AS/A Levels

chaosdestro0 said:
The problem with that argument is that there are students who are retaking it in this in there second year, by putting stuff in there that is out of the AS syllabus you are only allowing the year two students to do well.
I don't know if this is actually in any of year two stuff, but the style of this question is way outside of anything in this module.
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It's not an argument - it's just an opinion! The fact that you and other people found an A-Level maths problem difficult is, in my mind, a good thing - exams are meant to be difficult. It's a shame that such questions are met with the "that's not fair, we haven't been told how to answer that" mentality, but I think that's more a reflection on how A-Levels are taught nowadays.
 
w11tho said:
It's not an argument - it's just an opinion! The fact that you and other people found an A-Level maths problem difficult is, in my mind, a good thing - exams are meant to be difficult. It's a shame that such questions are met with the "that's not fair, we haven't been told how to answer that" mentality, but I think that's more a reflection on how A-Levels are taught nowadays.
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Perhaps Maths in particular. It's very easy to come out of gcse with the wrong mindset of what Maths really is, and it's only in the more advanced modules of A-Level further maths (and even then..) that you get questions that really make you think. It's unfortunate that the system solely rewards the ability to learn, but not necessarily the intelligence to think creatively about the subject. Not to suggest that people aren't intelligent, but rather that school teaching doesn't encourage that creative thinking. It's just "learn this method to solve this problem to be good at maths".

Honestly the question there is a perfect example. Frankly, it could potentially have been solved by any GCSE student. They have more than enough trigonometric experience and circle geometry to be able to do it. But why would anyone possibly think to use what they know in that way when they've only been told what methods to use and in what specific scenario?
 
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Alex74 said:
Perhaps Maths in particular. It's very easy to come out of gcse with the wrong mindset of what Maths really is, and it's only in the more advanced modules of A-Level further maths (and even then..) that you get questions that really make you think. It's unfortunate that the system solely rewards the ability to learn, but not necessarily the intelligence to think creatively about the subject. Not to suggest that people aren't intelligent, but rather that school teaching doesn't encourage that creative thinking. It's just "learn this method to solve this problem to be good at maths".
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Maybe that is what is needed in the real world (for jobs etc.)?
 
chaosdestro0 said:
Don't really care that much as I will be picking up further maths instead of this ghastly subject, also I don't understand why OCR think that a control unit governs the clock speed of a processor.
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Ghastly subject being computing? You really think f.maths will be easier?
 
Smithy0115 said:
Maybe that is what is needed in the real world (for jobs etc.)?
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Depends on the job you do at the end of the day I suppose. I mean I'm being harsh insofar as yes, people learn methods that they'll need to know for certain tasks in the real world.

But they're not learning Mathematics or how to do it, they're just learning how to do some stuff with some numbers to solve specific problems.
 
p4radox said:
But you just complained about the one question on your maths paper that wasn't pure regurgitation:p.
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True, but neither were any of the other questions in the exam.
( apart from binomial expansion)
Computing is 70% regurgitation and the rest is programming/binary.
Where as the only part in maths of regurgitation is remembering a couple of formula's .

I would not really care if I have seen a question like that before though, but it was just an odd one that is difficult to spot.
 
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Also there's pretty much no subject you can do that isn't based on regurgitation. It's not a problem with the actual subject, it's a problem with the system of 'teaching'. If you're lucky it will be on a subject you find the least bit interesting so make the effort to learn it.
 
Alex74 said:
Yea i think i have the answer. Bit mean to put it on an A-level paper though, as it does require a bit of engaging brain..


EDIT: In case anyone's interested (hell it's more fun to write this up than doing more revision :p)



Basically this is all you need to notice. Then you can just write

r = (6 - r) * sin(pi/6) = (6 - r) / 2

=> r = 2 with a line or two of algebra.

Not one of those questions where you need to "learn a solution", so i suppose it is a bit out of place. Would kill for something like this nowadays though :p
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Ah, so that's how it went.... I was in school when everyone came out of that exam and they were all complaining about that question. Someone told me it was a triangle the circle was in rather than a sector, I must have spent 20 minutes trying to get r=2 before going back to my FP2 revision. All makes sense now - I like it when they put questions like that on the paper - just makes it a bit more fun, and at 3 marks it won't take a huge bite out of you mark if you don't get it.
 
TheCenturion said:
Crap crap crap crap crap

Chemistry in a few hours :eek::eek::eek:

This exam could bloody well determine whether I become a doctor or not :(

I'm gonna go do some 'ard revision
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I have chemistry as well.

This is my third time doing the exam :(

Make sure you know how to do the flow diagram questions and know the labels of boltzman and enthalpy diagrams.
 
TheCenturion said:
What's a flow diagram? You're doing OCR Salters right?

I'm quite good on boltzman distrubutions and enthalpy diagrams tbh
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the one where they show the chemical formula in the middle so ch3ch2 blah blah and then 4 arrows going out and they state one or two conditions of each one.

You don't have much space to work it out either.

I'm doing OCR A, is your paper 1 hour 45 minutes?
 
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