A Level maths.

bennyboy2606

bennyboy2606

bennyboy2606

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Just started sixth form today, and in my options chose both options of maths, which were
Maths Pure & Stats
Maths Mechanics
Also doing one lesson a week in "Further pure" if anyone knows what this is?

So I was just wondering, had anyone body here done these courses, and what areas of study are there etc?

Just basically can anyone tell me what I should be looking to study, as my "careers advisor" didn't have a clue, so I just picked them.

Any information would be grateful

Thanks
Ben
 
I didn't know some schools still did pure maths.

Mechanics is much more interesting than stats, but considerably harder.
 
I do the scottish equivelant and
Pure maths-Extending on the last maths you did (advanced integration, differentiation for me)
Statistics-Statistical analysis with use of graphs n stuff
Mechanics- A lot like physics with equations of motion and vectors, also differentiating and integrating speed, time and distance and differentiating and integrating vectors. (I do mechanics)
 
I did better in mechanics than stats, probably because it was more interesting...but stats is easier.

FP (Further Pure) is just more advanced maths...
 
Are you not on the new core system?
Core 1 and stat 1 are easy peasy. I found mechanics hard, I couldn't get above a B. My brain is just not that way inclined, some people breezed through it.
Give further a go, but only if you absolutely need it for uni.
 
In the Pure maths, it is mainly differentiation and Integration. In the first year there was work on logarithms and factorisation, among other things. There were 4 core exams over the 2 years. C1 is non calculator, the other 3 calculator.

I did Decision maths instead of stats and mechanics, it's nice and easy!
 
I finished my maths A-level at the start of this summer (well it was by the Jan exams actually but it's a long story how I finished my course early). At the start of my AS though I applied for maths and further maths, which effectively meant as well as studying further maths on top of maths, I was doing all three applied modules too. The structure of your course seems to be slightly different though.

Regardless, I was fed up of further maths by the second year because you learn lots of theoretical maths in it rather than maths you can apply to real life situations, and I felt it was pretty useless (mainly because of the career path I want to go down), so I dropped it.

In pure, like TheCraig has said, you just extend on the maths you learnt at GCSE level. You get introduced to differentiation and integration really early in the course and then that's probably 70% of the pure maths you do for the next two years, the integrals and the differentials just become more complex. Like at tha start of the first year you just differentiate linear equations or quadratic equations (y=3x, y=2x^3 etc.), but by the end of you pure maths A-level you'll be differentiating logs, trigonometric functions, and lots of other stupidly named phenomena.

In mechanics (my favourite module :)) you learn maths which you can apply to a whole lot of real life situations. It mainly focuses on forces acting on objects, and you have to learn these 4 (or it might be five) equations of motion which are all related. It's mainly like "a guy hits a golf ball from X height, and it's travelling Y fast at a trajectory of Z degrees, calculate how far the ball will travel/how long it'll stay in the air/the maximum height the ball will reach before it begins to descend. It sounds complicated but once you do a few they get alright.

I severely disliked stats so I'm not going to say much about that. But you mainly focus on large tables of data and probabilities, and constantly use this graph which I've forgotten the name of (it looks like a big hill lol).

Like I said further maths was useless but you learn some pretty interesting stuff in it, mainly about imaginary numbers (hence the useless-ness).

Sorry about all the writing
 
mechanics is good if you do physics as most of the equations are the same so i found that easy, stats is easy but its possibly one of the most boring things i have ever done as its just masses of number crunching on your calc. Further pure i done it until christmas as i gave up as i was doing too many a levels its just silly maths where you deal with things that are crazy like the square root of -1 is the imaginary number i :confused: so i quit that.
 
I did mine nearly a decade ago now! :eek:

I'd imagine yours would be similar to mine, being Welsh. And I can't imagine they would let you do two A-Levels in maths? So do you need to pick one of the routes?

I did the mechanics route, but it still involved a little bit of stats and quite a large chunk of pure. The mechanics bit is essentially physics from what I can remember, using trig and vectors to work out resultant forces and speeds the majority of the time. Pretty awesome stuff.

We never did any 'Further...' modules though, didn't find out about them until I got to uni and discussed with English peeps what A-level modules they did.

Truthfully I quite enjoyed it really, involved many hours of homework though, and god help you if you're not listenning or you fall behind. Was definitely loosing motivation and interest towards the end of sixth form though.
 
I've just done AS Level maths and further maths, which is:
Core Maths 1
Core Maths 2
Core Maths 3
Core Maths 4
Statistics 1
Statistics 2
Mechanics 1
Mechanics 2

M1 and S1 are very easy, M1 especially if you are doing physics too. S2 is slightly harder with binomial and poisson distributions, and the worst bit being hypothesis testing.

Mechanics involves lots of kinematics and particle and vehicle dynamics, as well as collisions, moments and statics. Momentum and impulses are there too.

C1 is very easy, pretty much GCSE stuff with the addition of basic differentiation and integration. C2 just introduces a couple of new bits, namely logs and exps. C3 and C4 I found the hardest (even though I ended up getting 100% in the C4 exam). These involve lots of trigonometry, differentiation and integration, using chain rule, product rule, quotient rule, and integrating by substitution and parts. Other things include parametrics, long division of polynomials, connected rates of change, finding roots by iteration. You'll do a bit on 3D vectors in C4 as well.
 
Have they changed Pure to Core? or is that some new fangled contraption as I did Pure maths by itself so Pure Maths 1 - 6 which was a nightmare. I would go for mechanics personally though, know what I know now about it.
 
Lagmeister said:
Have they changed Pure to Core? or is that some new fangled contraption as I did Pure maths by itself so Pure Maths 1 - 6 which was a nightmare. I would go for mechanics personally though, know what I know now about it.
Click to expand...

A maths A level contains 4 "core" modules. C1 - 4. It also contains 2 others, usually mechanics or stats.
 
"Pure" isn't taught any more, modules have been rearranged and they are now "Core" 1-4.

There is also "Further Pure" 1-4, which includes some of the bits that were originally in "Pure".
 
depends what you want to do later really - here is my take (bear in mind I did mine a good few years ago)

if you're not fussed and want a good grade then most people will find stats is generally easier than mechanics at A-level - so go for that.

If you want to study maths later then do everything.

If you're interested in physics/engineering later etc.. later then mechanics would be a better option

If Economics/Business then stats would be a better option.

Ideally, if there aren't other subject you're really keen to do and you can fit it in then I'd say do both - Maths is probably one of the most valuable and useful subjects you can do at A-level. (unless you want to fail at life and become an arts student that is ;) )
 
Nobody's mentioned decision maths yet. But I don't blame them because when I did my AS in it I found it increidbly tedious. At the end of the day it is just following algorithms, but they have such daft names for them I constantly confused them all with each other.
 
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