Why Checking Your Working Can Be More Important Than Doing More Questions
When preparing for maths exams, it can be tempting to measure your study by how many questions or past papers you complete. Finishing 6 past papers might feel double as productive as finishing 3, but the number of questions you get through isn't always what matters most. What matters is whether you're actually learning from them.
One of the best habits to develop is consistently marking your work and thoroughly understanding where you went wrong.
The mistakes we make in maths generally aren't random. You might regularly forget to convert units, misunderstand a question or use the wrong formula. If you simply mark a question wrong after skimming over the answer sheet, there is a good chance you'll make a similar mistake next time.
Instead when you get something wrong, go back through your working and find the exact point where things fell apart. Ask yourself: was this a maths mistake, a calculator mistake, or a case of misunderstanding the question. Then, write it down.
This becomes particularly important in HSC maths because questions often involve several steps. You might understand the actual concept perfectly but lose marks because you used years instead of months in an annuity question or found the shortest network path when the quesiton asked for a minimum spanning tree. These are very fixable mistakes but only if you slow down enough to notice the pattern.
This is where that list of your regular mistakes comes in. Before an assessmentm reviewing that list can be more useful than smashing through another set of questions.
Getting better at maths isn;t just about doing more work. It's about getting more out of the work you're already doing. Ten questions that you properly attempt, mark and learn from can be far more valuable than 30 questions rushed through just to say they're finished.
