The Edexcel AEA (26/06/12 - AM) Revision Thread

are you sure about the bolded part?

i got

2(\sin^2x \cosx)^{1/3}

have no idea how to turn that in latex just tried and failed about 10 edits lol

I remember getting the answer as $a ( \cos x )^{ \frac43} + C$, where $a$ is a constant which i don't remember.

I'm fairly sure, but of course not certain. Raheem seems to have gotten the same form as me; where my a took the value -2/3.

I can't see how the boundaries could get higher than 2010 . As someone else said that would represent a near perfect performance with just one or two wrong parts and i think something like 20% get distinctions don't they? Seeing as nearly everyone here seemed to struggle in the exam with q3 and then individually one or two parts else with boundaries 85+ for the distinction, does anyone on here reckon they would get it?

Also, what were the boundaries for 2011 btw? I couldn't seem to find them on edexcel's site...


Year Distinction Merit
2002 74 51
2003 70 50
2004 70 48
2005 69 50
2006 67 48
2007 68 49
2008 72 54
2009 69 51
2010 81 63
2011 70 50


I don't feel the boundaries will be as high as 2010, in the 2010 paper there was only one 10 marks question which was difficult. In this paper i can see many people dropping marks on several places, i.e. last part of question 1, question 3, logs question, last question.

Thanks, thats interesting to know. The only paper i did fully for practice was 2008, and i thought that was all really easy except maybe 6(d) and half of the vectors question ( i suck at vectors). Though that year the boundaries did seem to be on the higher side which probably reflects this.

Never done one of these before the exams but these are the qs I did.

(1) Ranges and domains.

-First part requires finding the minimum value of the quadratic. 2nd part required a straightforwards substitution to find gf(x) and then showing that the root spewed real values for all real x. (Of course the domain was something like x>=2 so you had to adhere to this).

(2) Prove identity using compound angles formulae and trig identities, or more quickly by DeMoivre's theorem. Integration was a simple rearrangement of the initial result, only requiring use of the chain rule.

(3) The trigonometry question - did not attempt this.

(4) 3 vertices of a cube given.

-Find 3 different relative position vectors between vertices and take magnitude of each to arrive at 7, 7sqrt(2) and 7 sqrt(3). This is clearly a triplet stemming from the side, face diagonal and cube diagonal respectively. Volume of cube therefore 343 units^3.

- Use dot product to determine alpha.
- 60 degrees occurs in the equilateral triangle formed by joining the diagonals of 3 adjacent faces about one vertex. From this deduce the length of a diagonal and hence the length of a side of the cube.

(5) Simple laws of logs.
-(log_a x) = 0 was often a solution but x does not equal 1 hence not possible.
-one part gave the result of a^((n-1)th root of n)
-last part: LHS was an arithmetic summation to n and RHS a gp to n. Rearrange to get desired result.

(6) Straightforward:
-Roots of cubic are x-intercepts
-Integrate between roots dx to get G = ((a+b)^4)/12, very nice and clean algebra
-Differentiate cubic to obtain expression for derivative. Set this to equal zero and determine the values of x satisfied by this (this should have been a quadratic which factorised nicely in terms of a and b, but did require a bit of confidence with factorising quadratics). Hence do base x height for rectangle and the result for k may have been 16/27 or 9/16 i don't exactly remember.

(7) Differentiate or consider function to get coordinates.
- Latter coordinates had x-coordinate as arctan(5*pi/4)
- Sketch both curves having considered maxima/minima and intercepts to get a joker's lip shape.
- find dy/dx for C1 at S. Use a triangle to find tan beta and you're done.
- didn't get onto last part

So I think I lost 15 marks.. was just working at a bit of a sluggish rate :\ Is a distinction still achievable at this rate?

Thanks.

I am guessing the boundaries will be slightly lower than those of 2010.

Merit ~60 ±2
Distinction ~78 ±2

In the 2010 subject report, this was the introduction:
Unfortunately this paper was not as discriminating as usual and there were rather too many questions of an accessible nature which led to unusually high grade boundaries. Nevertheless Q6, Q3(c), Q4(b) and to some extent Q2 did provide some opportunity for distinction candidates to shine.

Whereas in 2011:
There were plenty of accessible parts to most questions and virtually all the candidates were able to get started on most questions with questions 2, 3(a), 4(a), 5(a)(b), 6(b)(c) and 7(a) being answered well. The paper also gave plenty of opportunities for the better candidates to shine and questions 1, 5(c), 6(a) and 7(c) proved to be quite discriminating. The work on calculus was generally answered well whilst questions involving trigonometry, vectors and functions proved more challenging.

I think with 2010 there was a lot more consistency with the 2012 one and even if questions like 2012 (1) was of a C3/C4 standard, there were quite a few parts that I'm sure few people got totally right. If you look at how disappointed the chief examiner sounds in the 2010 intro, it seems unlikely they would publish another paper that fits the same description.

I think I achieved at least a 65 (which I thought had definitely secured a merit at the time) and possibly up to 78 depending on how many errors I made and the bonus marks. I have got a lot riding on this academically and financially, so I can't stop thinking about it!

What do you all think the boundaries will be?

Yes, this is the thing- i'm really suprised they'd release a "too easy" paper when they clearly were so disapointed in 2010. They got the balance right in 2011 again so why would they cock it up so badly this year? I still think q1 was totally out of place on this paper. Way too easy!

In terms of getting our results for the AEA, is it just the same procedure as A levels (date, on the same sheet, result automatically given to universities, etc)? Also you usually find out grade boundaries day before results day, is this the same as well, and where do we find them? Any help would be appreciated.


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I am pretty sure that the grade boundaries are released the day before results day at http://www.edexcel.com/iwantto/pages/aea-grade-boundaries.aspx . Not sure about the procedure for results, though.

Behold the mark scheme.

Wow how on earth did u get this so quickly.

By any chance have you got a copy of the question paper please?

Guys I'm not sure I understand the way S marks are awarded. It says you can get up to 6 and in the mark scheme it says for example:

Q 2, 3, 4: S1 for a perfect solution or a S+

Does this mean that if you do 2, 3, and 4 perfectly you would get 3 marks or do they only count 1 of the 3 questions and give you one mark?

Also there only seems to be 2 S+ marks in the whole paper?

Download it from here.