Hola amigos!! You’ve probably heard the rumours….maths is finally recognised as an artform; the beautiful bundle of complexities it is and going to be made a little more integral and possibly even compulsory in future, huh?

Good – it’s about time they elevate maths onto it’s rightful place on the pedestal and crown it as a subject of royalty. Maths is an ARTFORM – and just like how we should value backstage technicians working behind the scenes during a performance, we should also give credit to our brains when encountering a problem solving with a healthy dose of pronumerals and a side salad of geometrical proving for their hard work behind the scenes. Now, by the time, you’ve finished reading that second sentence you’re either:

Throughly disgusted with me – because you’ve officially declared war against the subject since you were out of the womb.
Amused, but agreeing with me – because you also see the beauty of numbers…and the pronumerals, exclamation marks and other symbolic knick-knacks that humans for some reason decided to throw into the mix but hey, you’re not complaining
You couldn’t care less about it and can only think about food or technology (Fair enough).

Whatever your mindset though, the reality is that Maths will be an important asset not only in your life, but has a higher chance of being made compulsory in the higher years. In high school academics, most of the marks (as you should know by now) reside in the working out – I cannot emphasize just how important it is. So, let’s dive into a couple of basic tips:

Mind your equal signs!

Ensure they are lined down vertically – your pen should be playing commander and forcing them to remain in straight military rows. This helps you score the perfect marks that the answer won’t give you. Also, THAT is also how you make yourself feel better about the room you neglected to clean. Transfer your mindset onto the paper and complete your cleaning duties through the language of maths.

Don’t forget to chuck in plenty of those famous ‘therefore’ symbols

One thing that’s important to understand is just because it’s math, it doesn’t mean you have to express everything in numbers and call it sufficient. One thing I love so much about maths is that when you think of a question, you connect several dots in your brain at lightning speed already and it’s so difficult to explain through words sometimes what your brain have just done by instinct. Amazing. Anyways, I digress. My point is, when something is not extremely clear, MAKE it clear by writing normal English! It’ll be just a sentence – what’s there to be afraid of? You’re not writing an essay, unlike SOME subjects…

Make sure your graphs are at LEAST of a page

ALL of the following must be labelled:

* ALL intercepts

* ALL intersections

* X- axis and Y-axis

* Arrowheads

* The origin

* Important bits e.g turning points, vertex of a parabola

With graphs, teachers and NESA markers can be rather pedantic. And since the HSC requires you to draw graphs in pen, use pencil first to draw it before tracing it over with pen. However, I strongly suggest getting closely acquainted with graphs so that you’re confident enough to launch ahead and avoid wasting time.

I hated math when I was young, I admit. It was downright awful, especially when I found out that not only does math consist of numbers, but they had the nerve to mingle it with letters (which I now fondly know as pronumerals – you know, the famous x and y – and no, my lovely fellow science peeps, I’m not talking about chromosomes for once) to create a monstrosity known as algebra and problem solving. But now, it’s therapeutic! Maybe you’d walk down a similar path to me!

Good luck guys!!