ATAR Notes: Forum

VCE Stuff => Victorian Education Discussion => Topic started by: kido_1 on November 15, 2007, 05:57:11 pm

Title: Best Books For Subjects
Post by: kido_1 on November 15, 2007, 05:57:11 pm
I just wanted to ask, what in your opinion(s) are the best books for these subjects:

Specialist Maths

Accounting

Chemistry

Thanks
Title: Best Books For Subjects
Post by: kingmar on November 15, 2007, 06:02:09 pm
Accounting? Neville Box's (whatever the name is)

Chemistry no-one knows due to new study design. But mine is Chemistry Two and its pretty decent.
Title: Best Books For Subjects
Post by: AppleXY on November 15, 2007, 06:02:48 pm
Essential for Spesh.
Cambridge for Acc

Lol.

However, I think Neville Box's book is pretty neat.
Title: Best Books For Subjects
Post by: costargh on November 15, 2007, 06:23:49 pm
Oh whats the best book for economics 3/4?

Theres only 2 books according to my 1/2 eco teacher.
We're using Economics downunder (new edition for 08')
but i didnt like this years textbook. the layout is awful
Title: Best Books For Subjects
Post by: pillmatic on November 15, 2007, 06:42:35 pm
Chemistry Dimensions.
-Really good esp the layout. It has exam style questions at the end of each chapter as well as normal ones. Very colorful.Also done according to the new study design.

Economics Downunder
I had that one too. Pretty boring to look at lol. Soo bland, however the concepts are explained really well IMO.
Title: Best Books For Subjects
Post by: joshuamorgan on November 15, 2007, 06:43:10 pm
What are people's opinions for textbooks for Math Methods, Further Math, and Physics? How about English? What textbooks/study packs are people using for that?
Title: Best Books For Subjects
Post by: brendan on November 15, 2007, 06:48:35 pm
Quote from: "costargh"
Oh whats the best book for economics 3/4?

Theres only 2 books according to my 1/2 eco teacher.
We're using Economics downunder (new edition for 08')
but i didnt like this years textbook. the layout is awful


Greg Mankiw's Principles of Economics is a good introductory economics text.
Title: Best Books For Subjects
Post by: Daniel15 on November 15, 2007, 07:08:38 pm
Quote
Essential for Spesh.

My school used that book... It was quite good :)
Title: Best Books For Subjects
Post by: AppleXY on November 15, 2007, 10:00:53 pm
Quote from: "brendan"
Quote from: "costargh"
Oh whats the best book for economics 3/4?

Theres only 2 books according to my 1/2 eco teacher.
We're using Economics downunder (new edition for 08')
but i didnt like this years textbook. the layout is awful


Greg Mankiw's Principles of Economics is a good introductory economics text.


LOL, i read that. Brendan, its uni eco nearly 1/2 - 3/4 of it is not in the VCE study design for yr12 LOOL.

Instead, I'd suggest Economic Activity 2.
Title: Best Books For Subjects
Post by: brendan on November 15, 2007, 10:26:51 pm
it is well written :P
Title: Best Books For Subjects
Post by: asa.hoshi on November 16, 2007, 02:46:02 am
Quest Specialist Maths to get you going. Great textbook to use over the summer holidays. then after finishing with that textbook you should move on to something more difficult like Essentials.

x2 textbook for maths subjects is recommended at our school. but i don't see the point. practicing exam-style questions is more worthwhile imo. Some textbooks don't offer that aspect of questions. The downside to essential specialist maths is that their analysis questions are not a multi-stage solutions of increasing complexity but the question is in a whole paragraph form which makes it very difficult to comprehend. I guess thats the case for most text books.

If you have to choose between Quest and Essential, it really depends what your school uses, and your level of mathematics. If you are aiming 40+ ss raw, then I think Quest is not suitable for you.

Never did accounting so I dunno. but i heard A+ accounting is shit.

Chemistry. I used heinmann. my personal preference for textbooks is that they need to be colorful and nice to read. because you don't want to read a textbook which is black/white and have no pictures. and especially in chemistry, you have to read a decent amount. you would want to occasionally look at pics/graphs for further explanations, rather than paragraphs.
Title: Best Books For Subjects
Post by: Collin Li on November 16, 2007, 07:46:02 am
Quote from: "asa.hoshi"
Quest Specialist Maths to get you going. Great textbook to use over the summer holidays. then after finishing with that textbook you should move on to something more difficult like Essentials.

x2 textbook for maths subjects is recommended at our school. but i don't see the point. practicing exam-style questions is more worthwhile imo. Some textbooks don't offer that aspect of questions. The downside to essential specialist maths is that their analysis questions are not a multi-stage solutions of increasing complexity but the question is in a whole paragraph form which makes it very difficult to comprehend. I guess thats the case for most text books.

If you have to choose between Quest and Essential, it really depends what your school uses, and your level of mathematics. If you are aiming 40+ ss raw, then I think Quest is not suitable for you.

Never did accounting so I dunno. but i heard A+ accounting is shit.

Chemistry. I used heinmann. my personal preference for textbooks is that they need to be colorful and nice to read. because you don't want to read a textbook which is black/white and have no pictures. and especially in chemistry, you have to read a decent amount. you would want to occasionally look at pics/graphs for further explanations, rather than paragraphs.


I agree with you about the exam-type question practice! Make the most of your time, stop doing exercises once you get it. To be honest I stopped doing exercises entirely after first semester and I just listened in classes because I had a good teacher for Specialist Maths. I still did exercises in Methods only because it was so easy that I actually could be stuffed doing it :P

I think the main textbook for Chemistry is changing... most people used Heinemann last year, but I think there is more competition with the new course.
Title: Best Books For Subjects
Post by: Galelleo on November 16, 2007, 08:47:09 am
the leading edge is pretty handy for exam prep , ive found for every subject... i used it for history, spce, physics, psych. but they dont have one for english :P

Also, checkpoints has plenty of practice questions/
Title: Best Books For Subjects
Post by: Odette on November 16, 2007, 08:50:01 am
Someone fix the title please :) thanks lol ..

As for books and things, i would recommend the a+ publishing notes (they're awesome from what i've seen) .. as for textbooks im not too sure, my books were ok... english was awesome though was the insight one (cd rom had great study guides)
Title: Best Books For Subjects
Post by: costargh on November 16, 2007, 08:56:16 am
Access & Justice for Legal Studies
Title: Best Books For Subjects
Post by: brendan on November 16, 2007, 10:24:16 am
Heilbronn et al,  "Introducing the Law"
Title: Best Books For Subjects
Post by: millstone on November 16, 2007, 04:48:03 pm
from my experiences
for history: checkpoints is SOOOOO bad, leading edge is good, insight is okay

further: checkpoints and A+ are both good

psych: get the A+ books
Title: Best Books For Subjects
Post by: munto on November 17, 2007, 02:54:41 pm
For Biology,

Nature Of Biology (has a fishes swimming on the front cover)
reason it is a good book for biol is because it is written by the chief examiner...