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.