The Student Room Group

Decision 2, Mechanics or Statistics? (One of THOSE threads again :p)

We were told today we need to give some indication of what we want to do next year - and i cant for the life of me decide! So hoping someone can shed some light on each :smile:

I havent really heard much about D2, although I do enjoy D1 and find it fairly easy to understand.
I've heard statistics is mind numbing and dull.
& That mechanics is interesting, but I don't do Physics so will I find it difficult?

My other subjects are biology, chemistry and geography if that bares any relevence what so ever!

Help, I cant decide :laugh:
Reply 1
Original post by Mocking_bird
We were told today we need to give some indication of what we want to do next year - and i cant for the life of me decide! So hoping someone can shed some light on each :smile:

I havent really heard much about D2, although I do enjoy D1 and find it fairly easy to understand.
I've heard statistics is mind numbing and dull.
& That mechanics is interesting, but I don't do Physics so will I find it difficult?

My other subjects are biology, chemistry and geography if that bares any relevence what so ever!

Help, I cant decide :laugh:


I haven't done statistics and decision maths yet so can't say anything about them. But what i have heard is that statistics is the easiest.

I have done mechanics till M3, I did enjoyed it a lot, its a very interesting module.

Have you done physics at GCSE's?

I think that you are doing A-level maths, and you have done D1, so you only need to select one applied module, right?

I will advice you to go for M1, if you have done physics at GCSE. M1 will be more interesting than others. I wasn't taking physics at A-level but i managed to get 100/100 in M1, so i will say you to go for it. Scoring in M1 isn't much difficult, in M1 you only need to understand the concepts well.

According to my observation, the other modules, like stat and decision are very boring so mechanics is the best.
Reply 2
Mechanics is the best out of all three. If I could do an A level with just mechanics that would be great!

Surprisingly, being good at physics doesn't help with maths and the other way round. Ok, that might be an exaggeration, but I'd say pick mechanics and don't worry about physics too much.
Reply 3
Statistics is definitely the easiest... You hardly have to remember anything at all. It's all there on the formula sheet really!! And doing that, you might find lessons tedious but gives you plenty time to revise for your other exams!

I did D2 and it's a bit different to D1 but there are fewer, longer questions. But it takes many of the concepts of D1 such as linear programming and extends them into more variables. Like D1, you have to be so clear with your working you lose easy marks if you let the examiner guess what you've done, even if you get the right answer.

M1 is easy to those with the right mind for it. People who can visualise the problems and can "see" what's going on find it easier than those who can't. I found the actual maths of it quite easy, but it was setting up the model from the information in the question that was the difficulty for me. Once I actually worked out what on earth was going on, the rest just followed.

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