Junior Cert Maths Paper 1

David - Higher Level

Hi all, I know paper 1 was on Friday, but I wanted to leave my Maths blog until I had done them both!Paper 1 was the hardest paper one in my opinion so far. I had done all the exam papers from 2011-2004, and I had even done the 2012,2009 and 2007 mocks and I thought this paper was the hardest, but I suppose it goes by your strengths and weaknesses'. Q1 Went grand and there were no surprises - I flew through it.Q2 and Q3 Were harder for me, I'm good at algebra but I thought these questions were more complicated than usual. Q4/Q5/Q6 were tough, but nothing out of the ordinary, I don't mind functions so it wasn't too bad, but these questions I took the most time on and I think, did the worst on, for me they were just harder.

Jack - Higher Level

Maths used to be my weakest subject (well, among them anyway) but after today I feel really proud! After a quick read of boards.ie, it seems I am one of few who found the Paper easy.When the paper was handed out and I had a quick scan. Not too bad at first glance and I headed straight in to Question 1. Part A was quite easy, as A parts tend to be. Part B was also fairly easy. Part C, (i) and (ii) were very easy. However, (iii) caught me out. I just tried it and left it. Attempt marks, for the win!Next came Question 2. To my delight, Venn diagrams were not a C part! Part A was very easy. Part B... Venn diagrams... my old enemy. I've always struggled with them, but this felt like something out of Ordinary level, to be honest. Next came Part C. I needed a while to get it around my head, but after that it was grand.Next came Question 3. Part A was a tad confusing and I ended up guessing in the end. Scientific notation isn't my strongest part of Maths. Part B was fair enough. I made a very foolish error in (i). I thought 3 x 3 = 6! I was stumped for ages until I realized my error and fixed the question. Part C. Ah, Question 3, part C, how I hate thee. It turns out (after asking on boards.ie) that I was sooo close. I used - instead of +. Attempt marks shall do. I spent a good 45 minutes in total trying to work that out!Question 4 came next. Parts A and B were generic and quite easy. Part C gave me some trouble but after trying multiple times, I got it! I continued on to Question 5. Nothing I had not seen before. I flew threw Parts A, B and C. It was all very familiar.Question 6 came up last. Part A was grand. Part B was difficult to begin with but once I got my head around it, it was grand. Part C was a little confusing. I kind of made some educated guesses on how to do it!Overall, Paper One was quite easy, in my opinion. Maybe that's just me. I see a lot of people found it very hard... Even a friend of mine who loves Maths found it hard. So maybe it went well for some, horrid for others. Now to chill out for this weekend! Well... cram for French, I guess!

Lorraine - Ordinary Level

Hey guys! Lorraine here and I'm just home from doing Ordinary Maths Paper 1!The Exam started at 2pm and it finished at 4pm! I went in to the exam confident, I much prefer the topics on paper 1 to those on paper 2! Now? I'm in between! :P I found some of the questions really hard to figure out how to do, and for the life of me I could just not figure out how to do Q4 C - parts i and ii! It was all about - Conor bought a book for y and a jersey for 4y+6 euro. His total sum was 61 euro. I just couldn't figure out how to do it and I went over it a lot! I finished the exam at about 10 past 3! A few people had already gotten up and left but I was determined to leave feeling satisfied so I kept going over my paper.Instead of a bar chart or line graph we had to do a graph of a function question. There was only a small question on tax that I found simple enough! My graph of a function for Q6 did not look right so I re-did all of my functions and they were all right, then I re-did the graph on the spare sheet you get and it was still the same as the other graph so fingers, toes and legs crossed that it was right!Overall, I found the paper OK. I'm hoping I at least got a C in it! I'm not looking forward to paper 2 but I have the whole weekend to practice for it! I know I wasn't alone in finding paper 1 hard but lets hope that paper 2 is better! :) The weather definitely helps in the exams, I feel so much better knowing that even though I'm stuck doing exams I'm not missing out on much outside because no body else can go out either! :)I hope everyone thinks they did good in the paper 1 and Good luck for Paper 2 :)

 Please note: blog posts reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union. Blogs are updated daily by 6.30 pm on scheduled examination dates.