Does it help alot to know a little more (1 Viewer)

[Giant Lobster]

What i mean is knowing stuff beyond the sylllabus. I know I have limits to my intelligence when it comes to harder questions that involve creativity and sheer skill.

Would it then be helpful if I were to learn things such as Euler's identities, Taylor series, number theory stuff, and odd theorems here n there? So that when I get to Q8 in the HSC and see something I recognise, and they say "Hence or otherwise" and i can just regurgitate some proof ive seen a few times before? Do situations like taht arise commonly?

 

[spice girl]

Originally posted by Giant Lobster
What i mean is knowing stuff beyond the sylllabus. I know I have limits to my intelligence when it comes to harder questions that involve creativity and sheer skill.

Would it then be helpful if I were to learn things such as Euler's identities, Taylor series, number theory stuff, and odd theorems here n there? So that when I get to Q8 in the HSC and see something I recognise, and they say "Hence or otherwise" and i can just regurgitate some proof ive seen a few times before? Do situations like taht arise commonly?

it'd be helpful to learn a little extra things beyond the syllabus. however what you've listed there is probably useless. you'll need to know what you're looking for. i guess good tutors will teach u extra stuff now and then, otherwise looking for extra stuff yourself will be hell

 

[Giant Lobster]

I see... so I should just do heaps of Q8s

 

[spice girl]

Originally posted by Giant Lobster
I see... so I should just do heaps of Q8s

YES!

seriously

but that's only if you can confidently get Q1-7 anyway

if not, then invest ur time on better things

 

[Grey Council]

lol, if you can get to question 8 error free, then you will get like 98+ for 4u maths anyway. :-O

however, no point trying question 8 if you can't get 1-7, cause question 8 is worth the same amount of marks. question 1 is worth 15 marks, question 8 is worth 15 marks. hehe

 

[Giant Lobster]

yeah there is no point trying question 8 if you can't get 1-7.

lol, but then i should pay attn to the law of diminishing gains and focus abit more on the basics... or subjects like English...

 

[Affinity]

The Principle of comparative advantage: the surplus is maximum when people concentrate on things they are better at, so, you should do more maths

it's unlikely that you will have seen question 8 before, it's usually something interesting that the uni professors find during the year.

 

[Constip8edSkunk]

only when they trade... ie share answers

 

[Affinity]

complain to board of studies on the grounds that they are inhibiting the growth of the HSC marks economy by interfering with free trade in the same way the soviet and mao regimes did with what they were looking after.

also(off the point):

Due to recent(3 years) reforms in HSC accounting standards, the nett revenue on the statement of HSC performance has become nominally higher. This change in policy has also led to a general inflation of the HSC currencies. This could be seen in the fact that the Un-Apprehensible Index has stay pretty much the same.

 

[CM_Tutor]

I agree with the others that practicing question 7 and 8 type questions is the major way to improve, but competition and other problems can help with logic / thinking outside the square, etc. You specifically mentioned Taylor series. You certainly don't need to know anything about deriving them, but at least recognising that a question is playing in some way with Taylor series for common functions (like e^x, sin x, cos x, etc) can be useful, IMO.

 

[Giant Lobster]

Originally posted by CM_Tutor
I agree with the others that practicing question 7 and 8 type questions is the major way to improve, but competition and other problems can help with logic / thinking outside the square, etc. You specifically mentioned Taylor series. You certainly don't need to know anything about deriving them, but at least recognising that a question is playing in some way with Taylor series for common functions (like e^x, sin x, cos x, etc) can be useful, IMO.

Yeah that's what I initially thought. Sometimes I see questions that have the series for e^x and it helps recognising it.

Here's a start:

http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au:8000/u/jennyh/EnrichGroups

I never participated in any extracurricular maths before... What do you do there? And I think its kind of too late for me to start, because yr 12 I can't really afford to miss any classes.

 

[Affinity]

to quote one of the mathematicians Hua,
"competition mathematics is expressing higher mathematics in terms of elementary(high school) mathematics"

 

[Grey Council]

I'm gonna approach the head of maths for our school to start an inside-school extracurricular class on mondays before school.

Hrm, Sydney Grammar does it, so i see no reason why my school shouldn't.

 

[CM_Tutor]

Giant Lobster - you asked about Taylor Series. I just put up, in the thread "complex no. problem" a 4u trial Q8 about Taylor Series - you might want to have a look.