Andrew's Guide to IB Mathematics Universe

Hey there DP2s! For many of you school’s about to start in a week or two. If you have taken a fair mathematical sabbatical, perhaps this is time to prepare yourself for the new school year. I’m not a fan of studying from dawn till dusk every day, but the more work you could do now the more your future self will thank you when January hits.   Today we’ll be back with complex numbers. Similar to integration, complex numbers are not conceptually demanding but rather seasoned question writers love to weave other parts of the curriculum – trigonometric relationships, vectors, integration, you name it. Enjoy the complexity of your complex numbers!

Hello hoomans. My long-time readers may have noticed that I tend to take all of us on a tangent every so often. And today happens to be one of those days.   If you hang out with me on the IB Discord server this is not the first time I babble on designing and writing examinations. You know how happy I am to talk about these nerdy things. I wrote two posts on how I write exams, which you could find here and here . Today we’ll take a crucial aspect – question difficulty – and dive deeper into what makes up the difficulty of a question.   This is my attempt to distill some of the research I’ve read in a more user-friendly, digestible way. Perhaps not the most accurate but hopefully they serve as a checklist for question writers to be cognizant of when they’re writing questions for a mock exam.   Note that this does NOT apply to formative assessments; the purpose is different and therefore you shouldn’t apply what’s written here word by word. And if you’re not teaching mat

Tell me if this sounds familiar. Summer before IB, submitting your subject choice: aIsL iS sO eASy iMmA gEt a 45 Summer before DP2, looking at uni requirements: oh FUCK me no uni accepts this bird course!   Panik panik panik. Proceed to ask (read: beg) the coordinator to move you to AASL to get into the major you want to pursue. They raise their eyebrows, looking a little suspicious, really doubt if you could make it. But most likely they’re gonna say yes. You’ve got their green light, jumping in joy. September comes by, you see “the chain rule” on the board and proceed to read it as hieroglyphs.   Welcome to AASL.   Getting their permission is the first step. Now the hard part arrives: how to catch up with your classmates and how to come across as not totally out of your depth.   Today’s post focuses on the transition from AISL to AASL. The key things you should know to make the transition a little less bumpy.   (1) difference in content This one i