How hard is specialist?

[NE2000]

Summary:

-TT does every question in the book and is adamant he didn't waste time doing so
-/0 doesn't do every question in the book and is adamant he doesn't need to

That's the way all these arguments go.

I started doing every question in the book but stopped because I realised it wasn't helping me too much (MathsQuest ). So I just quickly did the set questions and read through all the other questions, if I saw a question that I didn't instantly see the solution I did that too. That should be generally OK. I do Essentials now Just doing the questions that seem to be possible problem-causers and the chapter reviews.

But in general I agree with /0 on this. I feel you will get a reward for doing every question in the book, but it is less than the reward you could get from spending that exact amount of time for extra questions from practice exams. But on the other hand, at this stage of the year I'm not sure whether many people have done 10-20 trial exams for spesh. In that sense, during Terms 1 and 2 where your focus is on understanding the concepts and doing the textbook, if you finish every question in the textbook then you can only benefit. Because if person A has finished every question in the textbook and person B has finished the set questions + a few trial exams, then I would say person B probably has better used their first semester, but if person A has finished every question in the textbook and person B has finished the set questions only...and both of them will be doing trial exams next semester, then in terms of spesh alone person A probably is better off (assuming equal mathematical talent, all other variables kept constant).

Just my two cents

[kurrymuncher]

trial exams> book questions

[andy0004]

The difficultly of Specialst Mathematics is really blown out of proportion. Some people are simply able to do maths well, while others can do other areas of study such as english very well. It is simply a different subject. If you like maths or are good at it, it is a really good subject to do. Specialist in many ways is just an expansion of Methods.

Doing methods the year beofre doing Specialist makes the course easier to understand in my opinion. Also, having done physics, the physics part of specialist (last 3 chapters) will be a lot easier. In my opinion, if you do yr 12 methods in yr 11 and managed well,  you really should do the subject.

[m@tty]

Thank you andy0004, very good response.

Not to say anyone elses wasn't.

[dcc]

Just don't do anything all year.  It works (trust me!).

And even if you did for whatever silly reason choose to do some questions from the book, there is certainly no need to do all of them.  Such an endeavour is overzealous and unnecessary.  If you can learn a technique within 5 examples (and I mean learn as in really learn, can recite derivation on the spot), then there's no need to do any more.