HSC Extension 2 Mathematics Predictions / Thoughts (1 Viewer)

Wolf97

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what were ur marks like, u got band 6, right?
93 raw (96 aligned) for MX1 and 79 raw (91 aligned) for MX2. The 2015 MX2 exam was a little bit on the easy side, though, when comparing it to the average exam over the past 20 years. Also I come from a rural school with heaps smaller cohorts, too, so that probably had an effect.


I reckon the 2020 exam is gonna be kinda on the easy side since it's the first one with the new syllabus. Last two questions will probably be super insane, though.
 

Wolf97

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be honest, can i revise all the topics in 2 days, and how fcked am i
As long as you've already wrapped your head around the the most important parts of the topics throughout the year, you can get a lot done in 2 days. If you're worried about performing poorly, you could avoid going into great depth into each topic and just make sure you know the basics and techniques for each topic. Probably better to do that than try to understand all of the ins and outs of every sub-topic in mechanics, for example.


I'm not super good BTW. You should've seen some of the guys back in the days of 2014-2016.
 

Wolf97

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omg thank u so much. i got in the 50s in trials and i didnt study for it and my rank was <5 (i go to trash public school tho) so im hoping if i cram the next two days i might be able to push my mark into the 60s thats all i want tbh i think my internals might carry me but i lowkey think i fcked my chance at getting a band 6 i did kinda good internally and have a good rank but externals is effdsjds im sorry for rambling omg im scared
<3 Stop stressing. I know exactly how you feel because I had INSANE exam anxiety throughout all of year 11 and 12, especially leading up to the HSC exams. I know it sucks, but I reckon it is worth cramming and studying super hard right now. It's only a short time left and it could help you a lot, and once it's over, you'll feel so much relief. Make sure you reward yourself once it's over! Good luck!
 

MrGresh

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omg thank u so much. i got in the 50s in trials and i didnt study for it and my rank was <5 (i go to trash public school tho) so im hoping if i cram the next two days i might be able to push my mark into the 60s thats all i want tbh i think my internals might carry me but i lowkey think i fcked my chance at getting a band 6 i did kinda good internally and have a good rank but externals is effdsjds im sorry for rambling omg im scared
Look, the reality is that if u get like 50 in 4u it still scales briliantly lol

Theres a solid argument for me to just work on bio rn because that will help my atar way more haha
 

Wolf97

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Look, the reality is that if u get like 50 in 4u it still scales briliantly lol

Theres a solid argument for me to just work on bio rn because that will help my atar way more haha
Yeah he's right. A mark of 75 compared to a mark of 90 would barely make a difference to your ATAR because that's how good MX2 scales. Definitely try to improve your shit subjects (I kinda wish I did because could've gotten a much better ATAR, but I didn't need a high one anyway).
 

Althacommie

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For previous students' raw marks, aligned marks and performance bands, check out rawmarks.info
Hey, could you explain how aligned marks relates to ATAR? Like I see a lot of ppl saying that aligned has nothing to do with ur ATAR so not sure what its significance is.. Might be a stupid question idk
 

Trebla

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Hey, could you explain how aligned marks relates to ATAR? Like I see a lot of ppl saying that aligned has nothing to do with ur ATAR so not sure what its significance is.. Might be a stupid question idk
See flowchart in thread
 

username_2

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I could not do these questions and I don't have answers. help.

20201023_221332.jpg20201023_221324.jpg20201023_221234.jpg

Thanks
 

Wolf97

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Hey, could you explain how aligned marks relates to ATAR? Like I see a lot of ppl saying that aligned has nothing to do with ur ATAR so not sure what its significance is.. Might be a stupid question idk
Sure. Due to difficulty (and possibly other factors, but almost entirely due to difficulty alone), different HSC courses scale very differently. It basically means that an aligned mark of say, 80, in two different courses of different difficulties would yield very different values contributing to your ATAR (rightly so). Take Visual Arts and Maths Extension 2, for example. By using an ATAR calculator such as Talent 100's [https://www.talent-100.com.au/atar-calculator/], you can see that an aligned mark of 80 in Maths Extension 2 would correspond an ATAR equivalent of 97.65, whereas an aligned mark of 80 in Visual Arts would correspond to an ATAR equivalent of 58.90. These mean that if all 10 of your units scaled exactly like an 80 in MX2, you'd get an ATAR of 97.65; same for Visual Arts but an ATAR of 58.90.
Anyone can get a decent ATAR regardless of the subjects they do, but the best scaling subjects are: Maths Adv, MX1, MX2, Physics, Chem and Econ, and maybe Bio, Legal studies and some of the harder language courses.
 

beetree1

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93 raw (96 aligned) for MX1 and 79 raw (91 aligned) for MX2. The 2015 MX2 exam was a little bit on the easy side, though, when comparing it to the average exam over the past 20 years. Also I come from a rural school with heaps smaller cohorts, too, so that probably had an effect.


I reckon the 2020 exam is gonna be kinda on the easy side since it's the first one with the new syllabus. Last two questions will probably be super insane, though.
Do u reckon the 2020 exam will be similar to the 2015 level of difficulty?
 

vinlatte

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lol everyone here is so prepared but im so fcked i haven't started learning the motions topic... idk i do physics so it won't be TOO terrible but still v terrible idk what to do lol fml, anyways gl guys
Ayy I also don't do physics and I was shocked about the amount of physics in this course lol. Eventually it makes sense, it's mostly integration of acceleration to get velocity and then displacement. And you've got this!
 

shashysha

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Do u reckon the 2020 exam will be similar to the 2015 level of difficulty?
going off rawmarks.info the 2015 cutoff for an E4 was 76 which is on the higher side, so if they did make the exams easier I think it'd be around the same difficulty (depending on the proofs we get lol)
 

Xanthi

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going off rawmarks.info the 2015 cutoff for an E4 was 76 which is on the higher side, so if they did make the exams easier I think it'd be around the same difficulty (depending on the proofs we get lol)
The syllabus says "simple" number proofs so I think the other content will be the source of the harder questions.

Considering some of q15 in 2015 went to q16 in the sample paper, it looks like it might have already been a bit easier than 2015 even before any editing (79 ish band 6?). If they did make the exams easier it might become similar to sciences (low 80s?) or if they just kept the nice aligning anyways it might stay as mid high 70s.
 

MrGresh

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Ayy I also don't do physics and I was shocked about the amount of physics in this course lol. Eventually it makes sense, it's mostly integration of acceleration to get velocity and then displacement. And you've got this!
Haha yeah, the whole thing is basically:

"should i use a = v dv/dx or a = d/dx 1/2 v^2"
 
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Trebla

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Sure. Due to difficulty (and possibly other factors, but almost entirely due to difficulty alone), different HSC courses scale very differently. It basically means that an aligned mark of say, 80, in two different courses of different difficulties would yield very different values contributing to your ATAR (rightly so). Take Visual Arts and Maths Extension 2, for example. By using an ATAR calculator such as Talent 100's [https://www.talent-100.com.au/atar-calculator/], you can see that an aligned mark of 80 in Maths Extension 2 would correspond an ATAR equivalent of 97.65, whereas an aligned mark of 80 in Visual Arts would correspond to an ATAR equivalent of 58.90. These mean that if all 10 of your units scaled exactly like an 80 in MX2, you'd get an ATAR of 97.65; same for Visual Arts but an ATAR of 58.90.
Anyone can get a decent ATAR regardless of the subjects they do, but the best scaling subjects are: Maths Adv, MX1, MX2, Physics, Chem and Econ, and maybe Bio, Legal studies and some of the harder language courses.
This is not technically correct. Aligning (for your HSC - and have nothing to do with the ATAR) and scaling (for your ATAR) are completely independent processes applied to the same raw mark. See the flowchart in the thread below:

There is no direct relationship between marks that are produced in two different ways. ATAR calculators usually attempt to find a correlation between aligned marks and scaled marks because raw marks are not readily available, but people often misinterpret this as a causation type relationship between aligned marks and scaled marks.

Also, scaling has nothing to do with course difficulty (as this is a subjective concept that is impossible to quantify objectively) but rather the relative strength of a cohort in their other subjects. For example, more people who do Maths Advanced usually do better in their other subjects than people who do Maths Standard - so the former "scales" better. However, the opposite can happen where stronger candidates all go for the easier Maths Standard and can actually make it scale better than Maths Advanced.
 

Xanthi

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This is not technically correct. Aligning (for your HSC - and have nothing to do with the ATAR) and scaling (for your ATAR) are completely independent processes applied to the same raw mark. See the flowchart in the thread below:

There is no direct relationship between marks that are produced in two different ways. ATAR calculators usually attempt to find a correlation between aligned marks and scaled marks because raw marks are not readily available, but people often misinterpret this as a causation type relationship between aligned marks and scaled marks.

Also, scaling has nothing to do with course difficulty (as this is a subjective concept that is impossible to quantify objectively) but rather the relative strength of a cohort in their other subjects. For example, more people who do Maths Advanced usually do better in their other subjects than people who do Maths Standard - so the former "scales" better. However, the opposite can happen where stronger candidates all go for the easier Maths Standard and can actually make it scale better than Maths Advanced.
UAC seems to back you up on the scaled mean being the metric for "scaling"

"3.2.4 Initial standardisation
Before the scaling algorithm is implemented, a linear transformation is applied to the raw HSC marks in each course to set the top mark to a common value. The marks in each course are then standardised to a mean of 25 and standard deviation of 12 on a 1-unit basis."

So the standardised marks are scaled and technically the "scaling" is exactly defined by the scaled mean.

However, most often the raw to scaled mark conversion is referred to as "scaling". In my opinion, this is also the more important metric - there isnt too much use in knowing the strength of the candidature as seen in the scaled mean, as it shouldn't affect the score you obtain. However, low scaling subjects impose a limit on the maximum scaled marks obtainable (z=+2.46 according to uac), which makes the raw to scaled mark data very important in addition to putting into perspective the difficulty of obtaining certain scaled marks.
 

Husky

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I'm thinking though cause it's first year of new syllabus the cut off will be pretty low regardless of the difficulty of the exam as it is new untested content, well at least I'm hoping it is :/
 

Fabrizio

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Hey guys, just for reference, how hard did ppl find the sample paper? I just did it and I got high 60s :/
Its one of the easier papers i have seen. Only really out there questions were 14 a) and 16 c). I got mid to high 80s
 

Fabrizio

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Can you explain 16 c) if you got it? My school didnt do anything on these types of proofs
 

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