P.S Thanks for the speedy solutions Rui, you're a legend 

83 would be minimum 93. Not sure how far up it might go from there.


Hope all of you have had a good rest and I'm glad if the solutions proved useful
Scanned copies of the solutions are going to replace all the photos soon.

See you all in MX1!

[Rathin]

You might get a 91 (or if lucky 92) though.83 would be minimum 93.

He said 82-83 aligned haha.

[Rathin]

Also, what would the raw mark be to get 80 aligned?

[francoisplessis]

What do you think a raw mark of 88 or 85 will get you around?