5 common pitfalls for VCE Maths Methods students

Units 3 & 4 Mathematical Methods is one of the most popular subjects among VCE® Exam students. Because it is a prerequisite for a number of tertiary courses, many students feel compelled to do it to keep their options open for university, even if they aren’t necessarily strong maths students. Many VCE® Exam students find it difficult. Below is a list of common places where students lose marks in their Maths Methods SACs and exams. The key to overcoming these obstacles is to do lots of practice. VCE® Exam practice exams are your best revision resource for Maths Methods because they give you a taste of what the final exam will be like.
 
Execution of basic skills
       If you read through the VCE® Exam examiner’s reports from previous years, you will notice that basic skill errors are occasionally a problem among Maths Methods students. Algebra, graphing, trigonometry and probability should not be new to you when you reach VCE® Exam. Things like calculating the gradient and x-intercept of a linear graph should be almost instinctive for you by this stage.

Units 1 & 2 Maths Methods is extremely important for this very reason: in Unit 1, everything that you covered in earlier years will be briefly revised. When you do go into new topics like quadratics and calculus, it is crucial that you don’t forget the fundamentals, because these are the building blocks for the more complex topics you’ll do in Year 12. If you can’t do linear graphs, you won’t get quadratics. Likewise, if basic trigonometry doesn’t make sense to you, you won’t be able to draw trigonometric graphs or understand concepts like the unit circle.

 
Time
       In the final VCE® Exam exams, you should have enough time to be able to complete the questions and then look over them at the end. To be able to do this, you’ll have to work at a consistent pace. Spending too much time on one single question will cost you a lot of time, put you under pressure and may force you to rush (which leads to errors).

 
Silly mistakes
‘       Ah, if only I hadn’t made this mistake in rearranging the equation, or forgotten to put in units, or only done half the question because I didn’t read it properly…’
Silly mistakes are the bane of any maths student’s existence. The worst part is the fact that they are avoidable, and that making these mistakes doesn’t necessarily make you a bad maths student. For all the hard work you do, it’s frustrating when you realise you’ve lost marks because of simple errors like expanding 2(x - 3) into 2x - 3, or confusing sin and cos, or taking a fraction and simplifying it incorrectly!
 

Showing your working out
        As the name suggests, Maths Methods is all about process. Getting the right answer will often only give you 1 mark. To get the other marks, working out has to be shown. A lot of students try to do their working out in their head, which is risky for two reasons: firstly, because this makes them more prone to errors, and secondly, because it makes it difficult for the examiner to see what process they used to get to the answer.
 
In a question worth more than one mark, you are expected to provide at least an equation from which you will derive your answer. This should be considered a bare minimum. Also, if you show a detailed method in all of your responses, you will be more likely to gain consequential marks if you make a mistake somewhere along the track. For example, if you get the wrong answer in part a of a question but all your steps are correct, you can then use this wrong answer to pick up marks in parts b, c and d of the same question.
 

Complex extended response questions
       VCAA love setting a challenging extended response question in the tech-active exam. They may also throw in a difficult question for Paper 1. These are the questions that differentiate the high-scoring students from the pack because they are unfamiliar and they integrate a variety of topics.
 
These questions, however, are usually split into several parts. The first few parts tend to guide you towards the method you need to work out the answers for the last few parts. For example, you may be asked to use your answer in part a for a ‘hence’ question in part b. It is important to get as far into these questions as possible, and to use your responses to the earlier parts as cues for the later parts.