Leaving Certificate Maths Paper 1

Lorraine - Ordinary Level

Hi all,I hope that your all as outraged as me right now..what on earth was that? Did they accidentally give us the honours maths paper because that was next to impossible!!I woke up to revise the itty bits that really niggle me in paper 1 but generally paper 1 is my okish paper whereas its paper 2 that Is my downfall! I spent a long time on complex numbers and going through the financial maths because they were a long question in the mocks.When I went into school everyone was feeling ok- a lot of revising going on!! When the examiner handed me the exam paper I started to scan through it making myself not rush into anything-my worst habit. I checked through the long questions and was really disappointed- no financial maths. I started back at the first question which was exchange rates- not my best question! The complex numbers question was like a different language - they brought cos into it!! I fought with myself in the exam not to panic or freak out but jesus Christ that was a horrible exam.After the exam from talking to everybody else, nobody seems to be happy with it! Some of the questions were just strange and some of them I had never seen on the sample papers never mind past papers!! I have to admit I am really disappointed and extremely worried now as paper 2 is my awful paper! At least I have the weekend to spend cramming on it and trying to get a half decent result!!

Leah - Ordinary Level

Out of all of the exams I've done so far, I was absolutely chuffed to pieces with the Paper! As soon as I opened Maths Paper I today, I could hardly contain my glee. The Paper opened with an easy enough questions about financial maths, like currency conversions and so on and - boy! I may be one of the few people to admit that I actually liked Maths.When I dropped to Ordinary Level Maths after Christmas of Fifth Year, I felt full of worry that I would get a horrible Paper in the Leaving - simply because I didn't know what to expect from the terrifying "Project Maths". However, I believe that this years Paper is the nicest one I've seen yet, including the Sample Papers that came in Examit's set of Past Exam Papers.In fairness though, I heard off many of my friends that they hated Question Eight and Nine and I have to agree but always remember; attempt marks are key! Attempt marks will be and are my blessing. With attempt marks alone you can pass Maths, which is nice considering the fact that it's either a subject you get or not at all. It just goes to show: everybody loves a trier.The only other question that stumped me was the second question to do with Co-Ordinate Geometry but I guess no one can be good at everything.Honestly, roll on Maths Paper II because I am feeling ecstatic. I'm as happy as Larry with what came up and I hope that the next people will be just as sweet! :)

Neil - Ordinary Level

After talking to many others, the general consensus seems to be that ordinary maths paper 1 was very difficult for an ordinary maths paper. I particularly found the question on sequences very difficult and honestly I thought oil barons earned more money lolOverall though, I think it was a very easy paper to pass as the question As were very simple and straight forward yet it was a hard paper to get an A1 in due to the Cs being challenging. Gods speed for paper 2 to all my fellow ordinary huns.

Shauna - Ordinary Level

Going into maths I wasn't too worried because I'm in pass and probably won't count it for points! I didn't study for it much last night as I had Honours Geography this morning and was stressed to the max about that! I went in just hoping for some nice questions though! Question 1 was about money exchange so that was grand! It all went down hill from there :(( I found the questions in the middle of the paper IMPOSSIBLE!!! I spent so long trying to figure out what I was being asked to do! The last 2 questions were do-able, although the very last part of the last question wasn't worded very well. I came out of the exam fairly depressed because I thought I would do well in maths, but found out that everyone found the paper soooo difficult so hopefully it'll be marked easy enough! LIVING FOR ATTEMPT MARKS !

Joanna - Higher Level

Ah, when I opened the paper and saw that there was no sign of DeMoivre's theorem or proof by induction, it felt like my prayers were answered! I was dreading seeing them, I spent the whole dull morning looking over them and trying to drill the steps into my head, without much progress. The fact that they weren't there was a massive relief and I felt ready to tackle anything else that may be on the paper.Looking over the questions, they looked challenging but didn't make me panic, and I found the first two questions were really manageable which helped me to stay calm (I even managed to get an answer in surd form for question two as was asked, so I was delighted!) the whole paper wasn't easy, I particularly struggled in finishing the last 3 questions. However, I put something down for every question which I was happy about. There were a few situations where I knew the figures that I got in a previous part of a question were wrong, but I knew what to do with them in the parts that followed. So hopefully, even though a lot of my final answers were a mess, the steps that I followed and the formula I used were correct and will give me enough marks to pass this paper.So, I hope I have a good few partial grades in the bag now, paper one was always my least favourite paper, so whatever I achieved should only get better after paper two! I'm really relieved because I knew this would be one of the most challenging exams and the fact that it went okay is really encouraging. Time to go over paper 2, as many biology exam questions as possible and make my way through Irish essays, summaries and vocab for the exams next week... But first, I'm taking the afternoon off and recommend it to everyone else after today :))

Isabelle - Higher Level

Today was definitely the most nervous I have been going into an exam. In the car on the way I wasnt sure whether I needed to cry or throw up (thankfully I did neither). Having got 40% on the dot in my mock Maths has been a huge source of stress for me, with my main end goal being to scrape a D3. This exam was baffling to me. Some of the questions were scarily easy and almost spoon fed the answers and then others (like the oil spill ???!) were difficult and just plain weird. Differentiation has never been one of my strong points, so when I saw that nearly every question included it in some shape or form (seriously though whats up with that??) I was quite disappointed. The financial maths question was a nice break from it all!Overall I was not overly happy with the paper, and I have pretty mixed emotions from most of my friends aswell, some thinking it was too easy, some finding it impossible. Either way I filled in every box and made some ludicrous attempts, so I'm hoping some nice partial credits will be heading my way and hopefully getting me to 40%.Now for a weekend full of the most intense cramming of my life, but maybe a well deserved break for tonight!

Dáire - Higher Level

I was more anxious before this exam than I was for English, but I was relieved when I opened the paper. I found the short questions to be very handy, especially the financial maths one, which I found nearly too easy and was searching for the catch involved. I was happy with that, because it's my worst topic.I took my time going through the paper, it took me a few minutes to relax with the paper and once I did, it was all good from there. Usually I would go mad if there was a question I couldn't answer, but I felt that time was on my side and I pulled each question apart and got through it.It wasn't a perfect paper either, there were surprisingly only a couple of parts that I could not answer. I'll hold off on predicting my grade for now but I'm nearly certain I passed off that paper alone. I hope paper two treats me as well on Monday as paper one did today.

Rob - Higher Level

I had prepared a lot on proof by induction as well as learning off my proofs and definitions for this paper. All morning I looked over these, and so I was quite disappointed to see none of them turn up in the paper.As I don't have the paper with me to analyse I can't speak about every question. I found the first 6 to be quite straightforward, except for Question 4 involving complex numbers. I tried everything with this question, swapping positions, De Moivres, adding conjugates. I couldn;t make it work.I found the rate of change question to be challenging, there was a lot of information with the different questions requiring you to fully be following what was going on with that oil spill.I was disappointed to see no theory, no induction or simultaneous equations nor any mention of surjective and injective functions. The paper was very heavy on calculus, which I can deal with, but I would have preferred some of the other topics.Overall I'm a little disappointed and disheartened. There will surely be some theory on Paper 2 now, on top of the theorems and inferential statistics to learn off. I'm still not sure about the new aspects introduced this year so will have to check up on that tonight online.Hopefully Paper 2 will be a bit kinder to me, I know not everyone was as disappointed as I was today. 8 more exams to go!Please note: Blog posts reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union.