Why am I finding S1 so hard?

C1 I found quite easy and achieved 91% in that. I'm also finding C2 easy, perhaps easier than C1. But S1... damn, S1 really messes with me.

Everything in S1 except for probability, perms & combs and binomial expansion is quite straight forward, and I rarely encounter any problems.

But some of the probability questions seem to trip me up and I'll only usually get between 1/2 and 3/4 of the marks available for such questions, sometimes even less! The same applies for perms & combs... it's as though I'm over thinking and concocting some weird way of answering the question. But even when I look at the mark schemes, I glare at them not knowing why the hell that's the correct answer.

As for binomial expansion, we haven't been taught it yet, though I had a go at teaching myself it today, and managed to get approximately half the marks available for such questions in a past paper.

All in all, in the OCR June 2010 S1 Paper (that I sat today) I got roughly 72%. I really want A grades all over, so achieving 72% (and sometimes lower) when seeing so many others find it dead easy, is slightly disheartening.

What do you suggest I do to improve my understanding of the topics that I'm struggling with (including binomial distribution)?

Don't feel disheartened! I found S1 really hard too, as the grade boundaries are high and is really easy to make silly mistakes. But I did okay in the end, with practice .

I did a different board to you (Edexcel), so my advice may not be that applicable. When I was revising, I summarised all the points first then basically just did every question in the exercise book. Do you get those for OCR?

Also, are there questions that you always trip up on? If you have any particular questions that you don't understand, maybe you can post them up?

Feel free to ask me any questions.

I was under the impression that binomial expansion was under C2 in OCR, do you mean binomial distribution?


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I think you mean binomial distribution, which is my all time favourite topic , with the exception of hypothesis testing. I'm with MEI which are known to have the most weird, challenging q's so imagine how I felt! I agree when I was doing S1, I was thinking wth, the probability questions were like mind games. Anyway, just go on examsolutions and use your class notes (usually easier to understand), to answer LOADS of those same challenging questions. Then, do like 10 past papers. It WILL get easier because you get better at it. I went from an E/U to an A, in less than 2 weeks so if I can do it, you can too! Oh and the grade boundaries aren't always 80% for an A I don't think, because they're sometimes like 74% so you're close.

Have your school subscribed to the OCR MEI website at all? That's one of the best resources around. We're so similar haha, even in class I used to stay quiet and not ask my teacher for help because everyone else was rushing through the q's, but just ask, it's worth it OR ask on TSR, there are actually maths teachers here so what more could you ask for! In the end, all the students that used to rush through the class questions got U's and I didn't so shows hard work does pay off even if you're not naturally good at it, like me.