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STEP II 2011 Discussion Thread

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Original post by Zuzuzu
I've come to terms with the fact I'm not going to Cambridge now. Just hoping I can get a respectable mark in I and III so that the Sidney maths people don't have too much of a laugh looking at my scripts. :redface: It's probably for the best anyway, if I could only scrape a 3 (at best) in step II, my head've exploded doing tripos exams.


Me too. It's just annoying because I genuinely feel capable, and it's not like I'm bad at maths... This was genuinely the hardest II paper I've seen! Even now I feel like there are only 2 questions I could fully complete without help!

Original post by Tsatska
Wow, I thought that was the hardest STEP 2 paper I've done! :O I did 1 (except solving the equation), 2 (the second part with trial and error but just read that candidates with the correct answer will get full marks despite method used :biggrin:) and the last question about skewness. Although couldn't get out the inequality there... Anyone know what the average grade boundaries are for STEP 2? I need a two grade desperately!



Yep, I felt it was the hardest. I think the 2 boundary will be around 50-60 maybe... Are you sitting STEP III? You might get a 2 in that. :smile:
Reply 81
Question 9 was a gift.
Reply 82
Original post by Schnecke
Original post by Zuzuzu
I've come to terms with the fact I'm not going to Cambridge now. Just hoping I can get a respectable mark in I and III so that the Sidney maths people don't have too much of a laugh looking at my scripts. :redface: It's probably for the best anyway, if I could only scrape a 3 (at best) in step II, my head've exploded doing tripos exams.
This exactly.
Same here!
Original post by AnonyMatt
So bloody awful - I'm so sorry Mr. Cambridge Person! :redface:
:rofl:
Reply 83
I don't think people on tsr have complained as much as now after a STEP exam so grade boundaries should be low!
Original post by tobyc
For all those who had trouble with the xcosecx thing, how many marks do you think we're likely to get for that question if we've done it right up to that point?

I think that difficult part cropped up halfway through, but seeing as the bits before seemed to be relatively straightforward, I'd imagine they'd be worth less than half marks, but I don't really know how the STEP marking works... :confused:


Yes! I would be really interested in a good conservatve estimate!
Original post by soczek322
root(2)/2?? and how did you prove that B is always moving towards the wall?


I looked at the velocity function, saw that it consisted of one term that is always positive (no matter what e is) and one that could be positive or negative (depending on e). For that velocity to be negative, that second term must be negative, and greater in magnitude than the first term. 'f' only appeared in the second term, so setting f=1 maximises the magnitude of the second term. Then I re-arranged the equation with f=1 to get e^2. Imposed the inequality 0<e^2<1 to the equation, re-arranged to get (something like) 3u/4<v<u, so v>0
Reply 86
Original post by AnonyMatt
Me too. It's just annoying because I genuinely feel capable, and it's not like I'm bad at maths... This was genuinely the hardest II paper I've seen! Even now I feel like there are only 2 questions I could fully complete without help!




Yep, I felt it was the hardest. I think the 2 boundary will be around 50-60 maybe... Are you sitting STEP III? You might get a 2 in that. :smile:


After yesterday's fiasco I was feeling genuinely terrible at maths and such. But honestly in past papers I've done much better so I guess it's a bad idea to start thinking I suck at maths. Do you think paper was genuinely evil or was it just hard + pressure? I think I'll be lucky to get 30 marks -.-
I did the whole of the first two mechanics questions (not sure if they were right or what I got, completely forgotten already) and I did the whole of the probability one with the matches and the points... I think I did the first part (ie the show that) of that wrong - basically just used a tree diagram and no series - I knew it should have been series, but I fiddled about with the probabilities of the tree diagram until I got the 'show that' result so left it.

Of the three pure questions I tried, I didn't finish any of them (and barely started one of them). Fingers crossed for low grade boundaries!
Reply 88
Original post by .,james<>
I looked at the velocity function, saw that it consisted of one term that is always positive (no matter what e is) and one that could be positive or negative (depending on e). For that velocity to be negative, that second term must be negative, and greater in magnitude than the first term. 'f' only appeared in the second term, so setting f=1 maximises the magnitude of the second term. Then I re-arranged the equation with f=1 to get e^2. Imposed the inequality 0<e^2<1 to the equation, re-arranged to get (something like) 3u/4<v<u, so v>0


Oops I did it a really long way... I said assume B is moving towards the wall and then I went on to solve it to get (4f-2)e^2 > f-2 i think... and then i considered the cases where f >0.5 and f < 0.5 blah blah blah it wasnt really a mathematical explanation
Original post by Schnecke
Damn definitely messed up in 6 somewhere. Hopefully would have got some follow through marks or my 3 is looking dodgy :tongue:

Have some faith! I can almost guarantee that the boundaries will be low; judging by how awkward the pure questions were this year.
Original post by jonnyboy1993
I started from the function for v, then through considering the values of e and f I showed that it must be positive for all 0 < e,f <=1. I don't remember exactly how, but I think it worked, though I could have missed something.

I did this too. I took the expression for B's speed that they asked us to show and said that this must be positive in order for it to head for the wall. Then manipulated that expression until I had e^2>..... and showed that the RHS<0 and thus the inequality must be true for all e,f.
Reply 90
Original post by Piecewise
I panicked and it all went disastrously wrong.


I was the same... half-way through I just thought "you need to actually do some questions... you're not going Cambridge". I just panicked then and it went downhill.

Average grade boundaries for STEP II in recent years, 2: 56-64 (before 2007 40-50), 1: 60-70 (last year was 79 though).

Question 1
For the 2nd part I couldn't sketch that damn graph! I had a really good sketch but I couldn't be certain that there was only 1 intersection.. the gradient of one curve could've changed alot and I didn't want to waste so long showing it was okay.

Question 2
For the 2nd part (again), I had an equation... Z^4 - Zx^2 - 19Z - 3x = 0 [something like that anyway], but I couldn't solve it! I couldn't even find any ranges for Z.

Question 3

I was also stuck on the (a)(iii) showing arcsin(x) / x > x cosec(x).
I suspected I would need to go into the 2nd gradient but I really didn't want to do that.. in the end I did something like that and I think I came up with an argument that was really weak. I'm not sure if it was even correct lol!

Question 4
I tried this towards the end as a last ditch effort to save myself. I did (ii) first fine, then on (i) I did it fine also except show sin(18) = 1/4(1+sqrt(5)). I had the idea correct of using sin(90-4x) = cos(x). I wrote this down also saying "I don't have enough time" I think... once I came out I knew exactly what I needed to do but I just needed a couple of more minutes.

Also
My paper was a mess. It started out fine but when I started crumbling things became messy, I'm not sure if they will understand some of the ideas I had.

In my past paper attempts I always worked on rough paper.. but here I had to do it on the actual answer booklet first go.. I didn't think of that.

Question 6
I had the right idea of using integration by parts and even wrote down some working on the extra answer paper, but I said it was worthless handing it in. I really hope the invigilator still gave it in !

Lower mark boundaries
I'm not convinced because everyone thinks the exam they did was worse than past papers.
I hope I am wrong
(edited 12 years ago)
Reply 91
Panicked and ****ed up.

Completed q2 first (cube numbers one with x,y,z)
Played around with q3 (increasing functions) but couldn't get past halfway.
Finished q1 (graphs)
Tried q7 and failed (sequences)
q6 (integration) was excruciating. Really panicking at this stage. Forgot that the n in [f(x)]^n existed and tried f(x) = (secx + tanx)^2 (to generate the ^6 ) after crossing out the correct answer/function.
Tried q4 but got nowhere really (trig).

Bring on STEP III. Or don't.
Reply 92
Original post by LtCommanderData
I did the whole of the first two mechanics questions (not sure if they were right or what I got, completely forgotten already) and I did the whole of the probability one with the matches and the points... I think I did the first part (ie the show that) of that wrong - basically just used a tree diagram and no series - I knew it should have been series, but I fiddled about with the probabilities of the tree diagram until I got the 'show that' result so left it.

Of the three pure questions I tried, I didn't finish any of them (and barely started one of them). Fingers crossed for low grade boundaries!


Any chance in question 10, tan = 1/sqrt(2)
Original post by soczek322
Oops I did it a really long way... I said assume B is moving towards the wall and then I went on to solve it to get (4f-2)e^2 > f-2 i think... and then i considered the cases where f >0.5 and f < 0.5 blah blah blah it wasnt really a mathematical explanation

That's looking about right (I think it was (4f-1) instead, though). That terms clearly positive so if you divide through by it and show that it's negative, you're done.
Original post by .,james<>
I did 9, 10, 1, 3, 6. My answer to Q1 is the same as what other people have posted (though my method of sketching the graphs was rubbish, just drew the two seperate root graphs and then said 'when you add them together it will look something like...'), 3 I got stuck on showing xcosec(x) is increasing. Out of curiosity, did anyone else get tan(theta)=2 at the end of projectiles question? That's the only bit I can remember of that question. And for any that can remember, on Q9 (collisions), to show B moves towards the wall, would it be ok to say that for that velocity function (the one we had to show) to have any chance of being negative, f=1, then rearrange to get e^2 and show that v>0 no matter what e is from there?


damn :frown: I got tan(theta) = root 2!! That would be me being wrong though haha :frown:
Original post by soczek322
Any chance in question 10, tan = 1/sqrt(2)


I can't remember, sorry :s-smilie:

If someone posts the whole question up that may jog my memory. That was the second question I did though, so the memory of it has been squashed by another whole question and 3 failed attempts
Reply 96
Original post by Farhan.Hanif93
That's looking about right (I think it was (4f-1) instead, though). That terms clearly positive so if you divide through by it and show that it's negative, you're done.


But 0<f<1 so you have to consider f <0.25 and f>0.25??

Thanks for the help!
Original post by kerribbz_x
damn :frown: I got tan(theta) = root 2!! That would be me being wrong though haha :frown:


I may have divided cos by sin :confused::eek:
Original post by soczek322
Any chance in question 10, tan = 1/sqrt(2)


I got tan(theta)=2, but as I've said I think my method was wrong, what did you do? Was it an Impulse-momentum principle kind of thing?
Original post by soczek322
root(2)/2?? and how did you prove that B is always moving towards the wall?


I got root 2 :frown: And someone earlier got 2 hahaa. Going well heyy!! I proved that regardless of the values of e or f the velocity would be positive so would move towards the wall. I showed that the component with just e was always positive. And the one with f, when positive meant the whole velocity was always positive, and when negative, that it was smaller than the component with just e, so it would always be positive too! I took most of my time proving it hahaa
Original post by soczek322
But 0<f<1 so you have to consider f <0.25 and f>0.25??

Thanks for the help!


I may have divided cos by sin :confused::eek:

Ah I'm not sure then. I can't remember quite what I did...

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