ATAR Notes: Forum

Archived Discussion => 2009 => End-of-year exams => Exam Discussion => Victoria => Specialist Mathematics => Topic started by: monokekie on November 03, 2009, 02:02:37 pm

Title: this year scaling change much?
Post by: monokekie on November 03, 2009, 02:02:37 pm
as the heading.
Title: Re: this year scaling change much?
Post by: dekoyl on November 03, 2009, 02:04:21 pm
By everyone else's standard, both exams were quite easy so I guess not.
Title: Re: this year scaling change much?
Post by: shinny on November 03, 2009, 02:08:26 pm
Scaling doesn't depend on exam difficulty....it depends how the spesh cohort goes in their other subjects. You won't really be able to find out until the official results come out since there's no real way of gauging this I guess.
Title: Re: this year scaling change much?
Post by: NE2000 on November 03, 2009, 03:15:26 pm
As I have mentioned elsewhere: study hard for methods if you're doing methods this year too. By what I've read over these forums, ff the people doing spesh dominate methods then scaling increases.
Title: Re: this year scaling change much?
Post by: shinny on November 03, 2009, 03:16:44 pm
As I have mentioned elsewhere: study hard for methods if you're doing methods this year too. By what I've read over these forums, ff the people doing spesh dominate methods then scaling increases.

Are you sure that's true? Kinda defies the point of scaling really...
Title: Re: this year scaling change much?
Post by: chem-nerd on November 03, 2009, 03:55:01 pm
Quote from: abc of scaling
Mathematics
VCE Mathematics studies are designed to cater for students of differing abilities and interests. Specialist Mathematics is the most difficult, followed by Mathematical Methods and then by Further Mathematics.
To ensure that students undertaking the more difficult Mathematics studies are not disadvantaged, Mathematical Methods is compared to Further Mathematics and adjusted up as and if necessary. Similarly Specialist Mathematics is compared to Mathematical Methods and adjusted up as and if necessary.

http://www.vtac.edu.au/pdf/publications/abcofscaling.pdf

and there's another more detailed scaling document floating around in VTAC's publication section that explains this in more detail if you're really interested
Title: Re: this year scaling change much?
Post by: jules on November 03, 2009, 04:04:44 pm
what if we did methods last year? does it still apply?
Title: Re: this year scaling change much?
Post by: NE2000 on November 03, 2009, 04:24:16 pm
As I have mentioned elsewhere: study hard for methods if you're doing methods this year too. By what I've read over these forums, ff the people doing spesh dominate methods then scaling increases.

Are you sure that's true? Kinda defies the point of scaling really...

I think the idea is that if people getting 30 for spesh get 50 for methods then the most logical explanation is that the spesh cohort is so hugely competitive and strong that they are getting low study scores simply because of that strength. And so the scaling would cater for that.
Title: Re: this year scaling change much?
Post by: kashmuq on November 03, 2009, 04:55:59 pm
Yeah spesh scaling depends on how the spesh ppl do in methods...i think a similar thing happens with methods and further

And it's a bit of a generalisation to say everyone found the exam easy, just because most people on this forum did.
Title: Re: this year scaling change much?
Post by: almostatrap on November 03, 2009, 04:58:34 pm
And it's a bit of a generalisation to say everyone found the exam easy, just because most people on this forum did.

yeah, i hardly think VN is an accurate cross section of the state.
Title: Re: this year scaling change much?
Post by: THem on November 03, 2009, 11:06:26 pm
So does that mean if everyone in spesh completely destroyes the Methods exams, then spesh scaling would be higher? :D
Title: Re: this year scaling change much?
Post by: mystikal on November 03, 2009, 11:14:04 pm
nice motivation!
Title: Re: this year scaling change much?
Post by: dejan91 on November 03, 2009, 11:23:59 pm
And it's a bit of a generalisation to say everyone found the exam easy, just because most people on this forum did.

yeah, i hardly think VN is an accurate cross section of the state.

It's like asking kids from MHS...
and remember, VCAA spends months planning these exams to make sure there is an even distribution of people (ignore this years physics exam :P) and that scaling, etc is fairly consistent.

Title: Re: this year scaling change much?
Post by: THem on November 03, 2009, 11:25:01 pm
Maybe they made physics unit 3 super easy and they're gonna make unit 4 super impossible :O
Title: Re: this year scaling change much?
Post by: eccentric on November 04, 2009, 06:36:39 am
There's a "scaling link" between all three maths.