Jaipur: With the board exams approaching, teachers said that students still have enough time to prepare thoroughly for the Applied Mathematics subject by focusing on the right strategy, given their strengths and the time that was left.Nidhi Gupta, mathematics teacher at Maharani Gayatri Devi Girls’ School, said that students should start by identifying their weaknesses and the chapters that held the most weightage in previous year question papers.“Start with those, and be thorough with formulae and their application, especially in formula-based chapters like financial mathematics and probability. In these topics, questions usually require direct usage of the correct formula. Students can make a formula sheet for remembering and revision,” said Gupta.For Inferential Statistics, Gupta said that questions follow a similar pattern in each year’s question paper, so students must make sure to practise old papers and sample papers.For the chapter on Linear Programming, she said that students should put their effort into formulating equations and solving word problems from sample papers to become familiar with the language used in them.“For Calculus, which includes complex, integration and differential equations, students must practise a lot of questions from reference books and sample papers. No need to focus on difficult problems; just cover the full variety of questions like derivatives, maxima, minima, nature of functions, etc,” added Gupta.She also suggested that students must make sure to practise case studies and MCQs from reference books and sample papers, as they hold considerable weightage and are relatively easy.Students should also identify topics where they make mistakes or are slow in solving, and specifically practise those from reference books or the internet.“More than speed, try to build up your confidence and familiarity with questions. Once students start recognising patterns, they will immediately know how to approach a question or which formula to use. This ensures that they do not need to do multiple attempts at the same question, as well as build speed,” said Gupta.
