Edexcel FP3 - 27th June, 2016

True that. I've always done problems like that by putting it in a form that would merge with what's next to it and then add or subtract what I added.

The versatility of mathematics

The versatility of mathematics

can anyone explain how k is 10, i got -10??

I don't see why you need to use the difference of two squares. I did by leaving it as it was and it took less than half a page.

evidently you don't lol, I guess I am very out of practice with these sorts of things. Method does work fine though, just fiddly

I guess you're more used to harder stuff ^^

Not the case with integration...there is a saddening lack of it in first year maths, Warwick at least

can anyone explain how k is 10, i got -10??

Ah shame it's one of my favourite topics. What interesting stuff do you do in first year of Warwick maths?

It is there but it's mainly just FP2 kind of stuff (with some FP3 integrals expected to be known also). Probs just as first year is meant to get everyone on a level playing field; I expect it to be better later. Personally, but I may be alone, I think Analysis is very interesting and fun. We do a geometry and motion module which is basically like A level +, just loads of techniques you learn and then apply; linear algebra is another slightly divisive one but I found it quite enjoyable, lots of proofs and really nice to see the matrix stuff built up a bit rather than fed to you in supremely boring fashion like it is in this module. The Foundations module has some cool stuff in it as well, bit of early number theory, set theory, logic and so on.

Seems good, I look forward to it. Yeah matrices in FP3 are quite dull. They just tell you to do stuff using formulae essentially. I looked at a past paper from Warwick and the first question was "State Pythagoras' Theorem" for 4 marks. What??!?! And you only need to do 2 questions. I thought uni maths was hard

The emphasis in linear algebra is on formally building up the correspondence between matrices and linear maps, which indeed is crucial to why we consider the former so important, and it is very nice to see quite elegant and intuitive proofs of stuff like the formula for an inverse. You may still have to implement those formulas in the same way but you can do it with good grace.
oh yeah haha I forgot Intro to Geometry. In a bizarre twist I think I actually messed up that exam and got somewhere like 80% (great mark for uni in general, for that module...lol). Despite having some very easy parts in it some of the geometric proofs are quite beautiful if you have not already been through them. There are several similarly trivial modules in first year but then people's marks tend to drop by nearly a whole classification (8% to be precise IIRC) in second year.

I'm guessing that if 80% was messing up for you then the others went fine . Wow that is quite a drop for the second year. I heard you can get above 100% because of some Seymour formula which is crazy. Have people actually gotten above that? I am looking forward to proofs. My teacher went through a lot of the proofs of formulae we use and I always find that the most interesting part of the topic. Also, how much work do you do a week would you say? Is there still time to socialise, go out or whatever?

well I shall see when my results come in... yeah they have recently done away with that. Now they pick the optimal subset of your modules and literally just calculate the weighted average mark, much simpler and no impossible percentages. I'm pretty sure people have had over 100% before. I dunno if they've managed that over the course of a degree but in a year maybe..

Yeah I love proofs, and that is why I love analysis so much, it is primarily loads of proofs, and quite nice and fun ones. It is hard to quantify. Tbh I didn't work hard enough. But you should essentially be treating it like a full time job for optimal results I think. Also depends a lot on your choice of modules. Definitely ample time to go out for me but I only slightly went over the minimum number of credits and picked some fairly easy choices and as I said didn't work hard enough in general. In first year you can kind of afford that I suppose as it's only 10% of the degree. Still in societies I go to second year maths students are running half the exec so they obviously have time..

I think the limits were switched in that question. When you switch the limits around you multiply your integral by -1.

$\displaystyle \int_{a}^{b} f(x) \ \mathrm{d}x = F(b)-F(a) = -\int_{b}^{a}f(x)\ \mathrm{d}x = -\left ( F(a)-F(b) \right )$

In layman's terms - flip around the limits, get a minus sign outside the integral.

Huh I did it a slightly different way.

Fp3 is my favourite module.

Dude... I'd give you full UMS straightaway if I were marking your scripts. That handwriting