Getting ahead

[Peanut Butter]

I have a whole week off and then we start year 12 orientation for two weeks.

I would like to get a bit ahead of the next week (and on a larger scale, the summer holidays).

What specific areas should I cover? What type of things should I do?

[zsteve]

Get the textbook and start studying stuff in order (or in the order your school will cover it). That way, you can ensure you're ahead of your class and then stay ahead by continuing to study ahead. (At least that's what I did, and I ended up finishing the Specialist course in July).
Specifically, I'd go for vectors, circular functions, complex and preliminaries (geometry, arithmetic/geometric progressions and conic sections (not sure what's in the new course). These tend to be the nitty-gritty stuff you want to get out of the way before launching into calculus.

See Maths advice for 2016 graduates-to-be

[William3558]

Hi guys,
Not sure if this is the best place to ask this, but I am doing units 3/4 Specialist Maths next year.
However, my school did not offer units 1/2. Is there any main concepts or techniques I should learn over the holidays to make it easier for me next year?
Cheers,

[MightyBeh]

Hi guys,
Not sure if this is the best place to ask this, but I am doing units 3/4 Specialist Maths next year.
However, my school did not offer units 1/2. Is there any main concepts or techniques I should learn over the holidays to make it easier for me next year?
Cheers,

I wrote a list of topics to be familiar with for 1/2, which is probably relevant because I grabbed most of it off the study design and threw in a couple of other things I personally thought were important.

It overlaps with Methods quite nicely, so assuming you've done the 1/2 for that (and you're confident with it ), here's a more specific list of things to know:

Spoiler

- angles/geometry (Supplementary, complementary, alternate, etc. / Properties of regular polygons, general area and volume formulas, maybe a couple of irregular ones like cones and spheres)
You can find all this stuff in your closest general maths/further textbook (and probably 9/10)

- Methods Trig as a foundation (but make sure you're 100% on it because it's unlikely to be covered in class)

- Circles (chords, arcs, angle rules, etc.)
Best bet for finding these without a GMA/Spesh textbook is probably a google search

- Modulus function (No longer in Methods but it's in spesh)

- complex numbers (Covered in GMA and the new spesh 1/2)
Probably only going to find this in GMA/Spesh textbooks, best bet is google if you don't have access to those

- Vectors (Get on top of this one, it's a whole area of study)
Again, probably only going to find it in your local GMA/Spesh books and google

- Kinematics (Mostly applications of calculus, but it's probably worth checking out)

- Statistics (while most of the stuff in the spesh study design is different from further and general maths, it might be beneficial to check those out because there are some concepts that will carry over)

- Probability (also on the study design but it's probably pretty different to 1/2 Methods stuff, probably don't look into it too much unless you're bored )

There's probably some stuff I missed, but that should be pretty close to what you need to know going in because I grabbed it all off the spesh 3/4 2016 study design. Definitely look at vectors and complex numbers if you can, make sure that you keep up with your calculus and trig and you should be set

[William3558]

Thanks very much! Much appreciated.