For this paper, it was easy and i could do everything. However,
i made some really really careless mistakes(like actually
forgetting that rooting a number would actually give you a negative
value). After going through Mike's solutions, i find that i got
72/80 for the paper(given that i do not get anymore minused off for
presentation). I read mike saying that minus more than ten marks
can say byebye to a1 liao, so i'm really worried about my a1.
You cannot use 0.9 as it is a rounded value. Refer to
http://www.seab.gov.sg/SEAB/oLevel/syllabus/2008_GCE_O_Level_Syllabuses/4016_2008.pdf
Look at Note point 6. This instruction may not
have been stated clearly in the A Maths instructions (but point 1
of the AM Note could be a catch all... omission of essential
workings...) but logically it should be applied too.
If you used 0.9006 then no issue. Else minus 1 mark most
likely.
Using Y = mX+c is best as all the values subsituted in are exact
values.
As note that for 10b, anyone who
b^2<40
b< +/-sqrt(40) has it wrong too as you are not allowed to
square or square root an inequality.
Likewise 1a asked for "exact value" and anyone who press the
calculator for 2sqrt(3) will lose 1 mark.
And question 3... hopefully some people mixed up their p and q.
:/
And 13... hopefully plenty of people forgot to calculate A.
Hope plenty of people did that as my students did badly, losing
-6,-7,-10,-14 and -15 marks. Else the gap that had opened up will
be too wide for them to recover from in paper 2 (hopefully a tough
one). Now the 2 person who lost 14 and 15 marks respectively will
have to get the whole of geometry proof correct to
maybe close the gap on the frontrunners (my guess
is 25% of the people lost less than 10 marks). And hopefully the
guy who lost 14 hopefully actually had 4ii) correct (should be
correct but always assume wrong when unsure then you have the worst
scenario planned for) as he can't be sure that he got it correct
and I assumed that he got it wrong in calculating his losses.
Either that or SEAB decide to increase the number of A1s and A2s
in setting a paper where consistency is so damned harsh.
So let's pray that today's paper 2 will be much harder.