BREAKDOWN OF MATHEMATICS STANDARD LEVEL FOR THE IB DIPLOMA
About this ebook
As a student, it is very important to analyse what the examiners are testing you in their places. For example, a question worth four marks may be broken down as one mark for showing appropriate method or formula, one mark for substituting the corresponding values into the formula, one mark for working and one mark for finding correct value at the end. In this case, to obtain full marks at least four steps are necessary, and one or two more steps are recommended to improve the chance of obtaining full marks.
In this book, I summarise all the knowledge required for standard level mathematics for IB diploma. Some words are written in colour or bold to draw your attention where I think it is important or confusing. Some pragmatic and efficient methods for tests are introduced by some examples where students often have trouble or make mistakes based on my teaching experience. The questions from the papers in the last two years are taken as examples to show a detailed breakdown of marking including the reasons or explanations for each mark. These real test questions may also help you to realise the importance of a section if you find more questions there.
In some examples, a solution is given step by step for a non-calculator question, and a shortcut by a graphing calculator is also demonstrated since a similar question may appear on Paper 2. A Ti-84 Plus Silver graphing calculator is used for demonstration because I think it is a little more complicated compared with the Casio calculators. The relevant pre-knowledge is also given in Chapter 1 as a brief revision.
All in all, solving questions is just like giving your viewpoints by showing your reasons logically but in a mathematical way.
Wei ZHANG
PhD in Physics
PhD in Electrical Engineering
About the author
Wei ZHANG received his Bachelor of Engineering in Electronic Science and Technology and his first PhD in Atomic and Molecular Physics in China. During his PhD study, he conducted one-year research in the Department of Chemistry, Princeton University, USA. He received his second PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of New South Wales, Australia. Then he stayed there as a research fellow. He has published more than 20 academic papers.
During his study and work, he often shared his ideas with his classmates or colleges and became more and more enthusiastic about teaching. He has taught many students ranging from primary school to university. Now he is devoting himself to helping students studying under the IB program.
Email: [email protected]
