Jumping into Spesh 3/4

[zsteve]

Hi All,
I'm pretty much certain I want to to spesh next year. But I just heard that Spesh 1/2 aka General Maths Advanced (is that right? please confirm for me) existed. So I'm wondering - should I, over the holidays, buy a second hand textbook and look through that instead?
And what does specialist mainly focus on? Things like proofs and 'pure mathematics' as opposed to the more application-oriented approach of methods?
Stephen

[LiquidPaperz]

would also be interested in the answer of this, im doing specialist next year but our school doesnt offer GMA

[keltingmeith]

I have said it once, I'll say it a thousand times over:

GMA is certainly BENEFICIAL, but it is in no sense REQUIRED to do specialist. It is in the name itself.

I did GMA in year 10, and then specialist in year 12. Because of this gap, I had forgotten everything I did in GMA (except that i^2=-1).

If you focus throughout the year and work hard, you'll be fine. I know of people from uni who didn't do GMA but still got above 40 (or closer than I did, at least), so it is certainly possible.

[Phenomenol]

If you want to be really prepared for Specialist, I would recommend looking through these GMA topics:
- Vectors
- Complex numbers
- Kinematics

[nerdmmb]

I had a similar query; is there anything from Physics 1&2 that we'd need to know before doing Spesh next year?

Thanks

[keltingmeith]

I had a similar query; is there anything from Physics 1&2 that we'd need to know before doing Spesh next year?

Thanks

Nothing at all.
Just like GMA, it's nice to have (so you have an idea on the difference of a vector and a scalar, know about Newton's three laws before you hit mechanics), but it's not necessary. Specialist approaches the relevant topics much more mathematically and axiomatically than physics does. I haven't done physics 1/2, so I don't know what you might learn that will transfer over to specialist, but the study design doesn't ask for too much in terms of physics knowledge, so it's easy to learn about what you didn't learn but physics students did.

[nerdmmb]

Nothing at all.
Just like GMA, it's nice to have (so you have an idea on the difference of a vector and a scalar, know about Newton's three laws before you hit mechanics), but it's not necessary. Specialist approaches the relevant topics much more mathematically and axiomatically than physics does. I haven't done physics 1/2, so I don't know what you might learn that will transfer over to specialist, but the study design doesn't ask for too much in terms of physics knowledge, so it's easy to learn about what you didn't learn but physics students did.

Thank-you EularFan101!