Advice for future Mathematical Methods students?

[Azerel]

Hey guys, now that exams for Methods is over - class of '12, is there any advice that you would give to future students in Math Methods such as myself and others taking up this subject in '13?
Such as -
Would should we expect?
How can we do well and what should we do to furthur improve?

[pi]

Would should we expect?

Similar to Units 1/2. Expect a little step-up in difficulty (mainly applications) and some new tech-heavy prob (which is easier than unit 1/2 prob).

How can we do well and what should we do to furthur improve?

Ideally: do questions from textbooks, ask questions on here, make a bound reference throughout the year, and do enough trials to feel comfortable with the course content.

[charmanderp]

Do the exercises. No joke. I did poorly on my SACs because I didn't practise, hence I didn't understand the course material. Had SAC scores of 80%, 50%, 70%, 70%, 80% and 90%. All above the median and mean at my school but still pretty bad. Then I just started doing VCAA practise exams at the end of the year as well as occasionally looking through my textbook and doing the odd questions and my understanding of all of the maths involved went through the roof. Wish I'd done this from the start. At least half an hour a day should be spent doing the exercises and thinking about why this solution pathway works. It'll go a long, long way.

[Special At Specialist]

Do tech-assist exams, not just tech-frees. There is a lot of temptation to just do those quick 1 hour tech-free exams, because let's face it: it's not everyday that you can be bothered sitting down for 2 hours to do a tech-assist exam. But you have to try!

[charmanderp]

Do tech-assist exams, not just tech-frees. There is a lot of temptation to just do those quick 1 hour tech-free exams, because let's face it: it's not everyday that you can be bothered sitting down for 2 hours to do a tech-assist exam. But you have to try!

I found tech-free exams to be a great place to start though - you're practising all of the basic skills which will aid you in doing the tech-active exams. Plus you know which areas of the course you need to revise, and they're not demoralising like exam 2s can be at first.

[gummo]

Definitely make your bound reference throughout the year. You won't really use it in the end but it saves you from freaking out at the end of the year. My teacher wrote notes on the board every class and I'd just copy those and supplement them with more difficult questions.

Start doing trials early (August/September) and do them gradually throughout the latter half of the year. Always correct thoroughly with bright red pen and make sure you know exactly how to do a question you got wrong if you encounter a question like it again. And always do them to time! My biggest downfalls were always giving myself an extra five minutes for exam 2 and getting too lazy to check over if I finished early.

Good luck!

[nisha]

Hmmm. Its difficult to say. I felt completely prepared for methods (doing close to 40-50 exams) and yet I found Exam 2 quite difficult.
I sucked in methods in year 11, because I tried to concentrate on my 3/4 at the time and some other unfortunate circumstances.
All year, I did:
- Downloaded past sacs from other schools and completed them
-Checkpoints
-EVERY SINGLE EXERCISE IN THE TEXTBOOK
-Worked from other textbooks (their chapter reviews)
-My teacher gave me this really old book filled with MC exam style questions and extended response questions that was published like in 1994, and so I did that too.
-Wrote my own notes, which I used to revise whenever I needed
-Did prac exams (admittedly more Exam 1's but in the end....I just stopped printing them so I had a huge pile of Exam 2's to do and slowly slowly you get used to doing them)
-Did school sacs, and after went over them, rewrote mistakes down and transferred in my notes.

-----
So thats what I did to prepare. In the exam, if you are well prepared it gives you an advantage but its all a lucky dip really. Exam 2 2012 (imo) was much more difficult than 2009,2010 or 2011 and it really depends (at the end of the day) IF YOU UNDERSTAND what you are doing. One girl at my school found it easy. Just one, ad she finished early. When you do the exam, you might understand. But the difference there was that she had been preparing for the methods exam ever since she was in year 10, and she regularly tutored 3/4 students throughout the year.

[gibsonaxxxs]

Great that you're getting ready so early

A couple of my own tips:

Focus on the concepts, not just the exercises. Make sure you understand everything completely, and in every way that it can be used; eg different contexts, different wordings. This will help immensely with your Exam 2 (which is the bigger exam).

Do hard questions. Don't rely completely on the textbook; if you can, look for really difficult ones. This is what my friends and I did, resulting in us finding both 2011 papers pretty trivial compared to the practice we'd had.

DON'T give up. Methods was grueling for many of us, but pushing on and working helped immensely. I personally gave up Methods in the middle of the year, but worked really hard at the end and did ok. I guess I kinda regret not working harder throughout the year, had I realised that it wasn't going to be in my bottom 2

I can't stress enough how important fundamentals are. Whatever you do, you need your fundamentals. This is the reason people find Exam 2's so hard.

Also, find your weakness. Which is your weakest topic? For example, from Year 11 I realised that probability was a huge weakness. So when my school taught it, I payed extra attention Then when it came to preparing for the exams, I looked for other probability stuff to do, and brought it up to make it my strongest area of Methods.

Also find your weakest exam technique. For me, it was carelessness. I regret not working more on it than I did; I ended up having to work extra hard at the end to pull my marks up. (My Exam 1 started out at around 30/40). Try to work on these issues throughout the year.

Good luck, and feel free to PM me for extra tips

[Jenny_2108]

Hey guys, now that exams for Methods is over - class of '12, is there any advice that you would give to future students in Math Methods such as myself and others taking up this subject in '13?
Such as -
Would should we expect?
How can we do well and what should we do to furthur improve?

There are already LOTS OF great posts here
Here is my own advice
1. Don't do every single ques in textbook if you understand the concept. It wastes of time and exam ques won't be as easy as like that. Do ques from other study guides instead
2. Don't do checkpoints because you will remember the ques and ans, hence in the end of year, when you do VCAA exams, you will remember everything
3. Don't take lots of note. I just make cheat sheets before the SACs with formula
4. Don't ignore easy ques! Because it make you think oh, its so easy, then in exams, you can lose marks for careless mistakes. Thats why I can't get high scores in exams and now I really regret
5. Don't do maths if you don't like it

[p.taaa]

learn to use your calculator proficiently and quickly, then you can blast through multiple choice and most questions, which will be good for time management during exam 2

[abeybaby]

learn to use your calculator proficiently and quickly, then you can blast through multiple choice and most questions, which will be good for time management during exam 2

this.

[~T]

Two things:
1. Getting the textbook before the holidays, and I'm looking to do quite a bit over them. Any tips on what to look at? Should I just start at page 1 and go from there? Or would I be better off just revising this year's work? I am generally pretty successful at self-teaching though...

And possibly not for this thread but I have no idea where else to put it:
2. I hear the study design is changing for next year? Anyone know if this is true, and if me getting a second-hand textbook from this year will matter? The friend that I am looking to get it from has the enhanced TI-Nspire version, which I believe is the newest at the moment.

Thank you in advance

[charmanderp]

learn to use your calculator proficiently and quickly, then you can blast through multiple choice and most questions, which will be good for time management during exam 2

this.

Shift key shortcuts are pretty great.

[Lasercookie]

And possibly not for this thread but I have no idea where else to put it:
2. I hear the study design is changing for next year? Anyone know if this is true, and if me getting a second-hand textbook from this year will matter? The friend that I am looking to get it from has the enhanced TI-Nspire version, which I believe is the newest at the moment.

No, it's not changing. From http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Pages/vce/studies/mathematics/cas/casindex.aspx - "The accreditation period has been extended until 31 December 2014." The current study design for methods doesn't end until 2014. (they extended it a fair while back, so this isn't a recent extension either).

Somewhat relevant, the subjects that are changing next year are listed here http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Pages/vce/studies/futuresd.aspx
"Accounting | Biology | Chemistry | Environmental Science | Physics | Psychology | Systems Engineering | Visual Communication Design"
(even then most of the changes to most of the science subjects aren't anything drastic)

[~T]

Ah, thank you