One STEP at a time

I just thought I'd update to let you know what I'm doing at the moment. I have just started a new Mathletics course, New Zealand grade 12, and in doing so, will revisit topics I haven't seen since 2012... I have gained so much mathematical knowledge since then! There is also something very rare: a topic I have never done before! It is called the capture-recapture technique, and comes under statistics. Normally, it is just the are you ready and test topics to do, but no, not this time! I am also only 2 weeks away from my next gold certificate. I will be having a little bit of fun, certainly for the moment, while my fifth year on Mathletics continues.

But easy computer maths aside, I am also doing some STEP papers in my own time, and have been since mid-June. I can safely say that they are the most difficult maths things I have ever done! I started with 2008 and worked backwards; they jumped in difficulty in 1999, and sort of struggled through that one, and the 1998 paper that I'm working on now. I seem to use the solutions a lot; more than I probably should, but I won't ultimately be sitting the STEP paper. I'm using it to boost my maths skills and possibly for another go at the MAT, which is generally thought of as being easier; though it's complicated by its lack of choice!

I will continue to battle with my STEP and chill out with Mathletics, and post here again when I can!

Secondary school maths finished!!!!!

Well... that was exhilarating! After a long break from Mathletics curriculum, I returned to it. I had 2 activities remaining: one until last week, and one this week. I tried it over the last few days, but only finally managed to crack it today, on my 9th attempt! (7 of those were today.) I made the same very basic errors about focuses and directrixes over and over again, I was very annoyed, then relieved by my final attempt. This marks the end of the Advanced Higher course for me! Obviously, I finished the actual course last week, with the exam on Tuesday. The questions were all so good until Q13, which was long and boring... then Q14 was a disaster for me, and that kind of threw me off the next two, although I did salvage 15, and after some struggling, I found my way through 16 in the last few minutes. Then Thursday was Applied Maths: so much more tricky, even compared with that maths paper! I hardly knew any of it, and felt like giving up, but gritted my teeth and moved onto the normal maths section, which I am so much more fluent with, and managed that without too much of a problem, then went back to the applied, and the answers started coming to me one by one, although I did mess one up by switching speed and amplitude (very different I know), and I also left a 7-mark question blank. However, I can't think about it too much, as I can't change anything now, and I still have one more exam to sit - Spanish, in about a fortnight.

Competitions

So much has happened since I last updated!

I have entered many maths competitions, I'll see what I can remember. On September 26th I entered the Maths Olympiad for Girls. I got my result today... 13/50. Percentage wise, that is very poor, but in context, it isn't bad, as many, many people got 0 or 1. In fact, I was only one mark off a merit certificate, although I did get one for participating.

Also in September, I completed the Scottish Maths Challenge, and found it a little easier than in previous years, though I haven't received any results, so I don't know how well I did yet.

I sat the MAT, but it was impossible: more difficult than the hardest questions of all the other maths challenges put together! So that will be a very low score and a rejection.

The next day, I did the Senior Maths Challenge, and that was much more fun. I believe I got 96, which will qualify me for the Senior Kangaroo, and put me one question away from the BMO qualifier. In fact, there was one question I nearly got right, but decided to change my guess at the last minute, and if I had left it, I would have qualified. However, that competition is much too difficult for me, and I really wouldn't have wanted to get zero, so I will be happy to sit the Kangaroo.

I have also made a lot of progress with the Advanced Higher course, and I will post about that another day. Keep checking back for updates!

Success

My exam results are in! I wasn't exactly confident about physics and English; however, I didn't need to worry, as I did manage 5 As! I am very happy with that, although obviously I won't be relaxing for a minute, and have continued with the advanced maths course. The thing I'm doing just now seems impossible and I can't find anything on the web about using Fermat's Little Theorem to show how a square is either divisible by 5, or one more or less than a multiple of 5. I will have to just skip it out and press on however, and I will be doing a summary of the topic tomorrow, then move on to differentiation the day after. This course is going by so quickly!

Much progress!

Well this week has been eventful! On Friday I finished my Mathletics course, I've been very close to doing that for ages, but it's been a year since I started it and it was definitely time to just do it. I have 100% on all 187 tasks now! That was at about 3pm, and just as I did that, my Unit 2 Advanced Higher book arrived. I thought I'd already done enough maths for the day so I waited until the next day, Saturday, to start it. I've now done four exercises (not bad for 3 days' work), but I'm not doing anything else right now as I will be on holiday until Friday. I will then work as hard as I can to finish off the first chapter, though it's a very difficult one, covering mathematical proof, which I don't really have any prior knowledge of. And my exam results are a week tomorrow, where is this time off going! I'm still going to try and finish the next chapter, Further Differentiation, before school starts in August, it will be quite tight in 2 weeks but I can get through it pretty fast.

One third of the way there

Well I have now made progress: I have finished the whole of unit 1 of Advanced Higher! One third of the way through my last school qualification, already. It doesn't feel like that long since I finished unit 1 of Int 2! I was reviewing my knowledge of Gaussian elimination today - it's basically a very sophisticated method for solving simultaneous equations. It can be time consuming and fiddly, but it's not that difficult, although it's pretty easy to make a very silly arithmetic mistake. I'd like to eliminate these mistakes, well, it's an excuse to play Mathletics during the holidays!

I will be revising the first unit of Advanced Higher Maths this week, and then I will try some of the resources on the UKMT website, as they are meant to be good preparation for the university entrance exams. I may possibly start unit 2 soon, it's tempting but I need to leave something to do when I start school in August, in 5 weeks.

Integration

Just a little info on how I'm getting on with the Advanced Higher Maths course: after a lot of both hard work and fun, I have finished Pascal's triangle, Partial fractions, and Differential calculus and its applications. I am currently working on Integration, and have managed to make some progress, although I did find some of the substitution questions impossible! I have just started to do this substitution with limits, and I'm finding it pretty easy, although there was one question which didn't make any sense! I also have more difficult substitution in the next exercise, so we will see how I manage tomorrow.

Exam season over

My exams are over now, culminating in Spanish yesterday. I have finished all the Higher work I will ever do! I'm actually not sure what to do with my free time now. I have been working on the Advanced Higher Maths course, and also have a plan to finish off a story I have been writing, along with a new personal essay. I'd also like to reread the literature I did last year, "Hamlet" and "The Great Gatsby". In addition to all this, I want to improve my Spanish skills, although I'm not yet sure how I'll do this.

Aside from the summer, my exams for maths, chemistry and Spanish went pretty well, physics wasn't very good, and the English critical essay was appalling. I'm not especially looking forward to results day now, but there is nothing I can do! There are two months until then anyway, so I will continue to work hard, and the results won't really change anything.

Time flies!

Time is going by so fast right now! There are only 7 more days 'til my English exam, and only 9 'til my maths exam! Then I have another 3, and then my Higher days are over forever. My others are chemistry, physics and Spanish. I am mainly focusing on English at the moment, as it is the hardest for me, although I have been doing past papers for everything else. I have done all the maths ones since 1995, plus the 1992 paper. I will do the 1994 paper next week, then that will be it, as I cannot find the 1993 paper anywhere. It is interesting to see how the higher paper has changed: I cannot complain about any of the questions from the modern papers! I have just completed the 1995 paper, and it had a horrible optimisation question (made worse by the fact I had forgotten about the chain rule), although some things aren't really hard, but I just do wrong (like confusing an altitude and median). I got 100% on my second maths prelim (on all 3 units) a couple of weeks ago, so I am kind of looking forward to this exam (although I think I must be the only person to do so!).

Meanwhile, I have completed a few things in the Advanced Higher course, but I have temporarily stopped, at least until my English exam is over. Then I will do a little, until chemistry and physics are done, then I will catch up. I plan to have completed all of unit 1 by the time I go to school in August!

Prelims and progress

I haven't posted on here in so long! Here are my prelim scores:

Spanish - 83%
English - 85%
Chemistry - 90%
Physics - 92%
Maths - 99%

I am very happy with those... although obviously I wish I could have got 100% on maths (it was a stupid mistake as well) and it would have been nice to get 2 marks more on Spanish for a clean sweep of A band 1s!

Back to maths, which this blog is meant to be about! In the prelim there was a question about the square of something being three, and you had to set up an equation to solve it. I forgot that every number has two square roots and lost a mark. At first, I was annoyed, but now, I am far too busy doing Advanced Higher maths and revising for my other exams to care!

In Advanced maths, I have completed one chapter about Pascal's triangle and binomials, which was abstract but very interesting, and now I am on the differentiation chapter (I skipped partial fractions as they looked a little too tough!). It is incredibly difficult, but I know it will get easier as time goes by.

Maths

It's been a while since I posted on here, I'm such a bad blogger! Well, there isn't that much to report, other than I got my 7th gold certificate on Mathletics last week, and I have nearly finished that course, as I only have about 10 activities to go (all about logarithms/exponents), but I haven't been doing that much recently as Mathletics is no longer a priority, which brings me to it: I have my mock maths exam on Tuesday, which is scary, 'cause every past paper I have done (2006-2009) has had at least one question which has stumped me. I know that I might struggle, but I am going to aim for at least 95% (with full marks on multiple choice).

End of an era

I have finally done it! I have finished the Higher Mathematics course! It has taken me 16 months, actually shorter than I thought it would (but I did 3 whole chapters in the summer holiday). Today is also the first anniversary since I completed chapter 4, and that doesn't feel like long ago, but I have now done all 16 topics! What an achievement. I still have so much more to learn though - especially on early unit 3, as I have kind of abandoned those topics as they haven't been in any of the tests I have done. I plan to do as much revision as I can this month, before I start past papers in mid January, then eventually the Advanced course in February.

Perfect

I feel so good right now! I found out my score on the maths test I sat last week... 95/95! I am very happy, though I know I worked hard for it (there's always a little luck involved however). Here's a little summary of what I have done so far:

June test: 71/74 (96%)
November test: 115/120 (96%)
December test: 95/95 (100%)

I finally got my 100%, after 6 months of waiting! I can settle for a little while, until I have the prelim in February (so long away!). Meanwhile, I'm about to finish off the Higher course, as I am on the final section, and I only have about 4 more exercises to do, so I will definitely complete before Christmas! Then I only have to revise what I have already done for months, although I might start Advanced maths if necessary (I don't want to get bored).

Test take 2

I had another maths test today, I think it went pretty well. This time, the timing was much fairer: 50 minutes for six questions, although they weren't that hard so I ended up finishing in the first half an hour (though I checked over many times). I am doing another the second part of this test (non calculator) tomorrow, then I will get my marks some time next week. More updates then!

Challenge result!

I'm feeling very good right now! I got my Senior Maths Challenge result this afternoon, I got exactly the score I suspected, 73. This means:

A silver certificate...

Best in S5...

And Best In School!!!!

Three certificates for a 90 minute challenge! Not bad, considering it went badly and I didn't dream I'd get best in year, let alone best in school. Then again, I got it by one mark, as there was a guy who got 72 in my year too. But I'm still so happy! And I always have next year to try for gold!

Maths test results!

I take what I said about the test back, I actually did pretty well on it! I knew that I'd definitely lost at least some marks, as I found that I ended up with a ridiculous fraction for what was meant to be a fairly straightforward question about intersection of lines. I then got stuck on a question which required the equation of circle to be found from three points on its circumference. I tried to find two perpendicular bisectors and then find their point of intersection, but it was made harder by the said mistake earlier in the question, and I ran out of time after only a little progress (only getting 1 mark out of 4 in the end). Another 15 minutes-ish could have got me the full 4 though!

That brings me to today, when I got my paper back. I was so nervous about it, as I knew I had taken quite a few guesses along the way, but, as it so turned out, I got full marks in paper 1 (non calculator). I had a little celebration on the spot, although I had to wait in anticipation for paper 2, which was more difficult, and the one with the above straight line problems. As it so turned out, there was only one more mistake, when I was calculating the volume of a prism when I had found the area of its cross section using integration correctly, and I didn't realise I had only found the area of half of the shape (so needed to double it), meaning I had half the volume. Although had originally panicked this test might finish off my achievement in maths, it so turned out I got 115/120 - 96%! Immediately afterwards, I would have been thrilled to know that, but now, I have more mixed emotions (though still a lot of joy), as were it not for a few silly mistakes, I would have got  98%, and although I wouldn't have got the short way to the circle question as it's not covered in the textbook, I could have had the perpendicular bisector method all complete if I'd had just a little more time (which the teacher admitted would have been fair). Although 100% is still just a percentage!

Next week, I have another similar test, but with more time, as it's on two days rather than one. I will be aiming to get in the nineties again, I'm not especially trying for 100% because I was so fortunate to get what I got last week, and 100% is a near impossible target, and the chances of me reaching it are so small!

Struggle

I did so badly on the maths test I sat today. Seriously. I left one part blank, because I ran out of time totally. I had 50 minutes to do what was more like two hours' worth of questions, I'm not kidding! I'm not looking forward to receiving my mark, however, I know I'll be ok, because often my great successes are preceded by struggles. I'm kind of annoyed though, as I've spent the last 2 weeks revising, and delayed finishing the course to try and get a good mark on the test, and now it's not happening. Oh well, I managed full marks on my NAB, which I also sat this month, so I've had one good thing! I also have another test in two weeks, giving me a chance to redeem myself!

Maths challenges

I was so nervous to look at the UKMT website today, because I had a feeling they would post the SMC certificate thresholds... and they did. I'm pretty sure I've got... silver. Exactly as I thought. I was a whole 4 marks off a gold, so it's kind of annoying as one more correct question would have got me it, or if I hadn't got any wrong, as I made exactly four mistakes. But I know there's nothing I can do now, and a silver is more than most people get! I guess there's also next year, though that's so long away. I'll have to be sure to get a gold though!

Meanwhile, I'm participating in the Four Nations Maths Challenge right now. I was hoping to get 15,000 points on the curriculum yesterday, but then I forgot all about it until 7pm, so I only managed 7000. I'm doing the Live section right now, so I will post my score here when I finish.

Senior Maths Challenge

I didn't think the senior maths challenge went well at all. I tried the last 3 years' papers over the weekend, and got 85, 93 and 71, a wide range I know. The first 2 got me excited and I was hoping to get in the top 80s, securing a gold. However, I was so nervous beforehand and struggled to sleep, and I don't know if it was because of this, but I found it very hard. I answered about 14 in the first hour and a quarter, but I knew that wasn't enough to do well, so I had another look through, and took a total guess at some of them, but I found one that, though it looked impossible at first, actually had a nice little trick to it. I realised that when you have a number whose sum of digits is massive, the smallest number it can be is one which ends in as many 9s as possible. I managed to put down answers for 17 in total, and I wasn't sure if many were right at all. I saw the marking scheme today (it's already on the UKMT site), and I think I got 73 out of 125, which will be a silver if last year's boundaries hold true, though I won't know until the end of November!

Senior Maths challenge participation confirmed

I've known for ages that the Senior Maths Challenge would be held on November 6th (next Tuesday), but I didn't think I would be doing it, as it hadn't been mentioned to me, and I pretty much gave up yesterday. Then, just as luck would have it, towards the end of my double period of maths today, my teacher announced: "Did I mention there's a senior maths challenge?" She revealed that she had chosen twelve students from my class to take part, in addition to the advanced pupils. Anyway, the 12 she chose were those who get the best marks on the test we did before the summer holidays, back in June. As I got the highest mark on that test, I knew I'd be on the list, and sure enough she called my name. I was so excited that I couldn't concentrate on the integration revision I was doing, although there were nerves too, as I know it is very difficult, but I so want to do well. It doesn't matter, however, because if I don't get a certificate, then I am still very lucky to take part!