Project maths and people applying for science degrees

coolbro

I was just looking over project maths now, it's a joke if you ask me. If you change the difficulty of higher level maths, it will only make life far more difficult for students when they come into third level courses with a heavy emphasis on maths (like engineering of science).

I've only seen the second paper, granted, but it looks far too simple for what should be a challenging course that should force students to think and even make some students be a little creative. There also seems to be a huge emphasis on probability, an area which isn't really all that vital for most third level courses (as far as I know), calculus is easily the most important thing for most university level courses as it's the most important tool in science, but I suspect they've dumbed that down a lot.

The core of the problem with higher level maths isn't one that should be addressed at 5th and 6th year, but rather at primary school level. If you fix the problem there, I'm sure you'll get another couple of percent of people doing higher level maths and performing well in it. Also what about transition year? Nobody ever studies in transition year really, but if you made the current/old higher level maths course into a 3 year programme I think students would really benefit since the workload is so great.

Another thing I wanted to bring up was the huge amount of people applying for science degrees these past 2 years. I really don't understand why? If you want to do a science degree, fine, it's a great and interesting course and I'm a big fan of science personally. But it's not for everyone. A lot of people will go into a science degree this year but they don't have a great aptitude for maths, which means that they'll most likely end up majoring in biology or something like that. Unfortunately most of the science related job offerings in this country are areas in physics and chemistry, areas which demand a strong aptitude for maths. Also, people should be applying for engineering courses as well. The job opportunities in engineering are far greater than those in science (especially finacially). The fact is that if you do a science degree, you may find yourself having no choice but to stay in education (doing research or a PHD), or you may find yourself teaching.

TL;DR: project maths is too dumbed down and people should be wary of science degrees

felic

I agree with you. I saw the project maths paper too and I thought it was an Aprils Fools joke or something. Junior Cert Higher level is tougher than that. I really hope that they dont dumb it down that much when they fully implement it and I am furious that they ran it for a set number of test cases this year! How was that fair on students who were taking the regular Maths papers?

Looking back over the Maths higher level papers in the last number of years, Im really at a loss as to why people are doing so bad in it. If you were to look at the papers pre the year 2000, there is just nothing to compare with recent papers. The problem hasnt been the difficulty, the problem is that the course is very long and most schools dont cover the entire course on time, and thus, students focus on the questions they can do and leave out certain topics; but, the exam board have now adopted an approach of mix and match where throw questions from sections found to have been most left out into most favored and popular questions.

Thats why people have been failing. And I think they've done it on purpose to convince people that this Project Maths is the way to go to improve the system. If those papers are anything to go by, Maths A grades will rocket yet drop out rates in college will also rocket because people wont be able to cope with the regular Maths that they will have to take at uni.

Its a problem alright.

rainbowtrout

coolbro wrote: »

I was just looking over project maths now, it's a joke if you ask me. If you change the difficulty of higher level maths, it will only make life far more difficult for students when they come into third level courses with a heavy emphasis on maths (like engineering of science).

I definitely agree, I think that problem was around long before Project Maths came about. I was shocked a couple of years ago to find that the Science Teaching degree I did in UL will accept a student with Higher Level maths and an Ordinary Level Science or vice versa. The idea that a student could conceivably be admitted to a science teaching degree when they aren't able to pass the subject at higher level with a C3 or greater is beyond belief. Lots of other courses in other colleges now have similar entry requirements.

coolbro wrote: »

I've only seen the second paper, granted, but it looks far too simple for what should be a challenging course that should force students to think and even make some students be a little creative. There also seems to be a huge emphasis on probability, an area which isn't really all that vital for most third level courses (as far as I know), calculus is easily the most important thing for most university level courses as it's the most important tool in science, but I suspect they've dumbed that down a lot.

Calculus still is a huge part of third level maths courses, but probability and matrices are also a huge part of it. Don't have a huge problem with the probability and statistics part of the new syllabus, but the questions on the papers are of a mickey mouse standard.

coolbro wrote: »

The core of the problem with higher level maths isn't one that should be addressed at 5th and 6th year, but rather at primary school level. If you fix the problem there, I'm sure you'll get another couple of percent of people doing higher level maths and performing well in it. Also what about transition year? Nobody ever studies in transition year really, but if you made the current/old higher level maths course into a 3 year programme I think students would really benefit since the workload is so great.

I was amazed a couple of years ago to learn that learning times tables was done away with in primary school because rote learning is now frowned upon. While I'm not a big fan of rote learning sample answers for the leaving cert, rote learning itself is not a bad thing for certain situations. Times tables, spellings, verbs etc. The widespread use of calculators in primary schools mean students mental arithmetic is poor due to the fact that they don't have to do it. Students are regularly shocked when I have maths done in my head or on the board quicker than they can type in into their calculators, mainly because they have problems multiplying 12 x 11 and the like, in their heads. Bring back times tables please!!!

coolbro wrote: »

Another thing I wanted to bring up was the huge amount of people applying for science degrees these past 2 years. I really don't understand why? If you want to do a science degree, fine, it's a great and interesting course and I'm a big fan of science personally. But it's not for everyone. A lot of people will go into a science degree this year but they don't have a great aptitude for maths, which means that they'll most likely end up majoring in biology or something like that. Unfortunately most of the science related job offerings in this country are areas in physics and chemistry, areas which demand a strong aptitude for maths. Also, people should be applying for engineering courses as well. The job opportunities in engineering are far greater than those in science (especially finacially). The fact is that if you do a science degree, you may find yourself having no choice but to stay in education (doing research or a PHD), or you may find yourself teaching.

TL;DR: project maths is too dumbed down and people should be wary of science degrees

You seem to contradict yourself an awful lot here, on the one hand you are criticizing people for doing science degrees and saying they won't get jobs, and will struggle with the maths. Some people want to do biology degrees, some want to do chemistry degrees and are aware that they have to do maths as part of it. Personally I'd be a bit more put out about those doing degrees in philosophy and classical studies who have absolutely no hope of gaining employment in their area of study. There are a lot of branches to science. it's not all about teaching or working in a lab. Science is not for everyone but I think you'll find the ones that don't like it, don't apply for it.

But after saying people shouldn't go into science because they won't be able to cope with the maths element of the course, you're suggesting that they should all head for engineering courses which are probably the most maths heavy courses of the lot. If they are going to struggle with maths in a science course, they are going to struggle with maths in an engineering course. And no one should do a course just because of the job prospects. If they do not like engineering they are not going want to work in it after they've graduated - if they make it through the course.

Ruski

The sample papers are only an example of the structure of the papers of the new course. Even if they did remove vectors, matrices and the option question, I'm pretty sure future papers could be more demanding.

dambarude

I have a terrible feeling that Project Maths is going to make things much much worse. The most annoying thing about it is the PRAISE it is getting in the media the last while. Headlines like 'more students choose higher level in news maths course' and the like. It was only 2% more! And that was in a tiny amount of schools. I would have expected it to be much more.

Mary Coughlan keeps mentioning it as a solution to our problems with second level Maths, and the media are just going along with it! It's not being questioned at all as far as I can see. The aim seems to be to raise grades and numbers doing higher level, but these will only be superficial increases in mathematical standards. Scratch beneath the surface and you'll see that these increases don't reflect actual ability.

And all this after the hullabaloo over grade inflation a few months ago!

Big Pussy Bonpensiero

I dont think difficulty was the problem, rather volume. Thats the reason I dropped. I was able to do most things fine at the time but when I went over stuff we did months back I was completely lost. Also the amount of people who are doing Science for the sake of it is ridiculous. Its only because the points were low that they think it won't be too demanding. Last year one of the lads that got 600 did science and he was great at Maths, but I know a lot of people this year who are doing Science and were struggling with pass maths.

rainbowtrout

dambarude wrote: »

I have a terrible feeling that Project Maths is going to make things much much worse. The most annoying thing about it is the PRAISE it is getting in the media the last while. Headlines like 'more students choose higher level in news maths course' and the like. It was only 2% more! And that was in a tiny amount of schools. I would have expected it to be much more.

Mary Coughlan keeps mentioning it as a solution to our problems with second level Maths, and the media are just going along with it! It's not being questioned at all as far as I can see. The aim seems to be to raise grades and numbers doing higher level, but these will only be superficial increases in mathematical standards. Scratch beneath the surface and you'll see that these increases don't reflect actual ability.

And all this after the hullabaloo over grade inflation a few months ago!

Yes, it was piloted in 24 carefully chosen schools. Hardly representative of the rest of the country.

THFC wrote: »

I dont think difficulty was the problem, rather volume. Thats the reason I dropped. I was able to do most things fine at the time but when I went over stuff we did months back I was completely lost. Also the amount of people who are doing Science for the sake of it is ridiculous. Its only because the points were low that they think it won't be too demanding. Last year one of the lads that got 600 did science and he was great at Maths, but I know a lot of people this year who are doing Science and were struggling with pass maths.

The amount of people doing Arts or Business for the sake of it is ridiculous. A lot of people think a course won't be too demanding when the points are low, that perception is not confined to science. You also don't need to get 600 to get through a science degree. Plenty of science degrees are not purely maths focused.

JamesJB

I haven't seen project maths, but I do have a lot to say about the higher level maths course in general. I did the leaving this year and I'm very happy with my results and all that. Throughout the year, though, I had no idea what I wanted to do with myself. I want to write, and during 6th year I wrote a (lacklustre) first draft of a novel (80k words) and realised that I had to pick a REAL career. Writing will have to be a hobby (and it always will; I began rewriting immediately and am sure that I'll never finish it).

Point is, I was vaguely interested in science. I've accepted my offer for Trinity's programme, not on any snobby grounds or because it's 'the best', but because it's a solid course and not too far from home either.

The only thing I've considered is maths. I hated maths during the JC and found it to be too mysterious and elusive. The books we used all through school (Texts and Tests) consisted of basic examples followed by difficult questions that often incorporated elements from subsequent chapters before we got to study them, even though that makes no sense.

My saving grace for the LC was my teacher. She made math accessible and took away all of the mystique. I worked very hard at it, and I got mostly As and Bs as a result of that. I was happy with an A in the mock, due to it being quite similar in difficulty to many of the years before it. Then I found the actual thing to be far, far easier than the mocks or indeed any year prior to it. And I'm not one of those 'math guys' either.

I do feel that things have been dumbed down, but would anyone agree that an awful lot of the difficult questions on past papers were hard for all the wrong reasons? My opinion is that the books don't prepare you for the real thing. A lot of the very hard questions that have appeared demand knowledge or reasoning that students just aren't taught. Often these problems would be repeated in an almost identical fashion in the book. That means that the book is putting in material from the papers and not vice versa!

I will say that some of the problems emphasised good analytical thinking and reasoning this year. One of the Trig questions was really good for that and I saw when I logged on here after the exams that some really really math oriented people found it refreshingly challenging. I always leave something out, or get my abstract thinking 'almost right'. Some problems in the past papers are so very difficult, at least to me, for all the wrong reasons.

Now they're making it easier in the wrong way. If our HL A grades mean less than those from the nineties, then what will the next decade be like? Don't get me wrong, getting an A takes a lot of work if you aren't one of those aforementioned maths whizzes. It's just that the papers all seem so capricious. Take last year (2009) algebra question; the part C I think. That is the hardest question to appear on algebra in years! I could not find anything like it ANYWHERE in my book or even in a past paper. There are of course other examples. I'm all for broad references but if the books cannot at least touch on the references then what do we do? It's going to be either too hard or too easy, and again it will be this way for the wrong reasons.

The whole system needs to be revamped, and according to my teacher project maths just isn't the way to do it. Now, addressing science degree issues. I didn't take chemistry (my biggest regret) so I've been reading up a little and watching many videos dealing with the basics. I want to study science, but the past will always remain with me: I am not a maths guy. I like maths, I worked hard, I got good grades, but I spent more time working past papers and examples than really being taught maths. I had to use the internet to get those core ideas, and I know I'd feel more comfortable if I had been given such information right from the start.

I don't think that the LC prepares you for college or anything like it. Right now my family thinks that I am some kind of genius and people believe that I could 'do anything'. Why? Because I managed to work hard consistently and with a good balance for 2 years and come away with that elusive 600 point score. I'm not saying this to boast, or to efface others who have gotten top tier points, or make others feel bad because they didn't. I'm here to say that I, quite frankly, am scared. Yes, that's right. I was proud and content on the 18th, but after some thinking I can only conclude that I am no more prepared to be a scientist than somebody who only just gets into the course. In fact, those people will likely be more prepared than I am.

But nobody will think that! My mother was crying and my friends and neighbours were sending congratulatory texts and cards, and all I could think of was how ill equipped I really was. Sure, some things can never be put down as 'too easy'. Irish is anything but easy at higher level; it's actually a gauntlet. Rote learning is rote learning, whether you're in 1980 or 2010. English can be done entirely on natural ability, and languages vary. So that leaves maths, and I for one don't know what to say. You might call me arrogant, or apprehensive, or ungrateful for whatever abilities a point system indicates I have, but what can I do!? I just want to write nonsense and share thoughts with the world! I'm doomed to the knowledge that I am not quite as intelligent as the system measures, at least in its current guise.

tl;dr Math has never been done right on the LC, or at least as far back as I can see. It's been capricious in difficulty and the core material is poorly presented.

EuropeanSon

Maths has been too easy for the last few years, and Project Maths is a joke. Looking at some of the papers from the 70s and earlier, it's amazing to see how much easier it's gotten, and it's only getting worse and worse with Project Maths. The Department of Education don't care about the standards, they only seem to care about getting more students doing "higher level", even when it means lowering standards.

johnmcdnl

Having just completed the "old" maths course I have to say it really isn't that hard once the topics are explained to you rather than told "do X Do Y there's your answer...

To be able to do maths you have to understand it - this is just making the paper easier but the same basic principal is there - your not going to be able to do maths unless you understand it and "project maths" won't help because the underlying problem is the way the subject is taught from my experience


not everyone is going to be able to do honours maths but this new project maths is just going to skew results and make it look like more students are doing better now so the government and teachers will look like their getting better results to help this "smart economy"

it's really not going to help and I'm happy I did the old course tbh - I can see it being held in higher esteem compared to this mickey mouse course now

mrsdewinter

JamesJB wrote: »

My mother was crying and my friends and neighbours were sending congratulatory texts and cards, and all I could think of was how ill equipped I really was. Sure, some things can never be put down as 'too easy'. Irish is anything but easy at higher level; it's actually a gauntlet. Rote learning is rote learning, whether you're in 1980 or 2010. English can be done entirely on natural ability, and languages vary. So that leaves maths, and I for one don't know what to say. You might call me arrogant, or apprehensive, or ungrateful for whatever abilities a point system indicates I have, but what can I do!? I just want to write nonsense and share thoughts with the world! I'm doomed to the knowledge that I am not quite as intelligent as the system measures, at least in its current guise.

Hi ... I'm actually only in here because I'm looking for info on maths for the Leaving but your post caught my eye. It's been 18 years since I did my Leaving so I'll share this nugget of wisdom with you: everybody's unprepared. You're at a slight advantage if, like yourself, you're aware of that fact but, really, you're better off negotiating the first semester as if you're brim full of confidence. It sounds like you're a good student - ie have developed the habits of learning - so don't worry.
Concentrate on gathering material for your next novel...
Good luck!

JamesJB

mrsdewinter wrote: »

Hi ... I'm actually only in here because I'm looking for info on maths for the Leaving but your post caught my eye. It's been 18 years since I did my Leaving so I'll share this nugget of wisdom with you: everybody's unprepared. You're at a slight advantage if, like yourself, you're aware of that fact but, really, you're better off negotiating the first semester as if you're brim full of confidence. It sounds like you're a good student - ie have developed the habits of learning - so don't worry.
Concentrate on gathering material for your next novel...
Good luck!

Your reply is actually very uplifting. To be honest I think that if I had one thing I was especially strong at, like if I was a 'math guy' who could breeze through HL maths and call it extremely easy, I wouldn't have been writing that long winded post. Your wisdom is very much appreciated, and I will gather material for the next novel once I'm finished my current one. I won't set a deadline for that, but I'm hoping to perhaps finish it before I die :pac:

mrsdewinter

JamesJB wrote: »

Your reply is actually very uplifting. To be honest I think that if I had one thing I was especially strong at, like if I was a 'math guy' who could breeze through HL maths and call it extremely easy, I wouldn't have been writing that long winded post. Your wisdom is very much appreciated, and I will gather material for the next novel once I'm finished my current one. I won't set a deadline for that, but I'm hoping to perhaps finish it before I die :pac:

oh I'm full of wisdom alright... :rolleyes:
The other thing nobody tells you is - whisper it - very few of us end up using our primary degrees when we enter the big bad world after university... It's how you rise to the challenges of juggling course work and working within teams and expressing your theories that employers are actually looking for.
And I've a strong feeling you'll be finished that novel long, long before you die, and that you'll go on to write many, many more...

JamesJB

I've first drafted it if that counts!

Yeah, I was told that your degree and your qualifications are secondary to the things you pick up along the way and the skills you learn. I suppose it's just an academic thing, then. Is math at the LC level really preparing us at the 'old' course level? I mean, math-types are probably going to breeze through it and people who struggle are going to struggle. If you're like me and you work hard and get good grades, you're still just passing a test because the core knowledge is so poorly presented in books and/or taught in classes.

I don't think that Project Maths should make it easier, but the fact remains: some kind of change and alteration to the course is needed to make it challenging in a more fair way. The challenge of papers from, say, the late nineteen-nineties isn't much greater than last year's LC in some respects. Then, in others, it becomes way harder. It's all so capricious and difficult for me to address! Some math person might say that it has NEVER been hard to them and another might be struggling to get by at ordinary level.

tl;dr if Project Maths is the first step towards teaching math in a better way, then let it be so. If, Odin forbid, I ever have kids, I'd feel better knowing that the challenges that they face in math class are based on the core knowledge and understanding instead of studying the exam itself.

blacklionboy

I agree with what most people here have been saying in that Project maths should go and that the countries maths problems should be addressed in primary school.

My main worry would be how getting rid of certain areas of maths in P.M affects other courses(in secondary school and college). For example calculus plays a huge role in applied maths in the leaving cert which normally relies on maths to get it started!

JamesJB

^ That's your main worry? My main worry is that HL math will become a joke and the 'new' HL A student will not actually be as good at math as the system would have people believe.

That said, many people will agree that these past few years it has been made easier in many respects (someone said that above). I agree, but there are still some things in past papers that are damn tricky and far beyond anything in the book. Doing HL math as it was when I came into 5th year is an achievement, even if the consensus is that it's 'easier'. Project Maths is probably going to diminish all that.

coolbro

coolbro wrote: »

I was just looking over project maths now, it's a joke if you ask me. If you change the difficulty of higher level maths, it will only make life far more difficult for students when they come into third level courses with a heavy emphasis on maths (like engineering of science).

I've only seen the second paper, granted, but it looks far too simple for what should be a challenging course that should force students to think and even make some students be a little creative. There also seems to be a huge emphasis on probability, an area which isn't really all that vital for most third level courses (as far as I know), calculus is easily the most important thing for most university level courses as it's the most important tool in science, but I suspect they've dumbed that down a lot.

The core of the problem with higher level maths isn't one that should be addressed at 5th and 6th year, but rather at primary school level. If you fix the problem there, I'm sure you'll get another couple of percent of people doing higher level maths and performing well in it. Also what about transition year? Nobody ever studies in transition year really, but if you made the current/old higher level maths course into a 3 year programme I think students would really benefit since the workload is so great.

Another thing I wanted to bring up was the huge amount of people applying for science degrees these past 2 years. I really don't understand why? If you want to do a science degree, fine, it's a great and interesting course and I'm a big fan of science personally. But it's not for everyone. A lot of people will go into a science degree this year but they don't have a great aptitude for maths, which means that they'll most likely end up majoring in biology or something like that. Unfortunately most of the science related job offerings in this country are areas in physics and chemistry, areas which demand a strong aptitude for maths. Also, people should be applying for engineering courses as well. The job opportunities in engineering are far greater than those in science (especially finacially). The fact is that if you do a science degree, you may find yourself having no choice but to stay in education (doing research or a PHD), or you may find yourself teaching.

TL;DR: project maths is too dumbed down and people should be wary of science degrees

Probability and statistics are important in many courses in college, I think your science background might be a little be biased..

felic wrote: »

I agree with you. I saw the project maths paper too and I thought it was an Aprils Fools joke or something. Junior Cert Higher level is tougher than that. I really hope that they dont dumb it down that much when they fully implement it and I am furious that they ran it for a set number of test cases this year! How was that fair on students who were taking the regular Maths papers?

Looking back over the Maths higher level papers in the last number of years, Im really at a loss as to why people are doing so bad in it. If you were to look at the papers pre the year 2000, there is just nothing to compare with recent papers. The problem hasnt been the difficulty, the problem is that the course is very long and most schools dont cover the entire course on time, and thus, students focus on the questions they can do and leave out certain topics; but, the exam board have now adopted an approach of mix and match where throw questions from sections found to have been most left out into most favored and popular questions.

Thats why people have been failing. And I think they've done it on purpose to convince people that this Project Maths is the way to go to improve the system. If those papers are anything to go by, Maths A grades will rocket yet drop out rates in college will also rocket because people wont be able to cope with the regular Maths that they will have to take at uni.

Its a problem alright.

As if you're saying its easier than JC maths stopped reading there.

I took the project maths course this year and I have to say that I probably would have done better in the normal maths course. In project maths you actually had to think and apply your knowledge to real life situations, we couldn't just bash out exam paper after exam paper until we knew how to do questions without understanding them.
People understanding and being able to apply slightly easier maths > people learning off the way to do all of the exam questions with little to no understanding as to why they are doing it.

People are throwing around wild statements about this new course with absolutely no knowledge of it. We were at a serious disadvantage this year in that we had never seen anything like the questions we were asked before (minus the calculus), we got 1 sample paper for it which really isn't good enough when 2 years of a course come down to 2 papers on consecutive days.

Sunny!!

http://www.studentsmart.ie/blog/2010/02/half-of-nations-maths-teachers-arent-qualified-to-teach-subject/

this is the problem. address this problem and the standard of maths would increase by much id say, rather than solving this problem, projects maths has just made it worse.

jumpguy

Sunny!! wrote: »

http://www.studentsmart.ie/blog/2010/02/half-of-nations-maths-teachers-arent-qualified-to-teach-subject/

this is the problem. address this problem and the standard of maths would increase by much id say, rather than solving this problem, projects maths has just made it worse.

The problem is being addressed afaik. By 2018 (I think - might be 2015, cba looking for source) it is hoped all teaching maths will have a relevant qualification in maths.

Sunny!!

jumpguy wrote: »

The problem is being addressed afaik. By 2018 (I think - might be 2015, cba looking for source) it is hoped all teaching maths will have a relevant qualification in maths.

Hopefully anyway