How long? (1 Viewer)

Gibbo69er

Poor Student
Joined
May 16, 2005
Messages
155
Location
Newcastle
Gender
Male
HSC
2005
Hey guys, I was just wondering from experience, how long it would take me to learn and finish the following 3 topics. Plz keep in mind that I'll be learning these by myself without any outside help and no help from school teacher and might be doing up to as much as 5hrs a day in the holidays.

Thinking bout working ahead in the holidays.

They are:
Binomial Theorems
Polynomials
Permutations, Combinations and Further Probability

And I'm not sure but I may have to do Integration II as well.
 

Antwan23q

God
Joined
Sep 12, 2004
Messages
294
Location
bally
Gender
Undisclosed
HSC
2006
if ur doin a solid 5 hours a day, im sure u can get it all done in bout 3-4 days, those topics aren't too bad, also id get the notes from them from, 3 unit summary
 

withoutaface

Premium Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2004
Messages
15,098
Gender
Male
HSC
2004
Permutations won't take long to learn but it can take some people forever to master (if they manage to get really good at it at all), and the others you should be able to get done in a couple of days.
 

Gibbo69er

Poor Student
Joined
May 16, 2005
Messages
155
Location
Newcastle
Gender
Male
HSC
2005
Thanks for the help guys. I'm hoping to finish them all off by the end of the holidays so I can start some serious revision
 

who_loves_maths

I wanna be a nebula too!!
Joined
Jun 8, 2004
Messages
600
Location
somewhere amidst the nebulaic cloud of your heart
Gender
Male
HSC
2005
Originally Posted by antwan2bu
if ur doin a solid 5 hours a day, im sure u can get it all done in bout 3-4 days, those topics aren't too bad, also id get the notes from them from
actually, out of the three topics Perms and Coms with probability is the hardest to learn. there is almost an infinite number of questions you can pose on this topic that you won't be able to answer under exam conditions. and it also depends on the supplementary book you plan to study with - if it's Cambridge 3u and you plan to do all the extension questions, then gl... you'll need at least half of the holidays. certainly not just 3-4 days!

the only reason many ppl think the topic is easy is because in real exams, teachers refuse to set any potentially hard perms and combs questions. because most of the hard ones are virtually impossible to do in the amount of time you're given.

the topic of perms and combs is POTENTIALLY the hardest topic in high school mathematics... except teachers simply don't put in the hard ones.

(last year in one of the yr12 assessments from our school, the examining teacher put in a perms and combs question as the last question of the test... no could do it during the test, and no one did it afterwards... the examiner himself couldn't do it either (he just plucked the answer out of a book)... eventually the Head Teacher had to ask Ivan Guo to solve it, and not even Ivan did it during the exam.)
and yes, the theory one needed to do the question turned out to be only at the 3-unit level.
 

withoutaface

Premium Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2004
Messages
15,098
Gender
Male
HSC
2004
who_loves_maths said:
the only reason many ppl think the topic is easy is because in real exams, teachers refuse to set any potentially hard perms and combs questions. because most of the hard ones are virtually impossible to do in the amount of time you're given..
That depends. I think perms/combs takes a certain way of thinking to do them, because I remember I was able to finish the Fitz harder 3u probability questions in their 4u book in like 2 hours, whereas other topics, while I was competent, I wasn't really that outstanding at many of them, and just attained skills in them through lots of practice.

Summary: You can either do them, or you can't. If the former applies, good, if it's the latter then rest assured 90+% of the 3u candidates are in the same boat.
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 0, Guests: 1)

Top