Maths Hl Options

Hey,

We are choosing our options in Maths now. I wanted to know (from people who have done them) what people think about them! Which is the easiest? Which is better preparation for Engineering? For Economics? Which one is the hardest?

I am thinking that the statistics one is probably the easiest one...

What do you think?

Reply 1

aluakz

well... it is assummed that statistics is the easiest one. and probably, for economics it would be the best. though series and differentiation is also good for that, and that is the option we did. i love differentiation and that's one of the main reasons i chose this option (but also because i can't stand probability and the other two looked to "pure" and complicated). but don't be fooled by the name! differentiation is only a 5th of the option, so that was kinda disappointing for me. and... this option is also quite hard. interesting but hard. i have never worked this much for maths!

also... take into concern that this may session the exams were screwed up (mostly because it was the first year of the new syllabus) - so statistics exam ended up being rediculously easy and series and differentiation one ridicuously hard.

i'd advise you to look through the content of the syllabus and then take the thing you are most interested in. all of them will be harder than the core, but if you are actually interested in what you're doing, then it won't be bad at all!

hope this helps

Reply 2

IBLinnea

Yeah pretty much everyone that did Series and DE got like a point lower than they should have. I mean I lost a whole point on my grade because of paper 3..so...

Reply 3

aluakz

yeah... it was almost my wrost exam (though it still could be worse than that). and my classmate who got 45 points got a 5 on that paper. but it didn't got as bad as getting a point lower than expected for the subject. and... it's not really because the option is impossible, but because the exam was rediculous! i hope they leart on their mistakes, so the november session people won't suffer

Reply 4

o.Ob

Your friend got a 5 on paper 3 and still managed to get a 7 in total? Wow, it was probably a close one o_O

Reply 5

Sinuhe

I found Sets, Relations and Groups and Discrete Maths the easiest ones; they're nice and lovely and pure. (I hope they're still called that in the new syllabus?)
Statistics was OK, but kind of pointless and easy to lose marks at. Analysis and approximation (now called Series and differentiation) was good, better than statistics in any case, but quite hard (not in the actual exam though, that was surprisingly easy in May 2005) - though this one has changed the most in the new syllabus, and I don't know exactly what it's like now.
The absolute hardest option for me was Euclidean Geometry and Conic Sections. It's not offered any more for HL Maths, and it has been cut to only a tiny bit of its former content for Further Maths in the new syllabus.

I suppose statistics might be the best option for economics; for engineering, I'd go for sets, relations and groups. (It doesn't *look* very useful when you do it, but group theory has lots of applications. It's incredibly useful in chemistry and physics, and I suppose engineers do symmetries and things like that as well.)
Also series and differentiation is useful - differential equations are important, and series, while hard, are very common in the sciences.

Reply 6

HMSChocolate

I wouldn't know. my class didn't have a choice. our teacher chose. we did Stats. I found it easy to do in class but kind of fell apart in the exam because I was nervous so I only got a 5 on P3. But I found Stats easy when we did in class.

Reply 7

aluakz

o.Ob

Your friend got a 5 on paper 3 and still managed to get a 7 in total? Wow, it was probably a close one o_O

that's coz he got full points on paper 1 and 2

Reply 8

rawkingpunkster

Hmm. Differential is easy for me because most of the stuff I have learnt before in the previous years. I'm not so sure if your option affects your application to uni. Yes statistics is useful for econs.. dont know bout physics though. You got physics HL so shouldnt be a prob (:

Reply 9

andy_cole2

actaully fulll points? what do u lot think of the discrete maths one? we did it and it has been boring and **** i cant rem any of what we learnt. also the osc guide for it advises taht it does not cover everything we need :p:

grr

Reply 10

HMSChocolate

then why doesn't it cover everything you need?? Huh? would they test you stuff that's not on the syllabus??

Reply 11

aluakz

the problem is not the syllabus, but the books. they don't cover everything that's in the syllabus or cover it only partly. and explanations are often crap. and now that they changed the syllabus the situation is even tougher...

Reply 12

hatif

if u are going to do egineering (as i am) do the series and diff eq option. This is option is really hard but very interesting. By doing math HL with series and diff eq covers alot of the first year mathematics for engineering at university, please see:

http://www2.ee.ic.ac.uk/electricalengineering/courses/course.asp?c=E1.10&s=E1