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Extension 2 Advice

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fkkiwi:
Hey guys,

Looking for some advice on how to spend my last few days prepping before the Extension 2 exam. I'm sorta panicking now since every time I do a past paper there's always a few questions I can't do before looking at the answers, but I want to do well in the trial.

Any tips?

RuiAce:
Well that depends on what those questions are, because getting out every single question in the MX2 papers is hard. (That's why typically a mark of at least 75 raw aligns up to 90 minimum.)

What questions (or types of questions) can you not do without looking at the answers?

fkkiwi:

--- Quote from: RuiAce on August 05, 2018, 09:05:15 am ---Well that depends on what those questions are, because getting out every single question in the MX2 papers is hard. (That's why typically a mark of at least 75 raw aligns up to 90 minimum.)

What questions (or types of questions) can you not do without looking at the answers?

--- End quote ---

Hi Rui,

Usually it's ones involving complex numbers or probability and the occasional conics/volumes question. Also, I almost always have to resort to the answers for most of Q16. (This is for the CSSA trials btw)

RuiAce:

--- Quote from: fkkiwi on August 05, 2018, 09:12:01 am ---Hi Rui,

Usually it's ones involving complex numbers or probability and the occasional conics/volumes question. Also, I almost always have to resort to the answers for most of Q16. (This is for the CSSA trials btw)

--- End quote ---
Complex Numbers: This topic is huge. For this topic, I would seriously advise taking a bit of time out and ensuring you understand at least enough of the concepts. Won't give a concrete value because 'enough' is relative person to person. Especially the weirder side of things, such as vectors. Some relatively easy examples were given at my lecture, so the lecture handout might be worth reviewing.

But as with a lot of other things, I am personally a fan of doing questions open-book. If you don't have enough confidence to do the paper without a textbook/notes/etc., just use them for a bit longer. Sometimes the problems are really just little gaps in your learning, which to varying extents is ok for MX2. Other times it's because a student lacks the intuition behind solving problems, and that kinda needs to be developed with the assistance of multiple resources.

Probability: At the end of the day, it's just 4U perms and combs. Because most probability questions should be handled with
\[ \mathbb{P}(\text{Event occurs}) = \frac{\text{# of favourable outcomes}}{\text{Total # of outcomes}} \]
(It's such a simple formula, but I personally reckon taking a combinatorial approach makes the formula a lot easier to use.) The total number of outcomes is also usually free marks comparatively speaking, because you're just removing all possible restrictions and thus the problem typically converts to one of the 3U calibre.

For this one, some techniques were covered on considering where the traps are with counting. Of course, those exact problems may not appear in the paper you're doing, but they have appeared in papers before. Again, some level of intuition needs to be developed as to when to use what. For this topic, I don't really think looking at the answers when you're genuinely stuck is a bad idea, because there's just so many different ways to count anyway. The important thing is that when looking at the answers, you need to understand "why" they chose that particular method. You'll need to relate each step of the process to what the question actually gives you. (And to be fair, there's a lot to juggle simultaneously, which is not easy.)

Occasional stuff: It's a good thing that you're saying occasional, because it means you at least have a solid grasp on most of the basic stuff within those topics. But for some commentary, harder volumes questions would typically not involve solids of revolution (i.e. parallel cross sections or something). My advice for that is really draw out whatever seems appropriate between the top view, front view and side view. And also use more labels such as \(a\) and \(b\) or even \(x\) if you need them. Whereas for conics, there's literally two things that underpin harder questions - tackling brutal algebra, and combining concepts from various other topics (e.g. geometry, quadratics)

Now having said that, of course time is running out at least for the trials. So there's probably not enough time to spend focusing on one and only one topic at a time. Perhaps a useful strategy to implement for the time being is to now skip certain questions. If you see a question and can instantly formulate a full method on how to do it, then it's not really worth doing (this should include basic complex numbers questions such as dividing two \(a+bi\) numbers). For the topics you're more confident at, be selective about what you do - only do them if they seem really out of the ordinary. (Other things - maybe just write down a few lines about what you would do.) Focus more on the things you're having trouble with, so that you're gaining more intuition and filling any potential gaps in learning. Looking at answers isn't necessarily something to be ashamed of, but so long as you're doing it properly. Answers are there to help you learn, so you should be thinking about the "why" as well as the "how" when using them.

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