4u maths text books: which to buy?? (1 Viewer)

[mkomko]

i'm looking for some more text books but i dunno which ones are good
so far this is my collection (just started 4u this term):

-fitzpatrick
-arnold
-cambridge (same as arnold)
-patel's text book
-patel's excel book
-hsc past papers
-two coroneous 4u

what else should i get?

 

[McLake]

You've got just about all of them, I think your pretty well stocked for the year ...

 

[Viator]

Hah I think that's all you will need

How many questions do you plan on doing geez...

 

[utopian731]

The Excel 4unit is a good book

 

[Weisy]

In all honesty, you won't find yourself using all of them.

I found Excel 4unit useful, the others are useful for specific topics and not too useful for others.

Fitzpatrick was pretty useless

 

[Ozz^E]

i think thats a wee bit too much...i only used fitz & cambrigde. though we got plently of notes from the teacher. The Pats papers by topic is pretty good.

 

[nakata]

wow, thats alot of books you got there. I can tell you, if you do manage to finish those, then you will go pretty good in your test.

I'd concentrate on Cambridge, cause they have really good questions, and the patels, with its past papers and all. Fitzpatriks isnt really good, cause its too easy, and excel is ok i guess, but isnt that challenging. The best textbook i think would be Terry Lee's one, as it is pretty difficult, although it does have full solutions. Cambridge, although it has good questions, could be too difficult.

 

[Ozz^E]

Speaking of solutions, I just thought I'd mention that all the worked solutions for cambridge and fitzpatrick ARE available.

 

[nakata]

you will have to buy it seperately though right? hehe, i always wanted to see the worked solution for Cambridge, some of its questions were undoable! hehe, too late now.

 

[Ozz^E]

the solutions are not availabe for commercial sale, only teachers can purchase them.

 

[Mathematician]

A request to board makers.

A request to board makers.

I was wondering if anyone somehow got the worked solutions for cambridge, could u'se plz make a pdf file out of them , so we can all download/print them.

 

[Weisy]

Are you talking about the Sami El Hosri solutions?

 

[Mathematician]

lol

Not sure do they contain worked solutions for cambridge?

 

[nakata]

cambridge has alot of questions, and hard ones at that, which requires alot of working out, it would take alot of paper you know

 

[Weisy]

yeah, I agree with nakata. It's too time-consuming to scan them. I have worked solutions to all the cambridge 4unit questions though

 

[McLake]

Originally posted by Weisy
yeah, I agree with nakata. It's too time-consuming to scan them. I have worked solutions to all the cambridge 4unit questions though

ALL of them, wow ...

 

[Mathematician]

Fair enough...

Fair enough, but consider the other long pdf files in this site one of them is 100 pages

 

[Weisy]

Originally posted by McLake


ALL of them, wow ...

yeah, we had a diligent maths teacher this year, who didn't mind causing major tree lopping. But in reality, we really didn't use them that much; I think most questions in Cambridge a good 4unit student should be able to (eventually) manage. The answers were only good for reference, and often we came up with better and shorter solutions. Also, for questions of that difficulty, it's pretty hopeless if you try to work out what the working means without first having a go and making yourself understand.

*thinks of the time it would take to scan 150 pages*

maybe we could have a requesting system or something; ie. harder questions. or maybe....I can send them all to Lazarus. Although I'd rather do it myself than ask the administrators to do something like this - it's not like they haven't got enough to do (and lives to manage) already.

Mathematician - why don't you just get your school to buy the worked solutions? That way you don't have to pay for them.

 

[nakata]

i'd say if you really want to go good in maths, forget about the worked solutions. Its just an incentive for you too keep looking at it if you dont know how to do it, and never give it a try. Not having worked solutions, encourages you to actually try and try harder until you can get the answer. Of course unless your really stumped...

 

[McLake]

Originally posted by nakata
Of course unless your really stumped...

Which in 4U can happen often ...

I think solutions are good because they show you SHORTCUTS that you may not have seen (which are always a plus) as well as giving you a stepping stone in questions you don't understand.

If you look at the solution for one type of Q then you can then work out how do the rest of the Q's of that type, instead of "giving up".

Examples (especially those in arnold) are often brief (including phrases such as "by inspection") and worked solutions are often benifical in these situations.