About a year ago, year 12 student Sam O’Driscoll was told he was ranked almost at the bottom of his class in advanced maths.
It wasn’t a complete surprise to the Alexandria Park Community School HSC student – he hadn’t spent much time studying and he wasn’t particularly motivated.
Simon Oye, Emily Blumoser and Sam O’Driscoll after the maths exam on Monday.Credit: Edwina Pickles
As he sat in the exam hall on Monday afternoon, the 18-year-old made a silent fist bump as he read a tricky question about a Ferris wheel.
“When you see a hard question and you know that three months ago you wouldn’t have been able to crack it, and you can do it … I was like: ‘Yes!’” he said.
To improve in maths, he got a former student to tutor him for $45 an hour and spent more than 45 minutes a day studying. The step-up in studying time was not difficult as he could see there was a clear payoff for the amount of time he put in.
“Maths teaches you to study and work hard in general,” he said.
More than 16,000 students across the state sat their maths advanced exam while 31,711 did the mathematics standard 2 exam on Monday.
Sam wanted to study the subject because he would need strong mathematics skills if he was successful in studying economics at university.
His classmate Emily Blumoser, 17, also said maths was a prerequisite for the course she wished to study after school – a bachelor of medical science and a master of nutrition and dietetics.
She said the exam was straightforward. Her classmate, Simon Oye, 17, said the early questions were “very easy”, but things got trickier towards the end.
A trend of asking maths students to forgo numbers and equations and ask them to write in sentences in some questions continued this year. Students were shown a graph about the growth of anacondas and were asked to write three observations about it.
“You just essentially write down what you see,” Sam said.
It is the second year in a row that mathematics students have been told to eschew calculations in their exam for some questions and answer in sentences instead.
Star mathematics teacher Eddie Woo said while it was perhaps uncommon in HSC exams and assessments to be told not to do a calculation, he said being able to explain and communicate mathematical reasoning was important.
“I think using words to communicate mathematical concepts is the most important thing I do in my everyday life,” he said.
Woo said the two standard and advanced papers were largely stock standard, with no wildly tricky questions.
“I was having a go at the very last question, which has some curveballs in it, and often one where students don’t have much time. I tried it out. It wasn’t immediately apparent to me what the right solution path was,” he said.
“There are many different ways to solve a problem. The best students work out the best option and go for it straight away.”
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