HSC Extension 2 Mathematics Predictions / Thoughts (3 Viewers)

[Althacommie]

For previous students' raw marks, aligned marks and performance bands, check out rawmarks.info

Hey, could you explain how aligned marks relates to ATAR? Like I see a lot of ppl saying that aligned has nothing to do with ur ATAR so not sure what its significance is.. Might be a stupid question idk

 

[Trebla]

Hey, could you explain how aligned marks relates to ATAR? Like I see a lot of ppl saying that aligned has nothing to do with ur ATAR so not sure what its significance is.. Might be a stupid question idk

See flowchart in thread

Flowchart of how HSC marks and ATAR are determined

Hi all, We have received a lot of questions on the aspects of the HSC and ATAR calculation process ranging from scaling, moderating and aligning. It has become apparent that some confusion exists on how the process works overall. This is important to understand before diving into the finer...

www.boredofstudies.org

 

[username_2]

I could not do these questions and I don't have answers. help.



Thanks

 

[erucibon]

Wow the highest for BOS trials was 72

 

[beetree1]

93 raw (96 aligned) for MX1 and 79 raw (91 aligned) for MX2. The 2015 MX2 exam was a little bit on the easy side, though, when comparing it to the average exam over the past 20 years. Also I come from a rural school with heaps smaller cohorts, too, so that probably had an effect.


I reckon the 2020 exam is gonna be kinda on the easy side since it's the first one with the new syllabus. Last two questions will probably be super insane, though.

Do u reckon the 2020 exam will be similar to the 2015 level of difficulty?

 

[vinlatte]

lol everyone here is so prepared but im so fcked i haven't started learning the motions topic... idk i do physics so it won't be TOO terrible but still v terrible idk what to do lol fml, anyways gl guys

Ayy I also don't do physics and I was shocked about the amount of physics in this course lol. Eventually it makes sense, it's mostly integration of acceleration to get velocity and then displacement. And you've got this!

 

[shashysha]

Do u reckon the 2020 exam will be similar to the 2015 level of difficulty?

going off rawmarks.info the 2015 cutoff for an E4 was 76 which is on the higher side, so if they did make the exams easier I think it'd be around the same difficulty (depending on the proofs we get lol)

 

[Xanthi]

going off rawmarks.info the 2015 cutoff for an E4 was 76 which is on the higher side, so if they did make the exams easier I think it'd be around the same difficulty (depending on the proofs we get lol)

The syllabus says "simple" number proofs so I think the other content will be the source of the harder questions.

Considering some of q15 in 2015 went to q16 in the sample paper, it looks like it might have already been a bit easier than 2015 even before any editing (79 ish band 6?). If they did make the exams easier it might become similar to sciences (low 80s?) or if they just kept the nice aligning anyways it might stay as mid high 70s.

 

[MrGresh]

Ayy I also don't do physics and I was shocked about the amount of physics in this course lol. Eventually it makes sense, it's mostly integration of acceleration to get velocity and then displacement. And you've got this!

Haha yeah, the whole thing is basically:

"should i use a = v dv/dx or a = d/dx 1/2 v^2"

 

[Trebla]

Sure. Due to difficulty (and possibly other factors, but almost entirely due to difficulty alone), different HSC courses scale very differently. It basically means that an aligned mark of say, 80, in two different courses of different difficulties would yield very different values contributing to your ATAR (rightly so). Take Visual Arts and Maths Extension 2, for example. By using an ATAR calculator such as Talent 100's [https://www.talent-100.com.au/atar-calculator/], you can see that an aligned mark of 80 in Maths Extension 2 would correspond an ATAR equivalent of 97.65, whereas an aligned mark of 80 in Visual Arts would correspond to an ATAR equivalent of 58.90. These mean that if all 10 of your units scaled exactly like an 80 in MX2, you'd get an ATAR of 97.65; same for Visual Arts but an ATAR of 58.90.
Anyone can get a decent ATAR regardless of the subjects they do, but the best scaling subjects are: Maths Adv, MX1, MX2, Physics, Chem and Econ, and maybe Bio, Legal studies and some of the harder language courses.

This is not technically correct. Aligning (for your HSC - and have nothing to do with the ATAR) and scaling (for your ATAR) are completely independent processes applied to the same raw mark. See the flowchart in the thread below:

Flowchart of how HSC marks and ATAR are determined

Hi all, We have received a lot of questions on the aspects of the HSC and ATAR calculation process ranging from scaling, moderating and aligning. It has become apparent that some confusion exists on how the process works overall. This is important to understand before diving into the finer...

www.boredofstudies.org

There is no direct relationship between marks that are produced in two different ways. ATAR calculators usually attempt to find a correlation between aligned marks and scaled marks because raw marks are not readily available, but people often misinterpret this as a causation type relationship between aligned marks and scaled marks.

Also, scaling has nothing to do with course difficulty (as this is a subjective concept that is impossible to quantify objectively) but rather the relative strength of a cohort in their other subjects. For example, more people who do Maths Advanced usually do better in their other subjects than people who do Maths Standard - so the former "scales" better. However, the opposite can happen where stronger candidates all go for the easier Maths Standard and can actually make it scale better than Maths Advanced.

 

[Xanthi]

This is not technically correct. Aligning (for your HSC - and have nothing to do with the ATAR) and scaling (for your ATAR) are completely independent processes applied to the same raw mark. See the flowchart in the thread below:

Flowchart of how HSC marks and ATAR are determined

Hi all, We have received a lot of questions on the aspects of the HSC and ATAR calculation process ranging from scaling, moderating and aligning. It has become apparent that some confusion exists on how the process works overall. This is important to understand before diving into the finer...

www.boredofstudies.org

There is no direct relationship between marks that are produced in two different ways. ATAR calculators usually attempt to find a correlation between aligned marks and scaled marks because raw marks are not readily available, but people often misinterpret this as a causation type relationship between aligned marks and scaled marks.

Also, scaling has nothing to do with course difficulty (as this is a subjective concept that is impossible to quantify objectively) but rather the relative strength of a cohort in their other subjects. For example, more people who do Maths Advanced usually do better in their other subjects than people who do Maths Standard - so the former "scales" better. However, the opposite can happen where stronger candidates all go for the easier Maths Standard and can actually make it scale better than Maths Advanced.

UAC seems to back you up on the scaled mean being the metric for "scaling"

"3.2.4 Initial standardisation
Before the scaling algorithm is implemented, a linear transformation is applied to the raw HSC marks in each course to set the top mark to a common value. The marks in each course are then standardised to a mean of 25 and standard deviation of 12 on a 1-unit basis."

So the standardised marks are scaled and technically the "scaling" is exactly defined by the scaled mean.

However, most often the raw to scaled mark conversion is referred to as "scaling". In my opinion, this is also the more important metric - there isnt too much use in knowing the strength of the candidature as seen in the scaled mean, as it shouldn't affect the score you obtain. However, low scaling subjects impose a limit on the maximum scaled marks obtainable (z=+2.46 according to uac), which makes the raw to scaled mark data very important in addition to putting into perspective the difficulty of obtaining certain scaled marks.

 

[Husky]

I'm thinking though cause it's first year of new syllabus the cut off will be pretty low regardless of the difficulty of the exam as it is new untested content, well at least I'm hoping it is :/

 

[Fabrizio]

Hey guys, just for reference, how hard did ppl find the sample paper? I just did it and I got high 60s :/

Its one of the easier papers i have seen. Only really out there questions were 14 a) and 16 c). I got mid to high 80s

 

[Fabrizio]

Can you explain 16 c) if you got it? My school didnt do anything on these types of proofs

 

[Fabrizio]

The syllabus says "simple" number proofs so I think the other content will be the source of the harder questions.

Considering some of q15 in 2015 went to q16 in the sample paper, it looks like it might have already been a bit easier than 2015 even before any editing (79 ish band 6?). If they did make the exams easier it might become similar to sciences (low 80s?) or if they just kept the nice aligning anyways it might stay as mid high 70s.

Is band 6 for sciences only 80?

 

[erucibon]

Can you explain 16 c) if you got it? My school didnt do anything on these types of proofs

I think the answers are quite self explanatory, which part did you not understand?

 

[MrGresh]

I'm thinking though cause it's first year of new syllabus the cut off will be pretty low regardless of the difficulty of the exam as it is new untested content, well at least I'm hoping it is :/

Haha, yeah probably. Same thing happened with sciences last year I believe actually.

Its one of the easier papers i have seen. Only really out there questions were 14 a) and 16 c). I got mid to high 80s

See I find that strange, because I have done plenty of other trial exams and I found the sample paper more challenging compared to them. I guess I'm just better at a different sort of question?

 

[Xanthi]

Is band 6 for sciences only 80?

Yeah 80 is usual, sometimes mid to high 70s are enough. But 80 is a safe value to be fairly confident on a b6.

 

[ultra908]

anyone else think the nesa sample answers r rlly weird- they skip steps where they shouldnt and add extra stuff where they dont need to?

 

[MrGresh]

anyone else think the nesa sample answers r rlly weird- they skip steps where they shouldnt and add extra stuff where they dont need to?

Yeah, I definitely think the term "sample answers" is misleading - I'm fairly sure if you wrote some of those answers in the exam the marker would be very confused haha