Or perhaps statistics could be added as an additional unit at HSC level only open to students studying either 2 or 3 Unit. In this way you would only be drawing on your existing pool of 2 and 3 Unit students rather than Statistics having to compete against them for students. It would be quite a new thing to have students from either 2 or 3 Unit enter such a course in Year 12, but hey, isn't NSW supposed to be the innovative state where things are done differently?
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Proposed changes to the Mathematics syllabus: Thoughts? (6 Viewers)
- Thread starter Carrotsticks
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What if 4U students wanted to do Statistics too?
By definition, all 4 Unit students are 3 Unit students already so would naturally be allowed to choose Statistics in Year 12 if they so wished.
Oh sorry. I thought you were referring to those who did 3U but not 4U.
leehuan
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That would be interesting actually.
Just not sure how many would be willing to mark the exams.
(And I guess how it would work; options for just 4U or for 2+3+4U? And are 2U options assumed knowledge for 4U?)
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Option topics by definition should be relatively niche areas so it wouldn't be assumed knowledge for anything else.
eyeseeyou
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lol speaking of options in maths, I have a feeling they'd do something like statistics, matrices, vector equations, etc. If they were to do it in lieu of conics, then I think it wouldn't be great idea since they never thought about options like they did in physics/chemistry
Also tbh I think that rather than replacing conics with statistics (although this sounds ridiculous b/c statistics is an important topic used a lot in society) is that they should have a 4U topic named "differentiation", like how they have it for integration (i.e. 2U integration, 3U integration and 4U integration). The only problem is that for differentiation, they only do 2U differentiation and 3U differentiation curve sketching. Nothing else which is a shame...
If these (matrices, vector equations) were to be introduced as "options" then I'd have a feeling that they'd have to teach from the very basics again (as students haven't learnt it in the junior years) and this is an issue given that they won't really have much time to start from the basics of the "options"
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nerdasdasd
Dont.msg.me.about.english
He was talking about finance .. Not physics
leehuan
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Ridiculously useless topic in society for most parts.
Not to mention most HSC-style Conics Q's are just messy/tedious algebra.
Guess so... I just enjoyed studying it. Actually the other day a general math student asked me why we even do graphs of circles, and how is it applicable for real life, and I'm still stuck for an answer. Surely there is something? (besides architecture-related)
A typical application of circles (and other conics) would be in Astrophysics. You can probably find more by researching online.
E.g. An application of ellipses in celestial mechanics: the Hohmann Transfer Orbit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohmann_transfer_orbit). This is an elliptical orbit that can be used to transfer a satellite from one circular orbit to another one (in the same plane) of different radius. This is mentioned in the HSC 4U Patel textbook I believe.
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That is really interesting, thank you.