Failing A Level Maths Stats

Pure is alright it's just Statistics that I hate and suck at completely. So far I've failed all the statistics mini assessments plus my overall maths grade is a D which my parents aren't happy about at all.

What can I do over the Christmas holiday to rapidly improve just in time for my first maths progress test in January? I'm in year 12 btw. If you say past papers, I need a more specific plan of action please.

There are a lot of sites out there that teach the content very well:

1. Dr frost maths - Has powerpoints that accompany the textbook and are good at explaining the concepts.

2. Tlmaths - Has videos that cover the spec for pure, stats and mechanics

3. Examsolutions - Everyone's favourite, he has video tuorials, exam style questions/solutions and even solutions
for exam papers.

Once you have revised a certain topic for stats i would reccomend you put your skills to the test by doing some exam questions. I would recommend you look for q's in the sample papers for this course since many people have said the old spec questions are not really good for practice in stats. Now there is a lot more emphasis on problem solving. You could also try q's from the standalone stats qualification that edexcel offer which is the 'A-level in statistics'

Finally, once you have covered all of the year 1 content go over it and practice by doing past papers.

I'd look at https://www.drfrostmaths.com/sow.php?year=A%20Level%202017&term=Stats%201

It's linked to the new A level which a lot of websites aren't.

Thank you! It won't let me access the past papers without an account, should I just make an account? Also does it cost money?

I did a level maths last year, and I’m doing further maths this year, but I was never that confident with statistics.
Sometimes it helps to remember that you can get 0 marks on the statistics exam, and still have an A* overall.

With the past papers thing, people say it because it’s literally the best way. They got me an A* last year.
Print a paper and for each question:
-have a go at it
-check your answer (just the answer)
-if it’s wrong, see if you can correct it without looking at the solutions
-check the solutions if you can’t get to the answer
-if you don’t understand exactly what you were supposed to do, ask a teacher to explain the question to you (if there is no one to ask in the holidays, try YouTube videos at this point)
You’re aiming to understand EVERY question.

Although I still don’t fully understand it, I did okay on the statistics exam by doing loads of questions around exam time, and learning the methods for each one. This meant I could make a decent attempt at the exam questions just by recognising key words and using the right method. Unlike pure, there tends to be less problem solving style questions, so understanding isn’t quite as important.

Thanks for the helpful advice! Is it really true that I can flop statistics and still get an A*? If so I will pretend statistics doesn't even exist and try my 200% best at pure content

On edexcel this year, you needed 217/300 for an A*, and there is 50 marks worth of Statistics content.
If you got 100% on the pure exams, you would only need 17 marks from the applied paper. This could come from attempting a couple of mechanics questions.

I wouldn’t rely on this though, because it’s really easy to mess up a pure paper. I messed up paper 1, and had to do loads of work for stats and mechanics to make up for it.