Leaving Cert Honours Maths

XxXSarahXxX

hey,:)
just wondering is honours maths for leaving cert as difficult as every1 makes it out to be. i got an A in the junior cert and would have thought i would be able for it. unfortunatly i have a terrible teacher but have recently started grinds.
Thanks

Fremen

If you got an A in the junior cert, it won't be a problem. It might be a bit more time consuming than some other subjects, but it's no harder if you approach it in the right way.

For the record, I got a B in the junior cert. Doing a maths PhD now.

XxXSarahXxX

Oh good, thanks. also iv found out that my grinds teacher is not actually a maths teacher he said he will have to 'learn' the course himself ! is it a joke goin to him?

MathsManiac

I agree entirely with Fremen that you should be well able for it.

The fact that your grinds tutor is not experienced at teaching the course doesn't necessarily mean he'll be bad, but it's certainly not stacking the odds in your favour!

Unless you have some good reason to believe that he's going to be very good, I would recommend that you try to find someone with experience of teaching the course, and preferably someone that other people have recommended.

Monkey61

Well I thought honours maths was the easiest A1 that I got. For me, it required the least amount of work out of all the Leaving Cert subjects.

As long as you can answer all the questions on the past papers and the sample questions(plus there was another book that our teacher made us get with sample papers - maths bank maybe?) and know your formulas - I'd go so far as to say it is quite easy.

Pawwed Rig

I was 'advised' by my career guidance teacher to do Ordinary Maths after doing honours for Junior Cert. It was a waste of my time. I would have got an A1 after summer of fifth year. I went on to do the honours course for a PLC where I also got an A. Lost 40 points in my leaving because of that career guidance teacher Grrrrrrrr.
To answer your question do the honours course. If you got an honour in your junior cert you will be fine. You still need to study though.
No point in you doing grinds with a teacher who is only learning himself. There are plenty of Maths, science, Engineering etc etc graduates that have a high level of Maths that would be better for you.

XxXSarahXxX

ok thanks every1 dats been a great help... i might change grinds teacher later on...i think id put in the effort even though i dont need it for any 3rd level corse im interested in i think i would do better in it compared to other subjects i do.....ne good revision books ye cud recommend?

sponsoredwalk

Hey Sarah if you're worried about LC honours math I suggest you watch some of the videos @ www.khanacademy.org as they will help you understand how easy the whole of the LC math course is.

Going crazy into these videos & using your books to practice questions should get you an A+.

Spread the word about these videos, the guy is making them for free & giving them out for free & they are so bloody helpful they make math fun :rolleyes:

XxXSarahXxX

those videos look good thanks

mickdw

I did higher level maths for leaving back in 96. Now while I was always excellent at maths, getting A at junior cert & having since got an engineering degree, the leaving cert appeared very difficult at that time & I just barely got a C in it. Now I think it is down to the teaching. I got the best result in the year yet a class in a neighbouring school got alot of A1s. I suppose the moral of the story is you need the right teacher. I remember all we did in class was have the teacher go through solutions to homework questions each day, very little understanding at the time.
I went through a past paper there last week & there isnt alot in it that is too difficult if you werent rusty like me. Has the course got easier since mid 90s?
I say go for it. You will know pretty quickly if its going over you head.

RolandIRL

there's actually a lot in the papers recently about honours maths and how it's more geared towards the students now. it has gotten a lot easier in recent years compared to what my brothers done round 2000. i did my LC last year and i found the maths course easy enough, but all this depends on the teacher you get. i'd say go for it, because if you do find it too difficult, there's always the option of ordinary level, which you would definitely get an A in, if you got an A for JC.

XxXSarahXxX

ya iv a desperate teacher, unfortunatly

miss no stars

The hardest thing about the leaving cert honours course is avoiding boredom. The material isn't that difficult in itself, but teachers seem to think it is so they make a big fuss of explaining about 20 times, which in turn makes students think it's difficult and sets them up to be confused so, god help you if you get it, you're gonna be bored

go read a little about maths. Read up on what things like trigonometry, geometry and calculus ARE and make sure you've got a good understanding of the very basics (what is a slope and when is it positive/negative - comes back big time in calculus) not just an ability to regurgitate. You should be fine.

jonseyblub

miss no stars wrote: »

go read a little about maths. Read up on what things like trigonometry, geometry and calculus ARE and make sure you've got a good understanding of the very basics (what is a slope and when is it positive/negative - comes back big time in calculus) not just an ability to regurgitate. You should be fine.

As an honours Maths Teacher I have to say you have hit the nail on the head with that comment. I'd always encourage my students to try and read up on what Maths is all about to get a better understanding of what they are doing.Unfortunately a lot of students who are doing HL Maths are doing it to get points which leads them to just learning specific methods and doing past exam questions which is fine 80-90% of the time. But when a question is put on the paper which is not the 'norm' but which tests understanding there is uproar. Hopefully with the new project Maths course coming on board in September there will be less emphasis on regurgitation and more on understanding.
My advice to the OP is to go for it but be willing to put in a lot more work into studying it from day one in 5th year and you should be fine as you obviously have some talent for the subject.

jonseyblub

sponsoredwalk wrote: »

Hey Sarah if you're worried about LC honours math I suggest you watch some of the videos @ www.khanacademy.org as they will help you understand how easy the whole of the LC math course is.

Going crazy into these videos & using your books to practice questions should get you an A+.

Spread the word about these videos, the guy is making them for free & giving them out for free & they are so bloody helpful they make math fun :rolleyes:

Thanks for this. Excellent videos.

tech77

Monkey61 wrote: »

Well I thought honours maths was the easiest A1 that I got. For me, it required the least amount of work out of all the Leaving Cert subjects.

I'd also maintain this (says he who managed to fcuk up and get a pathetic A2 in the end ).
From my experience, OP, if you have any sort of affinity for maths you should do honours IMO.

Also, Fremen- wow.
Is a maths PhD crazily difficult.
What are the most important attributes to get you through that- is it more about being gifted at maths or does hard work come into it as well.

Fremen

You don't need to be gifted, but you need to be seriously interested, and you do have to work pretty hard. It's just a matter of finding an interesting topic and asking the right questions, really.

tech77

Fremen wrote: »

You don't need to be gifted, but you need to be seriously interested, and you do have to work pretty hard. It's just a matter of finding an interesting topic and asking the right questions, really.

Right.
Given my attitude to maths is best described as "very interested" that's encouraging for me (if i ever did think of doing something like this in future).
Never did do it though, afraid it might be too hard.

sponsoredwalk

I think there are two things that are pivotal to success in this endeavour.

1: Interest.
You've said that you have this so that should keep you going for now. The real fun begins when you've mastered all of the secondary school math - which you'll need to in order to appreciate what's to come

2: A willingness to embrace failure.
You're going to mess up & get things wrong. End of!We all get it wrong sometimes, (think Einstein and him rejecting the weak nuclear force yet searching for a unifying theory of nature!)

"Take it easy, but take it"
Woody Guthrie

lilylarkin

Hi all, I am a mature student starting back to UCD Engineering full time in Sept. I did my leaving cert in 1985 and while I did well in Honours maths (B) i am worried that after 20 years I wont have a clue. Would anyone who has just completed the leaving cert be willing to pass on their old maths books to me, as I would like to do some study before Sept? I can collect from Laois or Kildare, also Dub. Thanks

Fremen

lilylarkin wrote: »

Hi all, I am a mature student starting back to UCD Engineering full time in Sept. I did my leaving cert in 1985 and while I did well in Honours maths (B) i am worried that after 20 years I wont have a clue. Would anyone who has just completed the leaving cert be willing to pass on their old maths books to me, as I would like to do some study before Sept? I can collect from Laois or Kildare, also Dub. Thanks

It wouldn't hurt to get yourself a copy of Thomas' calculus and Anton's Linear algebra. You may well end up using those books in class for the first couple of years. They're relatively gentle with lots of examples. They'll start with the definition of a matrix, tell you what a real number is, and go from there.

Lexor

+1 for Anton's Linear Algebra....can be picked up quite cheap on Amazon along with the solutions manual. For calculus, I used "Calculus made easy" by Silvanus P. Thompson & Martin Gardner. Another very good book which I have continuously come back to over the years is "Engineering Mathematics" by K.A.Stroud. HTH.

lilylarkin

Thanks Guys, are you saying these are the two main areas of maths I will be covering at third level linear maths and algebra? Therefore I don't need to go trawling thru leaving cert maths? While we r on the subject, I've never studied Chemistry or Physics and they are both First Year Eng modules, any advice or book recommendations?

Fremen

The main maths subjects you'll be doing in first year are calculus (which they'll start from scratch) and linear algebra (a.k.a. vectors and matrices, also from scratch). I'm not really that sure what you'd cover after that in an engineering course.

Parts of these subjects will have been covered at leaving cert, parts won't have been. For physics, try "fundamentals of physics" by Halliday, Resnick and Walker. I can't really comment about the chemistry side of things.

alphaLaura

While we r on the subject, I've never studied Chemistry or Physics and they are both First Year Eng modules, any advice or book recommendations?

Although most 1st yr physics courses recommend Halliday's 'Fundamentals of Physics' I'd say keep it as a backup and use Mansfield & O'Sullivan 'Understanding Physics' as your main textbook. It is far, far superior!

Decerto

lilylarkin wrote: »

Hi all, I am a mature student starting back to UCD Engineering full time in Sept. I did my leaving cert in 1985 and while I did well in Honours maths (B) i am worried that after 20 years I wont have a clue. Would anyone who has just completed the leaving cert be willing to pass on their old maths books to me, as I would like to do some study before Sept? I can collect from Laois or Kildare, also Dub. Thanks

Its been mentioned a few times on these boards but http://www.khanacademy.org/ is an amazing tool for what your after, full linear algebra and calc courses and the teacher is kinda awesome and you can start from whatever stage you want

sponsoredwalk

alphaLaura wrote: »

I'd say keep it as a backup and use Mansfield & O'Sullivan 'Understanding Physics' as your main textbook. It is far, far superior!

I've been trying to buy this book for the past month, from what I can tell
it's the best general physics book there is but it's at a higher level than
the others & seeing as it's only half as big as the bumper books. The
great thing I can see is that QM & SR are done early in the book & that
there are only like 14 questions per chapter which, in my view, is enough
reason to get the book anyway.

If anyone wants to sell me their old one pm me

Decerto wrote: »

Its been mentioned a few times on these boards but http://www.khanacademy.org/ is an amazing tool for what your after, full linear algebra and calc courses and the teacher is kinda awesome and you can start from whatever stage you want

The linear algebra done in this course is far better than khanacademy's
IMO but the rest of the courses are great.

Someone asked for a chemistry book recommendation, my vote is for:

General, Organic & Biochemistry

This book explains the early material very clearly, haven't finished it yet though!

manna

I wouldn't worry about the physics or chemistry too much unless they are on the list of required subjects. Neither subject is overly popular at leaving cert level, and not a lot of people will have taken them both, or had an option of doing physchem. They should start from the very beginning.

The chemistry book I used in first year was Chemistry: the central science by Bursten and LaMay (I think), and that was very easy to use.