What raw marks in extension 2 generally correspond to state ranks? (3 Viewers)

TheOnePheeph

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Well, I only recently started looking at uni maths because I'm too old for the comps now. Nothing official, but I've done some of my own research work. I haven't done much tho becos rest of HSC cancer (especially with new science and english courses)
Yeah I feel that, English is shit. My teacher got me to have a brief look at linear algebra and taylor series/convergence tests, as well as 1st and 2nd order differential equations, just from a textbook. How do the comp streams work though? Our school kinda just called a few of us in to do the test without any real warning lol, don't think anyone got above a distinction.
 

sharky564

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Yeah I feel that, English is shit. My teacher got me to have a brief look at linear algebra and taylor series/convergence tests, as well as 1st and 2nd order differential equations, just from a textbook. How do the comp streams work though? Our school kinda just called a few of us in to do the test without any real warning lol, don't think anyone got above a distinction.
Well, our school has compulsory participation in the Australian Maths Comp for yr 7 and 8. I did it in yr 7 and got 131/135, which was equivalent to a medal (top 0.03% or smth), and was invited to the Australian School of Excellence. This is a maths camp designed specifically for ppl who are likely to go well in comp maths and train them for the IMO team. Have a look at the AMT website for more info about it.
 

TheOnePheeph

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Well, our school has compulsory participation in the Australian Maths Comp for yr 7 and 8. I did it in yr 7 and got 131/135, which was equivalent to a medal (top 0.03% or smth), and was invited to the Australian School of Excellence. This is a maths camp designed specifically for ppl who are likely to go well in comp maths and train them for the IMO team. Have a look at the AMT website for more info about it.
Lol nice, I didn't know it went that deep. Highest I've ever gotten on it was high distinction in year 8 or something, and have only ever gotten credits/distinctions since then. I'm angry about the one this year though, the website kept crashing for us and there were like at least 3 of the last 5 questions that I could have done. I really hate the tests though, have never really been good at them. If there are kids like you out there doing the extension 2 paper though, I feel like its impossible for me to get a state rank haha.
 

Carrotsticks

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Hopefully this year's last question doesn't prevent potential state-rankers from doing their best like last year's silly geometry question.
 

TheOnePheeph

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Hopefully this year's last question doesn't prevent potential state-rankers from doing their best like last year's silly geometry question.
Yeah I hated that geometry question. It shows how bad some recent years have gotten in ext 2, either having easy Q16s (2014, 2017) or artificially difficult ones (2018). If you compare to like 2001 or even 2010, which had some really genuinely difficult questions, it is obvious how uninspired they have gotten. In fact the only post 2012 paper I thought was good was 2016, and even that wasn't great until Q16. Oh well, hopefully 2019 will be a bit better haha, since it is the last year.
 

HeroWise

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Hopefully. But could be harder too. Especially for things like conics, probs that might be this years q16 which are getting remvd.
 

UStoleMyBike

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There hasn't been a tricky integral in a couple of years, I feel like we are due for a hard integration question
 

DrEuler

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There hasn't been a tricky integral in a couple of years, I feel like we are due for a hard integration question
We all know what happened the last time they tried that *2014 HSC*. All the top students/state ranks literally did it in two steps because it could be done by inspection.

So na after that disaster I don't think they will haha
 

idkkdi

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Well, our school has compulsory participation in the Australian Maths Comp for yr 7 and 8. I did it in yr 7 and got 131/135, which was equivalent to a medal (top 0.03% or smth), and was invited to the Australian School of Excellence. This is a maths camp designed specifically for ppl who are likely to go well in comp maths and train them for the IMO team. Have a look at the AMT website for more info about it.
Did you end up making IMO?
 

TheOnePheeph

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We all know what happened the last time they tried that *2014 HSC*. All the top students/state ranks literally did it in two steps because it could be done by inspection.

So na after that disaster I don't think they will haha
I think we could possibly have an integral similar to one of the ones we see in the integration marathons here, but that may be too hard for most 4u students. 2014 one was hilarious.
 

blyatman

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I think we could possibly have an integral similar to one of the ones we see in the integration marathons here, but that may be too hard for most 4u students. 2014 one was hilarious.
Never really saw the point of doing those convoluted integral questions. 99% of it is spent doing algebraic manipulations rather than actual integrating, which is kinda pointless.
 

TheOnePheeph

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Never really saw the point of doing those convoluted integral questions. 99% of it is spent doing algebraic manipulations rather than actual integrating, which is kinda pointless.
Yeah thats probably true. I personally enjoy the algebraic manipulations, I find the problem solving aspect quite interesting but yeah they aren't very good mathematically. When you have stupid stuff like the geometry question last year though it wouldn't be surprising for the last question to just be one of these convoluted algebraic manipulations.
 

blyatman

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Yeah thats probably true. I personally enjoy the algebraic manipulations, I find the problem solving aspect quite interesting but yeah they aren't very good mathematically. When you have stupid stuff like the geometry question last year though it wouldn't be surprising for the last question to just be one of these convoluted algebraic manipulations.
I haven't seen it, but yeh the same logic applies, ridiculous convoluted geometry questions are also kinda pointless. In fact.... any ridiculous convoluted question is kinda pointless... which why I cheered when they scrapped conics.
 

Drdusk

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I haven't seen it, but yeh the same logic applies, ridiculous convoluted geometry questions are also kinda pointless. In fact.... any ridiculous convoluted question is kinda pointless... which why I cheered when they scrapped conics.
Forget convoluted geometry questions

NESA when thinking of an actually good question 15 for the 2018 HSC:



This one was soo convoluted
 

TheOnePheeph

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Forget convoluted geometry questions

NESA when thinking of an actually good question 15 for the 2018 HSC:



This one was soo convoluted
Lol completely forgot about that. What a ridiculous question. It wasn't even difficult, just a standard de moivrre's theorem identity, but god it took ages just because of all the algebra. 2018 in general had a lot of really stupid convoluted questions.
 

TheOnePheeph

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I haven't seen it, but yeh the same logic applies, ridiculous convoluted geometry questions are also kinda pointless. In fact.... any ridiculous convoluted question is kinda pointless... which why I cheered when they scrapped conics.
Yeah conics is mostly garbage, although there have been a few decent questions, such as the 2000 one near the end of the paper (7b iirc), as well as the 2005 one, but even that was convoluted, it just required more mathematical reasoning than algebra. I honestly think the nicest topic in 4u is polynomials, even if 90% of the time those questions are dead easy.
 

fan96

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Forget convoluted geometry questions

NESA when thinking of an actually good question 15 for the 2018 HSC:



This one was soo convoluted
Honestly, that question was more annoying than all of Q16 put together.
 

blyatman

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Yeah conics is mostly garbage, although there have been a few decent questions, such as the 2000 one near the end of the paper (7b iirc), as well as the 2005 one, but even that was convoluted, it just required more mathematical reasoning than algebra. I honestly think the nicest topic in 4u is polynomials, even if 90% of the time those questions are dead easy.
Yeh the entire conics chapter was useless. It was all just algebra and didn't contain anything new. The topic itself is also useless in the sense that it finds very little application in the real world. The only thing that I can think of is in trajectory calculations, and even then it doesn't really require all that much. My fav topic in 4u is mechanics since it's the only topic that actually applies the math to real world situations. Volumes is also nice too in that it's the only topic that demonstrates how an integral is used to build up a sum from its infinitesimal parts (a fact which they don't really teach), which is an important concept in physics/engineering. Complex numbers and integration are also pretty useful. Every other topic is more or less useless or nice-to-know.
 

TheOnePheeph

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Yeh the entire conics chapter was useless. It was all just algebra and didn't contain anything new. The topic itself is also useless in the sense that it finds very little application in the real world. The only thing that I can think of is in trajectory calculations, and even then it doesn't really require all that much. My fav topic in 4u is mechanics since it's the only topic that actually applies the math to real world situations. Volumes is also nice too in that it's the only topic that demonstrates how an integral is used to build up a sum from its infinitesimal parts (a fact which they don't really teach), which is an important concept in physics/engineering. Complex numbers and integration are also pretty useful. Every other topic is more or less useless or nice-to-know.
Oh yeah I forgot about mechanics and volumes lol. Volumes is fun but my problem with it is that almost every question is the same. When there is a hard one though its really good. Mechanics is also fun but I generally only like the circular motion bit, the reaisted motion is literally the same thing every time: equation for acceleration, then integrate to get v in terms of t, sometimes incorporating terminal veloicty. There was a really good resisted motion problem in one of the BOS trials though where there was resisted SHM and you had to solve a second order linear differential equation (but it gave you the integrating factor and basically told you how to do it). Makes me wish differential equations were in the 4u syllabus, would make mechanics so much better. I reckon taylor series could also be in the syllabus instead of something like conics or graphs.
 
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Trebla

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Speaking of BoS trials....

*cough* *cough*
 

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