Leaving Certificate Maths Paper 2

Craig - Ordinary Level 

For those, like myself depending upon "construct a triangle" to come up - today was a blessing!What a relief! That paper was lovely! I was quite tight on time today as I had Irish paper 2 to study for! I'm pretty happy with that paper, they were kind to us in maths this year to be fair - there was plenty of opportunity to show off what we knew!  

Ellen - Higher Level 

Was it just me or were those long questions a blessing? Seriously I was braced for one of the worst exams of my life after those short q's and then along came that beaut of a lantern. I have never loved pythagoras' theorem so much. I actually love sin and cos graphs so I was in my element with that port question (even with a shneaky bit of differentiation thrown in). Stats has never been my favourite but even I could do the final question. With 40 minutes to spare I could go back to those impossible short questions. I was as heartbroken as anybody to find that none of the constructions or proofs we had spent so long learning off by heart came up.  I answered all of them, even though I had no clue what to do for some (the cos question anybody?) and how to do the raffle question is anybodies guess.Overall though, I'm quite pleased with that paper, especially in comparison with Paper 1.

Liam - Higher Level 

I must say, paper 2 could have gone a lot worse! I've always been a paper 1 kinda guy, owing to the fact I'm not the biggest fan of Stats, Probabilty or even the circle side of Geometry but aside from all that, I'm reasonably happy with maths.The first section was reasonably okay. There were some parts that were reasonably tricky and needed some time, such as the geometric circle question 2 or the Venn diagram in  question 5. Those things I never really had much interest to begin with so I forgot that I didn't know them... oops.The long questions. The place where even the SatNav would get confused and lost at times was actually okay! Usually Stats always put me off but this time they were quite easy. The questions were straightforward and for once... as you'd expect to see them in the textbook!I never seem to time myself for maths, it's usually a case of doing what I like first and then.... the rest. But I figured it best to get the disgusting statistics and probability out of the was as quick as possible too, even there wasn't too much of it there!It wasn't too bad, in saying that, it could've been a lot worse!

Emma - Ordinary Level 

Maths paper two was surprisingly not as bad as I thought it would be!! For a girl with little mathematical capability I flew through the easier parts and like everything the harder parts took more time similar to paper one. Although it would not be right to say that it was EASY, I found it more manageable than the past few years exam papers!! Perhaps it is being in the exam hall which makes you concentrate more than at home when you are trying to figure out difficult parts!The questions on the line, the circle and the triangle caught me because it is something I failed to revise properly, but I attempted everything. I found section b much more manageable and had severe trouble with drawing that pie chart, which took me over half an hour!! Classic pass maths.Overall my final experience with maths was positive, but I was thrilled to dump the exam papers and put the maths set away!!

Cárthach - Higher Level 

Are we the first year to have not experienced writing a theorem in an exam of higher level maths!? For the Junior Cert, we got away with it, again this year, I was delighted! (I'm sorry for those who had it learned and depended on it, but I won't complain)!I felt the paper was tricky, but luckily, the project maths element came through, with fairly practical questions being the longest and awarded most marks, but with a few short 25m two part questions. The hardest for me were surely the Probability and Statistics questions, but the trigonometry suited me, so I think there was something in it for everyone, but I wouldn't say it was easy!It relied a lot on all aspects of the course(s) coming together. Overall, I'm hoping I passed, no guarantee, but it could have been worse, much worse! That was the last of the exams I was worried about, I must say, people make this whole craic out to be much worse than it is, if an exam goes wrong, which it can and does happen, it's not the end of the world, just focus on getting back on track for the rest of the exams! Best of luck with the rest of the exams! (:

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.Zeminar is an event for Generation Z, particularly those aged between 15 and 19, and their parents, teachers, mentors and coaches. It will take place from 11th - 13th of October 2016. For more information see www.zeminar.ie