Edexcel C3,C4 June 2013 Thread

Hey everyone.

Something is really really bugging me and I wonder if you can help.

I've done around 4 Solomon Press Past Papers each for C3 and C4, and the same thing keeps happening. I finish the paper, think I did great apart from a the occasional question where I will go and ask my teacher for help and then I find I make a lot of small arithmetic errors, or for example on Diagrams with Translations I may forget to put the co-ordinates.

I find when I write my plan of attack for around 10 seconds in bullet points I usually get the answers right, but I would like to know what everyone is doing to combat this.

It is really annoying me, and I hate wasting quality Past Paper time during my day, just to make dumb mistakes.

But yeah anything would be great, no matter how silly it sounds! THANKS

Hey everyone.

Something is really really bugging me and I wonder if you can help.

I've done around 4 Solomon Press Past Papers each for C3 and C4, and the same thing keeps happening. I finish the paper, think I did great apart from a the occasional question where I will go and ask my teacher for help and then I find I make a lot of small arithmetic errors, or for example on Diagrams with Translations I may forget to put the co-ordinates.

I find when I write my plan of attack for around 10 seconds in bullet points I usually get the answers right, but I would like to know what everyone is doing to combat this.

It is really annoying me, and I hate wasting quality Past Paper time during my day, just to make dumb mistakes.

But yeah anything would be great, no matter how silly it sounds! THANKS

Someone said that the two reasons people make careless mistakes, if that is what you are doing, is because they do more than one step at once or they misread. I read with my finger to prevent misreading, everyone's eyes cannot run along a line smoothly.
You should know how to check your answers using a Cal. I use a TI 84 plus and so with my cal I can check if I had done almost everything right, from minimum and maximum points to finding the remainder to drawing any graph right. After you do each question check it with an alternate method using your Cal. For example to see if you have differentiated an expression correctly substitute a value in the differentiated function and find the result. Then use your Cal to find the gradient of the tangent at that point.

Boom! Thanks so much bro!!! Two Great methods, I have the fx-991ES Plus so I think I will definitely start checking things like Gradients on my calculator more if I am feeling uncertain.

And will start tracing with my Pencil more! I think those two will help much alot, excellent tips. Thanks so much. Using that I think I will have to do less checking at the end as well.

If anyone else has more tips then please shoot! I will try those two methods when I start my next paper. Someone else told me a tip with Integration C4 is to differentiate what you integrated.

in this question i dont understand where the (-) sign went??!! they went from $-\int 4sintcost \times cosect\ dt$ to $\int 4cost \ dt$ when i believe it should be $-\int 4cost \ dt$ hence $\int -4cost \ dt$. need help !!

what's the question?

i think you just answered it for me lool ! because in the question they say they want the positive integer which im guessing means you need to make the (-) sign negligible right?

p.s. its part C

in this question i dont understand where the (-) sign went??!! they went from $-\int 4sintcost \times cosect\ dt$ to $\int 4cost \ dt$ when i believe it should be $-\int 4cost \ dt$ hence $\int -4cost \ dt$. need help !!

Isn't it because if you have a negative sign in front of your integral that has limits, then it'll be the same as the positive of your integral, just with your limits swapped around.


Posted from TSR Mobile

ooo i didn't see that they swapped the limits ! i get what they did now, but do you care to explain in general why if you swap the limits the sign goes away?

I'm not actually too sure about it myself as someone else pointed it out to me, I just remember that it does that, sorry I couldn't be of more help :-/


Posted from TSR Mobile

ooo i didn't see that they swapped the limits ! i get what they did now, but do you care to explain in general why if you swap the limits the sign goes away?

Is it just me or do people have a tendency to forget what they have learned when they have finished a maths book? (Really hope I am not the only one )

Posted from TSR Mobile

dw mutual feelings there. i'm going over pretty much whole of binomial expansion again because i forgot it-ish. bare in mind we are humans in the end. dw you will get the hang of it when you start doing exam papers

haha yup just finished, you scared me telling me substitution is hard grrr lool its probably the easiest part for me, that and by parts. yeeh i've already done a soloman paper today, got a C, but i know where i've gone wrong so thats good, its all about practice practice practice !

I'm not actually too sure about it myself as someone else pointed it out to me, I just remember that it does that, sorry I couldn't be of more help :-/


Posted from TSR Mobile

Hahah, oops. And that's a good score! You can only improve from there. By parts is definitely my favourite too. Good luck dude