Careless mistakes? (1 Viewer)

[Hey Arnold]

How do you guys avoid making careless mistakes in senior mathematics?

I know careless mistakes is a major problem in mathematics for me. Do you guys have any tips and advice on how to avoid them?

Thx in advance and much appreciated guys

(Also, do you guys have any advice on how to properly interpret the question? I know this probably seems like a ridiculous question but I frequently go off at a miscellaneous tangent when I try to answer maths questions because I grasped the wrong impression. Sometimes it may be 10 minutes before I finally grasp the right method needed to be utilised to answer the question.

Really appreciate your help guys and thx for putting up with my idiocy!)

 

[Bored Of Fail 2]

How do you guys avoid making careless mistakes in senior mathematics?

I know careless mistakes is a major problem in mathematics for me. Do you guys have any tips and advice on how to avoid them?

Thx in advance and much appreciated guys

(Also, do you guys have any advice on how to properly interpret the question? I know this probably seems like a ridiculous question but I frequently go off at a miscellaneous tangent when I try to answer maths questions because I grasped the wrong impression. Sometimes it may be 10 minutes before I finally grasp the right method needed to be utilised to answer the question.

Really appreciate your help guys and thx for putting up with my idiocy!)

there is not much you can do

other than try to take it easy and try not to rush , and keep doing questions, the more questions you do the better you become at picking up your mistakes

 

[mitchy_boy]

Do the question again. Don't rush. Say if you integrate something, differentiate it back and vice versa. Really try to grasp an understanding of everything, because regurgitating a memorised way of answering a question can cause silly mistakes.

 

[Bored Of Fail 2]

lol provided you dont make another mistake in differentiating

 

[Nahidul]

keep doing the same type of questions which results in repetition ya know? so if you keep doing the same type of questions for each topic, it gets stuck into your brain e.g. induction: if you kept doing that, in future tests you will know waht to look for quickly and thus saving you time and avoiding mistakes.

 

[Mature Lamb]

It's hard to avoid without practice. But if your answer looks completely wrong, or you weren't able to prove a result, then check through your working out.

 

[Aquawhite]

Honestly, the only thing you can do is just practice a lot. Over and over on different questions that will hone your skills. Particularly try to get questions that will have parts that could trip you up - take your time in practice and you'll gradually get faster and better, making less silly mistakes each time.

Also, remember to practice the easy things... they can be easy to forget sometimes.

 

[jet]

Silly mistakes happen, so include them in your plan for the exam. Check calculations on your calculator to check the answer goes with the information in the question. Say things out loud to you to see if they make sense.

In the end you can't avoid them. I completely missed an entire page in the 4 unit exam.

 

[Aquawhite]

Silly mistakes happen, so include them in your plan for the exam. Check calculations on your calculator to check the answer goes with the information in the question. Say things out loud to you to see if they make sense.

In the end you can't avoid them. I completely missed an entire page in the 4 unit exam.

That almost happened to me in the Chemistry exam last year. I can only reinforce what you said, just be aware of how frequent you're making small errors and try your best to minimise them by taking care and using all your time.

 

[jayy100]

Write down any of the mistakes your doing on a piece of paper or notebook. Its only through consciousness of the mistakes that your doing, that will help you eradicate them.

Always check your answers and if you get it wrong, follow your working and note down any of mistakes you committed. By saying that, you need to practice alot of questions, especially of different natures. However, as others have states, you'll get gradually faster.

This was my biggest pit-fall in prelim maths! I had so much misconceived ideas on what you can/ can't do!

 

[Hey Arnold]

Cheers guys
Wonderful advice from very talented people!
Thx you and I'll try my best

 

[deterministic]

- For applied mathematics questions, check whether your answer is reasonable via common sense:
eg. If you get probabilities which exceed 1 or physical quantities with negative values, you screwed up.
This highlights the importance of gaining an intuition on how maths concepts are applied
- HSC questions are designed so that all the information provided in the question will be required to solve all parts of the question. That could be useful when looking out for small tricks in questions.
- For integrations, differentiate to check. Vice versa (although integration can be a bit harder)
- For equations questions, substitute your answer into the original equation that it should satisfy.
- In a test when checking answers, if you have time, reattempt the question from scratch. It is best to do so a while after your first attempt so that you will be less likely to repeat any mistakes.

As others have said, mistakes cannot be completely avoided, but they can be minimised through constant practice.

 

[slyhunter]

Tl;dr practice.