MATH1241 - Higher Mathematics 1B

3 minute read easy

Difficulty: 5/10 · Time Commitment: 6/10 · Enjoyability: 8/10 · Mark: 90

Summary

I did MATH1241 (Higher Mathematics 1B) in Term 2 2021. The subject is a continuation of MATH1141, however, it is slightly easier because it has a very similar structure and in my experience, the familiarity developed in MATH1141 makes it easier to get accustomed to the course.

Positives

  • Well-structured
  • Interesting concepts covered and develops good basis for future
  • Lots of resources to supplement learning
  • Lots of scaling in the final exam

Negatives

  • Lectures are very slow and not very engaging
  • Final exam is significantly harder than any questions in the course

In-depth

Structure

MATH1241 has weekly modules to complete online which amount to about 3-5 hours a week. Apart from that, there are 2 lab tests, an assignment and a final exam. The course alternates between algebra and calculus, and there is a big emphasis on proofs.

Tutorials were offered in-person when I did the course, however, they weren’t really useful and I don’t think I gained much from attending them. Lectures got really complicated at some points throughout the course but I mainly watched them at 3.5x speed. The main topics covered are integration, statistics, linear algebra (basis of a matrix, nullspace, columnspace, kernel etc), calculus (partial differentiation, total differential approximation etc).

These topics were very interesting, however, they were content heavy and it was easy to fall behind. Having a good basis from MATH1141 and high school is really important in keeping up throughout the course.

Mobius

Mobius was the platform used for the homework modules each week. The platform is an improvement from MapleTA and although the final exam was plagued with technical issues just like term 1, it was handled much better on Mobius. The questions provided each week were good for consolidating course materials and the how did I do button made them very effective.

Around flexi-week this term, I was really busy with all my subjects and extracurricular activities and skipped a few weeks of Mobius. This didn’t end up affecting my mark and revising the topics I skipped separately before the exam proved to be just as helpful as the questions themselves. This is something I’d recommend to students during busy periods throughout the term.

Lab Tests

There are two labs tests in MATH1241. Each one is the same as MATH1231 except conducted a week earlier because the more advanced course is supposedly working ahead. I found the lab tests to be very easy specifically because all the questions were released one week prior. I practiced every question beforehand and even looked at multiple iterations of certain questions until I completely understood them.

It is definitely a good idea to attempt the entire questionbank before each lab test and get very comfortable with using Maple. This is especially important for lab test 2 which is focuses on using Maple software to complete the questions.

Advice

  1. WATCH 3BLUE1BROWN VIDEOS!!! - The linear algebra playlist by 3Blue1Brown is singularly the thing that got me through this course. It turned my concepts I was learning from simply vectors and matrices to actual physical representations which I could visualise when attempting questions. The whole series is very interesting and the visualisation of each concept is intriguing and makes this course so much easie to understand. I highly recommend watching it.
  2. Use Maple - Maple is maths software which I really hated when I started off MATH1141. However, within a few weeks of properly learning it, I realised how powerful and useful it was for pretty much everything in the course.
  3. Skip busy weeks - Doing so many maths questions every week gets very time consuming and weeks when multiple subjects have assignments are very chaotic. The course only takes the best 6 out of 9 weeks of online tutorials, so it’s sometimes a good idea to skip a week and then revise it right before the exam.
  4. Don’t stress during finals - MATH1241 finals has incredibly high scaling. I couldn’t attempt a huge portion of the questions in the finals because each question pushed my understand of the course much further than any practice questions. However, this is compensated for by the scaling in the course which ensures that students receive fair marks proportional to the amount of work they put into the course.

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