Ext 2 Maths Overated? Yay or Nay (2 Viewers)

Kimyia

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For 3U perms and combs are a pain in the backside for me. Looking forward to Binomials *sigh*
Yeah, I only do 3U but I hate permutations and combinations...ugh
 

mirakon

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4U isn't as devilisihly impossible as a lot of past students say, its quite doable by any adept mathematics student imo. Nevertheless it is challenging, so don't get complacent.
 

TheCardician

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4 unit is overrated for sure. I've heard students say "you gotta do pages of working out for 1 question", which made it sound intense, but when I started and finished the course, I only ever did 1 page of working out maximum, and it wasn't as hard as I expected it to be. So they pretty much exaggerated it's difficulty lol. But the course is still in various ways difficult, don't get me wrong about that.
 

bleakarcher

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Ive got two years on perms and combs in 3U maths lol, think I'll be alright?
 

math man

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well from experience in tutoring it most importantly depends on the student....
The strength of the student will determine how they handle 3u or 4u....
However, all in all 4u is definitely not overated....The concepts you are faced with
far more complex(get the pun) than in 3u.....the reason people will find it easier than some
3u topics is because of the type of maths it is testing...Lots of concepts for different topics
are analytical, which involves deep thinking (the underlying principle behind the hard questions)
whereas other questions are more algebra based which most ppl find straightforward...
All 4u topics can there fair share of easy and hard concepts to understand and same with 3u...
but overall the 4u concepts will win everyday....as to the difficulty of questions well all 4u topics
do some have straight forward questions, but every topic in 4u can have nasty questions asked of you....
whereas on average the 3u questions are all straightforward and although they can ask you some really hard 3u questions,
those questions are really part of harder 3u in the 4u course, so in the 3u paper when there is a super hard question it is
more separating the 3u and 4u students, and the really good 3u students who dont do 4u....So you really cant say 4u is overated....
 

largarithmic

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The actual material/coursework in the 4u syllabus isnt that bad I dont think - apart from conceptual stuff I guess around things like complex numbers - the main thing though is that the coursework gives the teachers pretty huge grounds for a really big range of hard questions, hence the difficulty of some q7s and q8s; e.g. the basel problem. Unfortunately the way most students seem to approach 4u is to see the harder questions as totally impossible and (because of the ridiculous E4 cut-off) just try to do questions 1 to 5 or 6 and still get a high scaled mark; not only is this a poor strategy for marks and for general education, but it skews the perception of 4u - people in younger years hear about the q7s and 8s being ones that nobody attempts, start believing its ridiculously hard, but when they're taught only how to answer 1-5 or so they suddenly think its a lot easier. Hence the "Ext 2 Maths Overrated" idea.
 

math man

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The actual material/coursework in the 4u syllabus isnt that bad I dont think - apart from conceptual stuff I guess around things like complex numbers - the main thing though is that the coursework gives the teachers pretty huge grounds for a really big range of hard questions, hence the difficulty of some q7s and q8s; e.g. the basel problem. Unfortunately the way most students seem to approach 4u is to see the harder questions as totally impossible and (because of the ridiculous E4 cut-off) just try to do questions 1 to 5 or 6 and still get a high scaled mark; not only is this a poor strategy for marks and for general education, but it skews the perception of 4u - people in younger years hear about the q7s and 8s being ones that nobody attempts, start believing its ridiculously hard, but when they're taught only how to answer 1-5 or so they suddenly think its a lot easier. Hence the "Ext 2 Maths Overrated" idea.
lloll yeh...but if my students ever have that mentality i whip them hard
;p
 

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