Maximizing Marks - IB Mathematics

IB Subjects - IB Mathematics

Say you are doing an IB maths paper and you are on a question that will reward you 5 marks for a worked answer. There is the easy way of doing it with your calculator or the hard way of working it out yourself (which you suspect is the way they want you to work it out), you can only remember the way to do it on the calculator so do you:
a) Write down some of the sums you used or
b) write down everything you pressed on the calculator in the hope you will get some of the marks?
- Holly

Answer

It is hard to give ONE CORRECT answer to this question. In general, since paper 1 is no longer a calculator exam, the IBO will place most of the questions for which they require working out in paper 1, leaving you the option of using your calculator as much as you would like in paper 2. At the same time, if they DO IN FACT want you to explain your working step by step in a paper 2 exam they tend to specify this quite clearly in the question.

In the unlikely event that you will come across a question as described above, your best bet is to write down as much as you can remember. You then conclude with something along the lines of "by using the such and such function on the calculator the result came out to be X". If you do end up writing this, then try to work it in so that it does not become evident that you do not in fact know how to solve the problem. Rather you try to show that you chose to use your calculator in order to save time.

- Bogdan, Lanterna Tutor