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Is AS Maths all that hard?

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Original post by j.alexanderh
No you didn't. You didn't say 'good', you said 'reasonably capable', and you further claimed that C1 could be learned in two hours, not just a week.


ok reasonably capable. The first time I posted I said a week and the question is asking whether he can learn it in a week. And if you're debating whether C1 can be learnt in 2 hours then you are fighting a losing battle, as i'm sure there are people who can.
geez... did you have trouble with AS maths or something and are offended by someone being good at maths
(edited 13 years ago)
Original post by fudgesundae
ok reasonably capable. The first time I posted I said a week and the question is asking whether he can learn it in a week. And if you're debating whether C2 can be learnt in 2 hours then you are fighting a losing battle, as i'm sure there are people who can.
geez... did you have trouble with AS maths or something and are offended by someone being good at maths


No. I didn't have any trouble with maths. I self taught it in year 11 along with A2 maths and university number theory, and C2 took me a couple of weeks. But, and it's a big one, I had already done OCR add maths before that and had covered between a half and a third of the material already, and I am better at maths than most people. I will happily say that no-one could learn C2 to exam standard in 2 hours starting with only GCSE knowledge. I've never heard such rubbish in my life, except on the global warming thread.
Original post by j.alexanderh
No. I didn't have any trouble with maths. I self taught it in year 11 along with A2 maths and university number theory, and C2 took me a couple of weeks. But, and it's a big one, I had already done OCR add maths before that and had covered between a half and a third of the material already, and I am better at maths than most people. I will happily say that no-one could learn C2 to exam standard in 2 hours starting with only GCSE knowledge. I've never heard such rubbish in my life, except on the global warming thread.


I actually said 6 hours for C2 :/

and C1 well here is what you need to know:

Basic laws of indices, surds, discriminant, simultaneous equations, graphs of functions transformations, how to find equation of a straight line/perpendicular line, arithmetic series, differentiation/integration.

Your telling me you can't, if you really try, learn that in 2 hours? not much of a mathematician if you can't considering most of those will require one or two example questions to grasp the concepts.
I think you should do it if you really like it. I don't take Maths but from what I've heard people constantly talk about retaking the exams "c1" or "c2" and even the clever and hard-working people still feel it's hard and that they need to retake!

Then they got in to c3 and realise c1 is easy as ****!
Original post by fudgesundae
I actually said 6 hours for C2 :/

and C1 well here is what you need to know:

Basic laws of indices, surds, discriminant, simultaneous equations, graphs of functions transformations, how to find equation of a straight line/perpendicular line, arithmetic series, differentiation/integration.

Your telling me you can't, if you really try, learn that in 2 hours? not much of a mathematician if you can't considering most of those will require one or two example questions to grasp the concepts.


You said two hours for C2 in your most recent post. Neither are possible from the OP's current knowledge and ability. You also said you weren't going to argue with me.

And like I said, the material for C1 is incredibly easy, but it's the volume of material. It's not huge, but it's far too much for two hours work.
(edited 13 years ago)
Original post by j.alexanderh
You said two hours for C2 in your most recent post. Neither are possible from the OP's current knowledge and ability. You also said you weren't going to argue with me.

And like I said, the material for C1 is incredibly easy, but it's the volume of material. It's not huge, but it's far too much for two hours work.


sorry my bad, its quite obvious I meant 2 hours for C1 not C2 from reading one of my earlier posts (which I know you have as you quoted it and negged it).

The volume of material is tiny, I just posted the sub-topics you need to know for it, they are not far more than 2 hours work. As someone who has self taught A2 maths surely you can see that.
Original post by fudgesundae
sorry my bad, its quite obvious I meant 2 hours for C1 not C2 from reading one of my earlier posts (which I know you have as you quoted it and negged it).

The volume of material is tiny, I just posted the sub-topics you need to know for it, they are not far more than 2 hours work. As someone who has self taught A2 maths surely you can see that.


For the record, I have never negged anything since I came on this site. It is childish and petulant. The volume of material is not large, but too much for two hours for anyone, and too much for a week for most people.
Original post by j.alexanderh
The volume of material is not large, but too much for two hours for anyone, and too much for a week for most people.


Reply 68
It depends. Have you done IGCSE Add Maths? If you have AS Maths is pretty much nothing,

If not, it's still possible, but you have to be prepared to work very hard and you have to be focused. I'm sure you can do it with the right technique of study, don't worry! :smile:
Reply 69
Original post by j.alexanderh
I'm supposed to be doing Edexcel, but I'm looking forward to doing groups in the OCR course. Nice and abstract.


dont look forward to it, its another case of learning the axioms and applying them blindly. no understanding needed. its the easiest option in FP3 alongside markov chains. i prefer MVC and vectors, tbh.

FP2 is the interesting module, weve been doing eigenvectors and our teacher made us derive the equations, and when we did the fp2 complex numbers, we were made to prove de moivre's theorem by induction with a little hint. the polar graphs are boring and easy, and the calculus is quite interesting but straightforward.

i really find the best way to learn maths and further maths is with a teacher who encourages you to prove things for yourself... ours always does and it helps a lot :smile: ...
which is why i dont think the OP will be able to self teach maths properly, because i dont think learning how to answer questions is as effective as deriving half the stuff they will be using. our teacher will give us a diagram to start from if its a complicated derivation but we are definitely encouraged to learn for ourselves. on your own, you probably dont have that. reading a derivation from a book isnt as effective as doing it for yourself (there was something very satisfying about arriving at a.b = |a||b|cosx :tongue: )
Original post by RK92
dont look forward to it, its another case of learning the axioms and applying them blindly. no understanding needed. its the easiest option in FP3 alongside markov chains. i prefer MVC and vectors, tbh.

FP2 is the interesting module, weve been doing eigenvectors and our teacher made us derive the equations, and when we did the fp2 complex numbers, we were made to prove de moivre's theorem by induction with a little hint. the polar graphs are boring and easy, and the calculus is quite interesting but straightforward.

i really find the best way to learn maths and further maths is with a teacher who encourages you to prove things for yourself... ours always does and it helps a lot :smile: ...


My teacher is useless for this, which is why I prefer self-teaching. Vectors are pretty cool, but I was looking forward to groups. What kind of depth does the groups section go into? Symmetry groups? Non-Abelian groups?
My math is horrible, I honestly dont know how anyone can cope with it especially at AS and A level. I suppose it would make sense if I opened a damn book once in a while :mad:
(edited 13 years ago)
Reply 72
Original post by Joburger
Has there been a change in the level of the statisitics 1 exams for edexcel.
Heard stuff about the questions being harder recently, has anyone experiences this first hand? either in January or last June.

P.s. For c1, c2 and s1, is it the exact same revision method for each. i.e. just doing past papers, or do you have to alter anything in your revision for each module ?




P.S. Would tomorrow be enough time to start proper revision for these 3 modules, and how many hours would you spend a day on each one, if you were in my shoes ?


anyone ?
Reply 73
Original post by j.alexanderh
My teacher is useless for this, which is why I prefer self-teaching. Vectors are pretty cool, but I was looking forward to groups. What kind of depth does the groups section go into? Symmetry groups? Non-Abelian groups?


That's a shame, there really is no better way of understanding things than to figure them out for yourself..
I learnt the groups option about 4 months ago but those words ring a few bells, as well as lagranges theorem and isomorphism... genuinely can't remember what any of them are though, I just remember it was too easy to be in FP3 as long as you can memorize definitions (i have a memory like a sieve though)
Reply 74
Original post by j.alexanderh
My teacher is useless for this, which is why I prefer self-teaching. Vectors are pretty cool, but I was looking forward to groups. What kind of depth does the groups section go into? Symmetry groups? Non-Abelian groups?


I do FP3 on OCR MEI. I was quite looking forward to it as well, but to be honest the stuff on syllabus is fairly dull. Although some of the proofs can be all right, the bulk of it is just remembering definitions and drawing lots and lots of Cayley tables (ugh). Non-Abelian groups are touched on, but tbh hardly anything is done on groups of order 6 or above so they aren't worried about too much.

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