Teaching myself LC project maths 2013

seven_eleven

Hi, Im not in secondary school anymore but I am repeating my LC maths this year. The only problem is, I have absolutely no idea. Im taking a class once a week but to be honest covering 2 years worth of material in just 1 class, once a week is too much to take in. I cant keep up.

Ive looked at eircomstudy hub (which seems to be down right now) but Im not sure if they have updated this since the old maths curriculum.

Ive never done any of these questions before, and feel really lost. Is there anywhere that can help me learn all of this for the exam in June?

I think it may be too late at this stage, and feel like the taking the exam will be pointless.

Apocladagr0

I don't meant to dishearten you, but how did you ever expect to do what requires about 10 hours' worth of work per week in 1 hour. I'm not exaggerating when I say 10 hours a week - in fact its a fairly conservative estimate..:

We have six 40 minute classes a week; at least 40 minutes of homework every school day and frequently over 1 hour during the weekend.

I think it's possible to do as long as you don't waste the single class considering it's your only subject. Spend it doing what you find difficult and got stuck on during the week, rather than on the monotonous exercises or learning of new material which you can easily study in your own time. Good luck:)

Marsden

I did the same thing last year, sat junior cert in the 90s and finished a higher level paper last year. Get a good book and youtube videos on anything your stuck on. Once you get into the swing of it you'll find it a lot easier than you first thought. A lot of people are put off at just the thought of maths but theres not really a whole lot to it.

cross_strike

Khan Academy is a pretty good resource! I haven't yet used it for maths, but it's been brilliant for my other subjects! Just google it

helloaliens

seven_eleven wrote: »

Hi, Im not in secondary school anymore but I am repeating my LC maths this year. The only problem is, I have absolutely no idea. Im taking a class once a week but to be honest covering 2 years worth of material in just 1 class, once a week is too much to take in. I cant keep up.

Ive looked at eircomstudy hub (which seems to be down right now) but Im not sure if they have updated this since the old maths curriculum.

Ive never done any of these questions before, and feel really lost. Is there anywhere that can help me learn all of this for the exam in June?

I think it may be too late at this stage, and feel like the taking the exam will be pointless.

Hi, I'm doing the same thing and it says on examinations.ie that you can't repeat project maths if you've never done it before? I did ol maths in 2005 and failed so just want to do ol project maths this year, whats the story with the online application do you know?

spurious

helloaliens wrote: »

Hi, I'm doing the same thing and it says on examinations.ie that you can't repeat project maths if you've never done it before? I did ol maths in 2005 and failed so just want to do ol project maths this year, whats the story with the online application do you know?

Can you give a link for that?

helloaliens

spurious wrote: »

Can you give a link for that?

here it is :

https://www.examinations.ie/index.php?l=en&mc=ca&sc=ca

scroll down to no. 7, it says
7.Project Maths.
Only candidates that attended an approved Project Maths school are eligible to enter for Project Maths.

this kind of threw me when I tried to send my application, as I have bought all my project maths textbooks now, I did OL maths in 2005 and presumed I'd just have to do project maths in 2013, but whats the story, do you have to do OL maths if you haven't done project before? I'm confused!

spurious

As far as I know, everyone is a Project Maths approved school now- there aren't any that are not doing it. That may have been an old document that was just re-dated.

I will find out for sure at work tomorrow.

cmssjone

cross_strike wrote: »

Khan Academy is a pretty good resource! I haven't yet used it for maths, but it's been brilliant for my other subjects! Just google it

Khan academy is a brilliant resource. I teach and encourage my students to use it. As another resource I would recommend Wolfram Alpha.

Canard

Helloaliens/spurious, I'm pretty sure it means you can't do the full project maths exam that the pilot schools do unless you're in one.

NegativeCreep

Wouldn't have passed the leaving cert maths paper last year without this site!! Got a C1 when in reality I should've failed http://www.themathstutor.ie/

whiteandlight

If you are sitting the exam this year, it just means that if you are in a mainstream school you can only take strands 1-4 not the strands 1-5 (whole new course) that the pilot schools are doing

VirtualWorld

Can anyone here suggest the best books to get to ensure I'm covered for the LC HL Maths 2013 exam? Leaving it late and about to home study for it. Luckily I have lots of time to put into it. I don't want to miss a chunk of the course by not having sufficient course books. I was going to go through Kilroy's but am beginning to think they don't do a whole lot more than provide me with the material anyway for a whole big whack of cash that I could do without parting with. And I do have someone to call on if need be when I get bogged down.

En

I'm going to drop a little input here since I feel I can relate to you.
I'm currently teaching myself Maths and Applied maths(they don't teach it in school and I'd rather not spend hundreds on overpriced minority subject grinds), both for higher level and to hopefully A1 standard.

My current maths teacher hasn't done a maths or science degree, but dropped it down on her CV and as a result got the job here a couple of years ago. She doesn't know how to do any of the problems in any of the papers outside of part (a)s and theorem questions and relies on the repeats from last year (who had a different teacher) to put up solutions. Unfortunately, they are repeating for a reason so they are unreliable at best. She genuinely doesn't have a clue [she once spent a double class trying to explain why the differential of 2x was 2x^(2+1)..], and got yelled at by practically every parent during the parent teacher meetings. She'll probably be sacked, but then again she does have a kind heart so I'm unsure.

From that I hope you can discern that I'm completely alone in relation to Maths, and I can hopefully shed some insight with regards to teaching yourself.

First off, It's actually seriously manageable. The papers are restricted to the same topics over and over again, so all it is is practice and understanding. Pick a topic from the papers (complex numbers, let's say) and read through the chapter. Then do as many paper questions as you want until you feel you know the topic inside out. I find that maths is one of the few subjects that is very difficult to forget - what I mean is that once you learn it well the first time, it doesn't leave you / takes 10 minutes to refresh your memory entirely.

It isn't that time consuming either, a topic generally takes 50~ mins to cover completely and forevermore for the leaving cert. If you've done the old leaving cert course, this one should be a cakewalk (the difficult part (c)s of the old course were sort of converted to easier simple understanding based questions).

Tl;dr : It's a lot easier than people make it out to be, focus on understanding rather than nitpicking.

VirtualWorld

Thank you for the encouragement En. Can you recommend books?

En

VirtualWorld wrote: »

Thank you for the encouragement En. Can you recommend books?

The active maths (4) series is the one i'm using now.
Book 1 deals with paper 1
Book 2 deals with paper 2
Lots of helpful examples and excellent revision questions

VirtualWorld

Much appreciated. It's good to have a system when going through the course. Thank you again for that.

VirtualWorld

Going through this book now and can agree there are lots of examples and questions. Good so far.

En

VirtualWorld wrote: »

Going through this book now and can agree there are lots of examples and questions. Good so far.

There are two books, just in case you only bought one (sorry)
There is very little outside of those examples they can ask you for everything except the contexts and applications part. That's where common sense kicks in. If you're very good at understanding and very bad at remembering that's where you'll pick up your marks. Try to understand everything and it will come as second nature to you eventually > no memory involved. Mindless repetition also achieves this effect, so if you're the studious type of person then there you go ^^

VirtualWorld

Thanks. I was aware of the two books. Worry not. They only had one of them in the three shops I tried. So I'm making do with one for now. I will get to book 2 eventually.

Luckily, I have always tended to understand theorems rather than memorise when in school etc. So I completely agree with what you're saying there.
I'm beginning to feel now that I'm under the pressures of time, that a bit of memorising may have to play it's role too this time around. We shall see. I'm finding I can manage the complicated bits, then it's something I learned in national school that is completely gone from memory that trips me up. It's mad. Sometimes you feel so in control of a chapter, then the simple steps trip me up. This is what happens when you're out of school a few years!!

Thank you for the reply. Much appreciated.

MathsTeacherD

One of the things about being either a mature student re-doing their Leaving Cert work or a second-level student who just happens to be reasonably mature is this: textbooks are written for you to teach yourself.

When you read the maths book, it is written as if someone is explaining things directly to you. The author presumably tried really hard to make the teacher superfluous. Now obviously a great teacher can explain things in numerous ways if you're having trouble and make them easier to relate to and even enjoyable, but if it comes down to it (you're not in school/your teacher is crap/your class are idiots) you can make a good go at doing it all yourself. (You'll usually find a good teacher uses the maths book as a question bank, while a bad teacher sticks to the book rigidly.)

Personally (as a student and teacher) I am a reasonable fan of Khan Academy videos (I am not a fan of the wobbly graphics and obviously it doesn't always match up with the thing you're actually doing - it's very much geared to K-12 education in the states...) and I am a huge fan of the Engineering Maths books by KA Stroud (they're written in an excellent frame-by-frame and programmed manner, and the tone is just right - speaks to you like an adult who just wants to learn something, not patronising or childish at all; the first 400 or so pages of Engineering Maths is designed to cover 'foundation' topics for those doing something mathematical in college...so that's basically a Leaving Cert course right there). Khan Academy is free, KA Stroud books are about €50, though I have seen scans/pdfs on the web.

Anyway, anyone who's trying to teach themselves the course: good luck! It's very much achievable.

VirtualWorld

Thanks for that Maths Teacher. I'm getting through the course, a little more slowly than I'd like but I'm getting there. While I agree it is certainly possible to teach yourself from these books, what I've been finding is it possibly takes a little longer than it might when you have someone to ask questions. The silly things you don't get, that send you off to the khan academy's of this world, take time to get to the bottom of, and frequently you go on a wild goose chase in trying to get an answer. A tutor/teacher would be able to point you in the right direction more efficiently (you would hope). Furthermore, certain questions are asked in the texts that simply aren't covered sufficiently prior to their being asked. An answer at the back of the book that says x,2,4 doesn't inform the user how to answer that question. That being said, time permitting, I'm finding it perfectly achievable also.
Another useful resource:
studentxpress.ie
they have a fantastic bank of exam questions that are grouped as per subject complete with solutions. When you feel you've covered algebra for example you can complete your confidence by going through the algebra questions as a revision exercise.

I'm away now to check out Easter revision courses. SOOOOO expensive. :eek:

MathsTeacherD

Just a curiosity, which Easter course have you gone for?