Andrew's IB Maths Vault

Hey y'all! After the hectic three weeks (with my own schoolwork and mocks and revision sessions and all that) I'm happy to report that I finally got some time to upload the Survival Guide for AISL!! This work is in collaboration with an AISL teacher, christina77. She basically did all of the planning and also a common guest on AISL Survival Papers! Hope this would be a saving grace for you M24s, and may the odds be ever in your favour.

Survival Papers (AdventurousAndrew and christina77) Survival Papers focus on the core topics that we consider crucial for a grade (level) 5 student. If you're consistently smashing these papers, getting a 5 on the real exam should be relatively straightforward. Papers 1A , 1B , 1C , 1D and 2A are available at the moment with the respective markschemes and scoring guides.   The Survival Guide will be posted in late April. Booster Papers Less straightforward than Survival Papers, more manageable than a typical Andrew's mock exam, hopefully on par with a typical past paper: here you go! Unit Tests Quadratics Trig relationships Sequences and series Intro to probability Probability distributions

 Hey y’all! Sorry for the rather long pause – last week we didn’t have any wifi at my place!   Today I’m back with Survival Paper 2A! Different structure, same predictable questions. Just as Survival Papers 1A-1D cover Paper 1-style questions, Survival Papers 2’s will give you some practice on key Paper 2-style questions.   Without any further ado, here we go!   AISL Survival Paper 2A:   AISL Survival Paper 2A MS:   AISL Survival Paper 2A Scoring Guide:     P.S: The Survival Guide for AISL shall be posted around 20 April. Similar to Survival Guide AASL, it is not intended to be a comprehensive list of all topics, but merely a checklist to see if you’re on track to a 4.   Have fun with maths!   Andrew

 Hey there peeps!   Sorry for the MIA. I know it’s an aspirational goal to post weekly (rather, to have time to write and post stuff weekly) and it was successful for exactly two weeks. ;p   Starting now, I’ll aim to post every other week. It’ll be a mix of + AI survival papers, as I’ve been neglecting y’all for too long + unit tests – that’s why most peeps are here in the first place! + updates on biannual mocks + insights on teaching.   Let me elaborate. Teaching is an experimental science. We all conduct experiments on our students to decide what works. A good teacher is one who can respond to the student(s) in front of them, giving every student the thing they need to succeed. I’ll document what worked well and what wasn’t so hot, what my expectations were and what the reality had to offer. Hopefully fellow teachers and tutors will find my two cents useful.   That being said, most of my audience are DP students, so I’ll keep it to ...

 2 nd post of the series! Andrew being consistent for once!   Hey y’all! Survival Paper 1B is out! Continuation of 1A, this is the practice you’re looking for if you’re struggling and you want an anchor to hold onto. 50 marks, 50 minutes, levels 1-5.   Some of you are wondering about the frequency of posting – WHAT IS UP with Andrew posting two weeks in a row. I’ll try my best (“endeavour”, for those who use fancy words) to post something weekly, whether it is a survival paper, a unit test, or some Challenge Questions (yes it is a spoiler, more details to come).   Without any further ado, here’s what you signed up for! Survival Paper:   Survival Paper MS:   Scoring Guide:     Happy 2024! C:

 Hey there hoomans!   Welcome to 2024. What better way to start the year than making up for the kiddos whom I’ve neglected over the last year or so: AISL! Can we have some drumrolls for… AISL Survival Papers!   With the collaboration of christina77, we’ve finally put together a couple survival papers for you guys. (It’s mostly her keeping me on my toes since last July :p) Predictable structure, predictable questions, predictable grades. Grinding all of them should give you the skills required to get a 4.   I’m aware that most questions on these papers don’t have a lot of words, and that’s because I’m a simple man. That means you’ll need to practise the art of filtering words in word problems on your own, either using your textbook or past papers. All roads lead to Rome; don’t take what I say as the answer to everything.   There will be five papers mimicking the style of paper 1 and three papers following the same style as paper 2. That’s only...

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...

Hey there kiddos! Many of you will write the final exams in two days - best of luck! Even better this time that P2 is on a Monday so y'all will have some time to focus on things that haven't showed up on P1. Today's post is a lil different from normal: booster papers. Some people (myself included) have the tendency to do easy  questions before the exam to boost our morale and give us some confidence that you do know some stuff. Well this is it - I've just written a couple papers over the last four days (hence please pardon me if the papers don't have their usually high quality) which were supposed  to be easier than the mocks (so perhaps at the same level as the actual exam lmao) that you could get your hands on! Grab your stuff here before it's too late:  https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13ArEJPOWOcPCTOI0WOmw-t7SSgINeMfA?usp=sharing . How are your other exams going? Let me know in the mocks server ! Btw, all the papers from M22 are uploaded, link  here . ...

Hey y'all. For the last few days, I've seen some students struggling with conditional probability on the IB server. This isn't news or anything; conditional probabilities are usually poorly done overall, especially the SL folks. This post summarises what commonly show up on examiners' reports and how you can avoid it. The concept of probability in IB is ENORMOUS, so I'll just focus on basic probability and combined probability. A solid foundation in this would ensure a good shot at solving the more complex, massive-tree-diagram-wordy-thingy questions. Basics of probability (1) giving answers which were greater than 1 You've probably heard of this statement 283187 times, but it's surprising the number of students who "innocently" report a probability of 2.0 due to a calculation error when dealing with decimals. Honestly. If y'all ever  report a probability greater than 1, I'd leave the room and SCREAM because you didn't pay attention to ...

Hey y'all! Due to not-so-popular demand I'm back with two series of tests for AISL and AIHL. I admit I've ignored the AI folks for a while, and this is my futile attempt to make up for it. c: AIHL Statistics and intro to prob: AIHL Statistics and intro to prob ANSWERS: AISL Statistics and intro to prob: AISL Statistics and intro to prob ANSWERS: AIHL Probability distributions: AIHL Probability distributions ANSWERS: AISL Probability distributions: AISL Probability distributions ANSWERS: Stay safe y'all. If you hate online school or just life  in general, remember that everything will be alright. Love, Andrew Credits:  AdventurousAndrew#7499

This is the first time we have the FULL HOUSE on this website! It's Tuesday and I'm back with FOUR (yes, four) tests this round mainly because they're pretty much identical  for all courses on sequences and series. Even though I do expect that most people have covered this topic by now, including M23s (god I'm old), this should still be a challenging for everyone, especially AISL. I feel kinda bad for not writing a totally different paper for ya, but I'm treating you guys in the same way as the AASL kiddos because the two courses are supposed to be equivalent . Since I'm in the mood to write stuffs, there might  be another post re Optimisation using calculus, something I've had a chance to teach yesterday. This is a poorly done topic most of the time  - so I think my advice can help some people out. Alright, boys and girls and bis and everyone in between, behold. AAHL AAHL Answers AIHL AIHL Answers AASL AASL Answers AISL AISL Answers If you have any question...

Hello hoomans, Are y'all looking for more IB practice papers  after you've exhausted a large collection of past papers you could get your hands on? Do you want to try papers that are (generally) above and beyond what you'd expect on the actual exam?  I've uploaded all the goodies I've ever written for my own mock server (at  http://discord.gg/SHBFEAf39Y ) for the last two exam sessions. Note that Nov 2020 was the last sitting of the old syllabi but you'll find most of the questions very useful for the current courses. Papers will eventually be added to the Google Drive after each mock session. Just in case you're new to the website or you haven't had time to take the mocks, here are some reasons why you should try the papers out. Challenging If you talk to people who have tried my mock before, it isn't uncommon to see people reporting that they've lost a couple brain cells.  I'm known to be a hard exam writer so this isn't news to me, but...

First off, sorry y'all for changing Tuesday Tests  into Thursday Tests. At least there's still alliteration so not all is lost. This week we'll have Trig Relationships for AISL and AIHL. Despite the name, we also cover trig functions (in AISL) and Voronoi diagrams (for both courses). Usual T&Cs apply - y'all probably familiar with this by now. AISL: AISL Answers: AIHL: AIHL Answers: Credits:  AdventurousAndrew#7499

It's Tuesday Tests and I'm back with two more tests for AISL and AIHL folks. The AIHL test is pretty similar to the AA tests because y'all need a solid foundation of algebra to do well in the course. AISL is different in nature. I recognise that not everyone needs to master algebra to the same level as AIHL and that you don't really need too much algebra to get a high 7. By this I don't mean AISL is in any way inferior to AASL; it's simply a difference in the focus of the course.  So here you go. AISL: AISL Answers: AIHL: AIHL Answers: Usual TOCs apply. Question 2 in section 5 was taken from Dr Frost Maths. Credit: AdventurousAndrew#7499