you know it's been a minute been a minute since i made a video on maths and seeing as i made one
on gcse maths and hug online then two years ago i thought it was only right to make one on how
to get an a star in a level maths because i also did the same thing for those of you that have been
here since i just said the umass video i hope you appreciated that little cameo yeah anyway
getting straight into it this is exactly how i got a start in a-level maths and exactly how you
can get it yourself you can also apply all of these methods and tips to a-level further maths
but it's all in this one video okay six so first of all a few things to know about math as opposed
to other subjects is it isn't subjective you get the answer right or you get it wrong which means
it's a lot easier to revise in some of the other subjects like the humanities which has memorized a
bunch of information and then hope that you can put it into an answer that the examiner likes
because with this it means that the same of fundamental mathematics and the same methods
underpin every type of question for example there aren't two different methods of integration that
give you two different answers there's one method and it gives you the one correct answer however
the problem lies in the questions and exactly how they ask them because sometimes the way they ask
them what masks the methods do you need to be able to solve that question but you might not be able
to initially identify the path that you need to take to get to an answer so even though you have
the fundamental understanding of the content and of those methods you can't apply it because you
don't know what to apply so taking all of that into consideration there's only three possible
areas you can use marks or three reasons why you'd lose marks the first being a lack of understanding
of the fundamental mathematics or those methods so even if the question is explicit in asking
you to apply that method because you don't have the fundamental understanding of that method
you can't answer the question and you don't get the marks now the second reason why you lose
marks is the inability to see what the problem is actually asking you might have the fundamental
understanding of the methods behind the question but you can't figure out what methods to apply to
reach an answer because the question might be asked in a really inexplicit way that might be
just like find this answer but you don't know how to get to that answer so even though if someone
told you all the sets you needed to take you'd be able to apply it because you know the maths
you can't figure out that path for yourself and you can't get the marks and then the third and
final reason why you lose marks is literally just stupid mistakes like you might write an
answer to the wrong number of significant figures or you might just not write down the answer you've
got and that's something that's really easily solved or something that's really easily solved
and those are the three key reasons why you lose marks in this revision method i basically try to
eliminate all of those reasons to give you a better understanding of the mathematical
content to enable you to find those paths to the solutions and methods that you need to use to get
there and then also help you to eliminate those stupid errors so what is the method okay right
well there are two aspects of this revision method the first aspect and the first thing that you need
to do is whenever you finish a topic in maths you need to go home you need to make cue cards outline
the content and then the methods you use to solve questions relating to that content so for example
if you're making a cue card on integration what you want to be doing is first of all outlining
the reason for integration's existence the sole purpose of integration is to find
the area beneath the curve when you've got that down you then want to write down the method used
for solving integration questions for example you might write down when asked to integrate a
x to the power of n what do you do and then on the back of the q card you literally just write
a x to the power of n goes to ax n plus one over n plus one but to make those cue cards you need
obviously the information and you can either get that information from the notes you take in class
if you feel like you take detailed enough notes but what i did was take notes from intel because
my school actually paid for interval for all of us now i don't actually recommend buying in school if
you don't already have it through your school i recommend a textbook like this it basically just
explains all of the math topics and then gives you a bunch of practice questions for each of
those topics i'll actually link this one in the description below and that's what you want to
be doing every single time you finish a topic in maths because that helps you then to solidify your
fundamental understanding of the maths you're in a better position and you know all of the
methods required to answer any questions then the second thing you want to be doing is blasting out
thousands of exam papers and pass questions and by doing past paper questions i don't mean
just answering them and then leaving it i mean answering them going through the mark scheme
marking all of your answers and seeing what you get wrong because in doing this
not only are you helping to better your understanding of the content by applying
what you've learned or what you've looked over in your cue cards but you're also helping to develop
your ability to identify paths to a solution in questions where those methods might be slightly
masked for example if you don't get an answer or you don't know how to tackle a question you look
at the mark scheme you identify the process that they've used and exposing yourself to all of those
questions and all of those answers will put you in a better position to begin to identify those paths
for yourself unlike my physics and my chemistry methods while doing these past paper questions
you also want to be making cue cards on the stuff you get wrong for example if you haven't seen the
maths in the context of a specific question and you don't know how to answer it when you
look at that mark scheme and you realize how to answer it you want to make a cue card to
re-trigger that understanding so on the front of the cue card it might let you through the question
how do you answer it and on the back of the cue card you'll literally outline the process
because then when you're reviewing those cue cards you're improving your ability to
identify paths to solutions and familiarizing yourself with a load of different situations
ultimately helping you to identify the paths to answers on questions that you've never seen before
and then doing both of those first two processes you're tackling the two main reasons why you drop
marks on the exam the lack of understanding of the content and then the inability to find a
path to the answer but then obviously there's a third reason why you lose marks and that's just
making stupid errors with this all you have to do is just double check and then triple check all of
your answers when you're doing any of those past paper questions and then in the actual exam and
while you're doing those past paper questions if there's any stupid errors like for example
swapping a plus with a negative or not writing it's the correct number of significant figures
you want to note that down make a cue card on it so that when you're reviewing your cue cards
that's getting ingrained into your mind so as to not make that mistake in the exam for example if
you know you're making loads of mistakes with significant figures write a cue card on it
and then when you go through those cue cards you're constantly telling yourself check for
significant figures and then when you're in the actual exam you do check for significant figures
so check while you're doing practice questions and make you guys on that and then in the exam
leave time to check because so many times have i been back through my exam paper and found like 10
to 15 marks which could be the difference between a grade c and a grade a is mad check will do your
answers but yeah those are the three aspects of my revision method that help me to get that
a start in maths and obviously it also applies to further maths but for maths i probably made about
i probably made about 400 500 cue cards and it took so long but these are all in the description
below if you do want to check them out however snap revise today's video sponsor has actually
put together this set of 200 cue cards that covers the entire a level so let's see what they're about
okay so these are the cards inside the box and they're laid out exactly as the a-level physics
ones if you did see the last video but essentially there's a content space that tells you exactly
what topic is on every one of those cue cards and they're all numbered so if you just want to go to
a particular idea you can look at the content see which card it's on and go straight to it unlike
with my cue cards where you just have to flick through them all and try to find where that idea
is this is a massive time saver in that regard and then the actual cue cards themselves they
have that information on the front like i said basically outlining the fundamental understanding
of that mathematical topic and then on the back they have a question and then the exact method to
solve that question so with this you can get a quick reminder of the mathematical content
and turn it around and then answer a question by covering up the answers attempting the
question and checking to see if you got it right and then if you didn't either making
additional cue calls on something like anki to familiarize yourself with exactly why you got
it wrong or just putting the card to one side and attempting it again later and that's how you can
work through these cue cards and essentially just use them as your all-in-one with reason resource
using additional past paper questions etc on top if you wanted to but then as always we've got
the sacrifice course the course is basically just the complete package and can be used to
teach everything you need to know or conjure users revision you basically just work your way through
all of the topics by first taking a quiz on each this quiz determines the subtopics you struggle
on and then highlights those topics in orange for review you then review each with the bite-sized
videos before attempting a new quiz continuing this cycle until you've mastered every subtopic
for each there is also a set of exam questions for additional practice so if you do want to check
out those cue cards or the course and depending on when this video is out the free maths cheat
sheets that basically summarize the entire course then hit the top link in my description below and
also if you use the code snap revise jake you can get a 14 day free trial on both the pro and the
basic subscriptions for that course otherwise that is it for me today i do hope you found this video
helpful you can also check out any of my other gcse level videos up there and yeah we've got a
hell of a lot more content coming just like this and then of course all of the university vlogs
so if that sounds like content you want to be a part of i'd go down and absolutely obliterate that
subscribe and like button i appreciate that anyway thanks for watching i'll see you in the next one