VCE General & Further Maths Question Thread!

[snowisawesome]

Are further exams before 2016 similar to the current study design?

[EdwinaB19]

They are reasonably similar. You’ll find pre-2016 finance questions don’t quite extensively test the current study design, but there are still plenty of finance related questions in the business-related mathematics and recursion modules of the pre-2016 exams. I found that everything else was still super relevant to the current study design.

[snowisawesome]

They are reasonably similar. You’ll find pre-2016 finance questions don’t quite extensively test the current study design, but there are still plenty of finance related questions in the business-related mathematics and recursion modules of the pre-2016 exams. I found that everything else was still super relevant to the current study design.

Thanks

[snowisawesome]

For the core data analysis part of further, are the core data analysis section of past exams a good way to revise for sacs  after attempting all the past sacs from my school?
Is the core data analysis section from further exam before 2016 similar to the current study design?
Thanks

[AngelWings]

For the core data analysis part of further, are the core data analysis section of past exams a good way to revise for sacs  after attempting all the past sacs from my school?
Is the core data analysis section from further exam before 2016 similar to the current study design?
Thanks

Yes to both your questions. You'll need to find some newer stuff or check out the number patterns and business maths modules for help in the financial recursion modules though, as that's a newer addition in recent years.

[snowisawesome]

Yes to both your questions. You'll need to find some newer stuff or check out the number patterns and business maths modules for help in the financial recursion modules though, as that's a newer addition in recent years.

Thanks AngelWings

[snowisawesome]

The ages of people surveyed was normally distributed with a mean of 19.5 years and a standard deviation of 2.9 years
Estimate the percentage of people between 19.5 and 25.3
Estimate the percentage of people below 16.6

Does anybody know what formula is needed and how these questions are worked out?

[VanillaRice]

The ages of people surveyed was normally distributed with a mean of 19.5 years and a standard deviation of 2.9 years
Estimate the percentage of people between 19.5 and 25.3
Estimate the percentage of people below 16.6

Does anybody know what formula is needed and how these questions are worked out?

I didn't do Further, but I suspect this is an application of the 68-95-99.7% rule for normal distributions. That is, 68% of values will lie 1 SD from the mean, 95% will lie 2 SD from the mean, and 99.7% will lie 3 SD from the mean. The best way to answer this type of question (from my knowledge) is to draw a normal distribution curve, shade the area which you want, and work it out from there

[AngelWings]

The ages of people surveyed was normally distributed with a mean of 19.5 years and a standard deviation of 2.9 years
Estimate the percentage of people between 19.5 and 25.3
Estimate the percentage of people below 16.6

Does anybody know what formula is needed and how these questions are worked out?

I didn't do Further, but I suspect this is an application of the 68-95-99.7% rule for normal distributions. That is, 68% of values will lie 1 SD from the mean, 95% will lie 2 SD from the mean, and 99.7% will lie 3 SD from the mean. The best way to answer this type of question (from my knowledge) is to draw a normal distribution curve, shade the area which you want, and work it out from there

VanillaRice has already answered your question, but I'd like to recommend that you copy the image of the normal distribution with the standard deviations and associated percentages straight into your bound reference. This type of question is one that reappears frequently in exams.

[PhoenixxFire]

Could someone explain standard deviation?

Somehow I made it through general without knowing how to work it out. 😂 I’ve seen a formula but there’s a symbol I don’t know, (it sort of looks like £ but less money-like I think?) I asked but they looked at me funny and said I should know it because we had already done our SAC on it.

Like, what even is standard deviation? Is it something about how different the data is?

[VanillaRice]

Could someone explain standard deviation?

Somehow I made it through general without knowing how to work it out. 😂 I’ve seen a formula but there’s a symbol I don’t know, (it sort of looks like £ but less money-like I think?) I asked but they looked at me funny and said I should know it because we had already done our SAC on it.

Like, what even is standard deviation? Is it something about how different the data is?

Standard deviation is essentially how spread out a set of data is. By spread out, I mean that on average, how far away are the values from the mean? I guess you could see it as how 'different' each of the values in your data set is different from the mean.

The big 'E' you see in the formula is capital Greek sigma, and basically means you add up something. In this case, you find the differences between every single value in your dataset and the mean, square this difference, and then add them all up.

Hope this helps

[Dr. Nick]

So I was doing this question, which asks you to convert a two-way-frequency table into a percentage two way frequency table but I noticed that the explanatory variables were in the rows instead of the columns where they usually are placed. So I rearranged the table to place the explanatory variables in the columns and use their totals to get percentages... but then I checked my answer and they didnt do that. I thought that you always use the explanatory totals to get percentages?

The question also then asked to create a percentage segmented bar graph, and they has placed the response variable on the horizontal axis and the explanatory variable on the vertical axis.

Can someone please explain why im wrong? - Ive attched the answers

[snowisawesome]

Thanks guys for the help
Does anyone know if it's possible to work out deseasonalized figures for a group of data on the CAS?

[MissSmiley]

Can someone please explain why im wrong? - Ive attched the answers

Hi there,
You're right!
The simple trick to remember where to put the response and explantory variable is just picture a graph. So the response on the y-axis and the explanatory on the x.
So in that case, like you said, the response variable (number of blood donors) should go in the rows, and the explanatory (age group) in the colums.
I don't know why your textbook gives that answer as the two way percentage frequency table...
And the percentage segmented bar chart has faults as well. You're right, the age groups should have separate bar charts, and the colour coding should be "whether or not they were blood donors or not," and obviously their percentages would be on the "percentage frequency" (y-axis)
I've attached two pictures that correctly represent what you should do with the two-way frequency table and percentage segemented.
I think your task would be to double check with your teacher straight away when school starts. But at the moment, you're right!
Does your textbook do this for every single problem?
Feel free to ask me if you want any explanation about the photos (i.e. which variable is 'x' and which one is 'y')
Hope this helps !

[AngelWings]

Thanks guys for the help
Does anyone know if it's possible to work out deseasonalized figures for a group of data on the CAS?

There is, but the way you’d do it would be similar to how you do it on Excel. In all honesty, there won’t be a time you’d be have to do the entire thing in an exam (perhaps one value in the entire table is possible), but there is a chance it’ll be an application SAC (usually this is broken down to parts, so there is some guidance). If anything, it might be faster to do it as a table on paper and use the CAS for its basic calculator functions.