Is the new fitzpatrick book enough? (1 Viewer)

qwert73

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My school is using the new fitzpatrick book for 4u. I'm not doing tutoring so do you think I should buy another 4u book like cambridge if I want to do well in 4u?
Thanks :)
 

Carrotsticks

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The new Fitzpatrick book is sufficient for the entire Extension two course.
 

qwert73

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The new Fitzpatrick book is sufficient for the entire Extension two course.
So do you think that using the new fitzpatrick book along with past paper questions would be enough to do well(like E4).
 

Ekman

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We are still awaiting your book carrotsticks.
 

porcupinetree

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As I've said before on this forum, personally I reckon the new Fitz book is awesome - however, there's no harm in getting another textbook or two to complement what you're learning from Fitz. I recommend Terry Lee. However, actually understanding the concepts is more important than simply hoarding textbooks
 

dan964

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The new fitzpatrick or NSM is not your best bet for complex numbers.
(neither is Cambridge)
 
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iforgotmyname

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I actually did the 4unit course for 3 weeks and did not understand a single bit of complex numbers when i read Cambridge. But the pink Fitzpatrick was def much more easier to understand and to some degree 'fun to do' if that makes any sense.
 

sida1049

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The new Fitzpatrick is great. Our school officially issues the Cambridge textbook, but the overwhelming majority of our Extension 2 class bought the new Fitzpatrick anyway.

The new Fitzpatrick textbook has great explanation; from what I've seen, a lot easier to understand than a lot of the other textbooks. It also highlights the things that you should know, such as having summaries of formulas and properties at the end of theory sections when they are needed. At the end of the book there is an entire section dedicated to summarising the content. The solutions are great as well; they offer a decent amount of steps for proof-type questions. The exercise questions come in good quantity and are more than adequate, but the difficulty can sometimes be graded strangely (e.g. the hardest question may appear as the third, while the last couple of questions are really easy). The diagrams are better than that of most textbooks. The book has aesthetic appeal; it genuinely looks and feels nice.

The contents of each chapter sufficient, and the strengths of the book lies especially in the later, harder topics. The only chapter I felt that was lacking was on graphs (chapter 2). The textbook also doesn't throw as many difficult questions as Cambridge does. Also, since it's a new textbook, it has quite a few errors; including getting the equation of the normal of rectangular hyperbolas wrong, and several questions in the exercises.

Overall I think the textbook is enough, coupled with one doing enough past papers. It really shines on explaining the theory. And it looks nice.

Edit: the new MX1 Fitzpatrick is really great too (the only textbook I used the last two years for Extension 1), so if you have experience with that, it's about the same with the MX2 textbook.
 
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