Friday 14th June - AQA Unit 3 Modular Exam GCSE

i'm absolutely dreading it!

I'm doing it, but I had been revising for today's Unit 2 the past few days. So now I'll restart the Unit 3 revision. It's a BS exam anyway, it's a memory test rather than a real maths test.

I need 102 UMS/120 UMS to get an A overall! If I don't get an A, what options do I have in achieving that A - someone please help

What do you need it for? If you don't need it immediately, you can simply do it next year, and I don't mean the whole course. A well-kept secret is that you don't actually have to attend a school or college or enrol on a course or join a website to do a GCSE (or even A Level). You contact the exam board, arrange where you'll take the tests and when, pay them, and there you go. You could choose to take the 3 units in March or whenever's earliest, then you have the chance to resit any you didn't do good enough on in June anyway.

Say I wasn't off that much off an A, could I retake a specific unit in March or January?

You know what hate? Words like 'subtended'. Why don't they just speak English proper, wut like we does? Remember in Unit 2 in one of the papers on the last page, they had that upside-down triangle symbol instead of 'a = 2, b = 1'? That wasn't a maths question at all. If you want to test our ability in maths, don't test our ability in English and symbol language.

You don't need to know the word 'subtended', it helps, but all you need to be aware of are the circle theorems in that regard. Remember the arrow theorem as opposed to the angle subtended at the center is double that of the angle subtended at the circumference.

'Symbol language' is the basis of algebra, love it or hate it, it will be on the paper!

As for the testing English in a Maths paper part - this is happening across all examinations. GCSE Maths isn't really a great test of your mathematical capabilities, it's more a test to see if you are fit for A Level, that's where the real test is!

Convert everything the paper is stating into familiar language that you understand. That way when some symbol language comes up you can call A two and B one, just like you said above.

Best of luck!

Woah settle down there. I call bull**** when they choose to use a rarely used word instead of a more common one, and when they decide to use an upside-down triangle to stroke their... ego. That's all. If I'm testing someone, I'll make damn sure they understand the question. Like I said, it's supposed to be a maths test, I'm not gonna punk out foreigners or illiterates to fake question difficulty.

It may be rarely used outside of Maths, but it's used a lot within Maths. It's just you usually come across circle theorems by GCSE level (it's not limited to circles either, look here for more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtended_angle.

Other than that, AQA aren't the worst for setting questions people don't understand. I've seen OCR ask questions that weren't even on their specifications!

Before I submit this reply, what do you mean an upside down triangle? In GCSE Maths triangles are triangles and you can work out angles or lengths using The Pythagorean Theorem, Trigonometric Ratios, Sine Rule and Cosine Rule. If you mean it was awkward how they positioned the triangle then that would be to increase the difficulty, making things harder to spot.

On the specification they have the Ambiguous Case (part of the law of Sines) and as far as I'm aware it hasn't came up on any exams yet, and it's the most tricky devious thing they could put on it. However, in the specification they have outlined that if they want you to find an answer for the Ambiguous Case then they will specify in the question, which I found to be rather nice of them.

Focus on the good parts of the exam. I'm a big fan of maths so I'm looking forward to the exam. If you are struggling with anything or unsure about some of the terminology used then let me know and I'll do my best to assist you!

Woah again. Look, really, you're just over-analysing everything and reading something else anyway. I'm not struggling with anything. I'm not talking about geometry, or algebra. All I'm saying is the language is needlessly complicated and takes away from the purpose which is to mesaure someone's mathematical ability in key areas.

As for the upside-down triangle, I am not talking about geometry. Like I said, it was in algebra, unit 2. 'a [upside-down triangle] b' was used in an unclear way to mean 'a = something in this equation, b= something in this equation'. Unless the person had been specifically told what the symbol actually means and what's being asked of them, and chance are they won't be told, they can't do the question at all. That means they will have lost marks not because they couldn't do the math, but because the question was impossible to understand. It becomes a test of language, not maths.

Guys I am dreading the unit 2 tommorrow, any thoughts on what it might be like?

You mean Unit 3, and it'll be as hard as all the past papers. Hopefully it isn't a nasty surprise like Unit 2 a few days ago with its new questions, stuff I certainly haven't seen in any textbooks or past papers.

Guys I am dreading the unit 2 tommorrow, any thoughts on what it might be like?

I want to go to the top universities for a degree I pick so I definitely need an A in Maths for GCSE.