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How to Stop the Sillies (2 Viewers)

michaeljennings

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How can we do?

Silly mistakes always feature in my exam paper for ext 1 and I was wondering how I could stop them from making themselves known
 

Shadowdude

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Do the question slower. My maths teacher maintained I made lots of silly mistakes because I was too eager for the question and I rushed into it.

Read the question carefully, plan the answer and always use working out paper... if you need it.
 

SpiralFlex

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Also a little tip: When going back to check your work, you should try and cover your previous result and work the question again instead of following it.
 

michaeljennings

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Do the question slower. My maths teacher maintained I made lots of silly mistakes because I was too eager for the question and I rushed into it.

Read the question carefully, plan the answer and always use working out paper... if you need it.
Good advice, I was expecting 82 for my ext 1 trial but thanks to 4 silly errors i did not get the result i wanted
 

michaeljennings

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Also a little tip: When going back to check your work, you should try and cover your previous result and work the question again instead of following it.
silly mistake 1: Did not write where k is an integer for a general solutions question
silly mistake 2: Did not write the function was continuous when i was trying to prove that a root lay between two points for newtons method
silly mistake 3: For rates of change i tried differentiating the volume of a cone with respect to h without converting radius to a value in terms of h
silly mistake 4: Because of silly mistake 3 the 2nd part of the question was completely wrong but they gave me a carry over mark so i only ended up losing 1 mark

So a lot of the time my final answer is correct i just do stupid things in between
 

Hermes1

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as u go through paper in reading time note possible areas of concern and circle these.
do the questions moderately quickly so that u can check each line.
at the end go back and do the circled questions. (for a 4U student, there wont be any of these in 3U, but just in case)
then do ur final check by eliminating all proofs questions and just checking questions where silly mistakes could arise like in SHM, IBS, rates of change etc.
 

michaeljennings

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as u go through paper in reading time note possible areas of concern and circle these.
do the questions moderately quickly so that u can check each line.
at the end go back and do the circled questions. (for a 4U student, there wont be any of these in 3U, but just in case)
then do ur final check by eliminating all proofs questions and just checking questions where silly mistakes could arise like in SHM, IBS, rates of change etc.
ahhh yeahh i think i need to figure out a way to calm my nerve in exams lol i rush into questions wayy too much
 
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are the sillies called billy? cos if they are what i tend to do is yell "STOP SILLY BILLY" and then they stop making themselves known u see
 

Alkanes

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And a common mistake is people not putting +C for an integration question.
 

taeyang

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Yo SpiralFlex, how do I add Ordinates to say... y = 3sin(5x) + 5cos(x)
cheers bro.
 

SpiralFlex

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Yo SpiralFlex, how do I add Ordinates to say... y = 3sin(5x) + 5cos(x)
cheers bro.
Do you want to sketch it? If you want to sketch it, you can either sketch both graphs separately and add each coordinates individually if that's what you mean. You can also find the maximum and minimum values, intercepts and sketch.
 
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funnytomato

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Do the question slower. My maths teacher maintained I made lots of silly mistakes because I was too eager for the question and I rushed into it.

Read the question carefully, plan the answer and always use working out paper... if you need it.
+1
 

mike12345678

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lol i think im one of the worst people with this.

both 2u and 3u i lost like 20% just on silly mistakes very annoying when u know 100% is not hard.

like for my 2u i make mistakes like writing the Q wrong in the work booklet or adding minuses/ pluses where neccesary

i got 25.5/31 for my lat 2u should have got 31
thanx for the advice
 

jnney

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This is literally the story of my life lol. I think I panick too much. And I think ..'slowing down' will work, I will try that next time . :)
 

aphorae

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What. I'm going to speed through it and do everything a second time (if I can). Taking it slow just freaks me out... just in case there's a qn later that takes longer than expected, or a qn I can't do that I need to time to figure out, etc.

I find all my stupid mistakes if I do the question a second time so yeah (cover your first working and literally do it again -> low chance you'd mix up +/- signs twice...).
 

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