Mathematics Exam Advice

  • The first piece of advice is to read questions carefully. Don’t glance at a question and go off writing: take a moment to understand what you have been asked to do.
  • Don’t use tippex; instead draw a simple line(s) through work that you think is incorrect. 
  • For equations, check your solution by substituting your solution into the original equation. If your answer is wrong and you know it is wrong: write that on your script.

If you do have time at the end of the exam, go through each of your answers and ask yourself:

  1. have I answered the question that was asked?
  2. does my answer make sense? If no, say so, and then try and fix your solution.
  3. check your answer (e.g. for a fitted curve or beam function, input values and see do they make sense; substitute your solution into equations; check your answer against a rough estimate; or what a picture is telling you; etc). If your answer is wrong, say so, and then try and fix your solution.

Student Feedback

You are invited to give your feedback on my teaching and this module here.

Assessment 2

I am working my way through these. I promise you your final CA results before Monday morning.

Week 12

We finished off Chapter 4 by looking at Error Analysis, including rounding error. We had a tutorial for a lecture on Wednesday, and Thursday might allow some tutorial time.

Week 13

We will go through last year’s exam on the board and then I will answer your questions if there are any. If there are none I will help one-to-one. Usual class times and locations.

We will also have tutorials on Friday 14 December at the usual times and venue. If there aren’t too many students present (max 18), you can attend both tutorials.

Past exam papers (Winter and Autumn) may be found here.

Study

Please feel free to ask me questions about the exercises via email or even better on this webpage — especially those of us who struggled in the test.

Student Resources

Please see the Student Resources tab on the top of this page for information on the Academic Learning Centre, past exam papers, etc.

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