IB Math AI Paper 2 - Navigate to Success
After finishing your Paper 1 exam in Mathematics Applications and Interpretations, you will have to face the second math exam - Paper 2. You are still allowed to use your graphic display calculator while completing the examination, however you can expect the questions to be more complex and expect a more in-depth approach than what you have previously seen in the Paper 1 examination.
Struggling to prepare for your IB Math AI Paper 2? Our expert IB tutors can help you master exam techniques, understand mark schemes, and boost your score with confidence.
Time and worth
For SL students, the allocated time to write the exam is 1 hour and 30 minutes. The maximum number of points you can score is 80, and the exam grade contributes to 40% of your final grade for the mathematics course.
For HL students, you are given 2 hours to complete the 110-point exam. It will account for 30% of your final course grade. The remaining percentages for both SL and HL students are allocated between any other exams and your mathematical exploration - the Internal Assessment.
Contrary to Paper 1, you do not have the points distributed throughout 10-14 questions, but many fewer. Here, you can expect the questions to contain many sub-questions, each one following what was asked of you in the previous ones. For SL students, this paper typically consists of 5 long-answer questions, while for HL students, it consists of 8.
For students following the course at a Higher Level, this exam is likely to cover HL-only syllabus content.
The purpose of paper 2 is to test your abilities in problem-solving and applying the theoretical concepts discussed during classes, therefore, you should be familiar with both the SL and HL parts of the Math AI syllabus.
You can expect the exam to ask you about matrices, complex numbers, graph transformations, vectors, nonlinear regression, Poisson distribution and in-depth kinematic problems. Of course, you may still be asked SL-based sub-questions, however, you should expect a progression in difficulty as you keep solving further problems.
General exam tips
As obvious and cliché as it may be, the best way to prepare is to solve as many past paper problems as possible.
First, make sure that you are familiar with the entire syllabus of the Mathematics Applications and Interpretations course, as well as how you are supposed to utilise your GDC in every topic discussed. When you feel ready and comfortable with all or most of the subjects covered, it is time to test your skills in paper-style questions.
To make the attempt as close to a real exam as possible, it is recommended that you print a past paper exam, find a quiet spot, set a timer on your phone or watch, then silence any notifications and try to complete the exam in the allotted time (as above, 1 hour and 30 minutes for SL and 2 hours for HL). When the timer goes off, make a small summary of how you did. You can, for example, ask yourself the following questions:
Did you struggle with any specific topics?
Was there a problem with understanding what the question wants from you?
Did you get stuck on any of the (sub)questions and didn’t find enough time to approach the remaining ones?
Was there a moment when you didn’t know how to use your calculator to find a final solution to a question?
Although it may be uncomfortable to point out your mistakes or what aspects you may be lacking in, there is no better way to fix these issues than by being aware of them and targeting them during practice. Try to go over your answers with a mark scheme and check how many points you have scored. This will ensure that you will know where you might need to improve, in order to do your best in the actual final exam, whether it will be paper 1, 2 or 3.
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Keep in mind that IB expects you to write your answers in a clear and precise way. Unless stated otherwise in the question, all of your final answers should be given to three significant figures.
Keep in mind that there is a difference between significant figures and decimal places; make sure that you know what these terms mean and what that means for the notation of your final answers.
Similarly, you may encounter trigonometry questions where you are supposed to work out an angle - if all of the data provided uses degrees, then your answer should be provided in degrees as well. If you find it easier to complete the calculations using radians, you will not be penalised for doing so.
Do keep in mind that you will later have to convert your final answer into degrees. Not doing any of the above may cost you a lot of points, which later could have increased your final grade for the Math AI course.
Similar to paper 1, you will have the same formula booklet provided to accompany you during the exam. It is there for a reason, so make sure that you are familiar with its contents before you enter the exam hall.
When practicing past paper-style questions, make sure that you have the booklet nearby and put the formulas it contains into practice. This way, you will know where you can find a specific formula and will not spend much time leafing through the booklet, checking whether it even contains a formula you need to use.
Since the Math AI exams all require the use of a calculator, make sure that you are familiar with how that can work to your advantage.
Before you enter the exam hall, take your time in getting to know what your calculator can do for you, as well as where to find all of the options and modes. You have to know how to graph functions and their derivatives, find their minima and maxima points, areas under the curves (definite integration), enter datasets into lists, calculate Pearson and Spearman coefficients, complete t-tests, find probabilities for both normal and binomial distributions, as well as many more.
It may sometimes be difficult to figure these out on your own, therefore, our tutors are here to provide guidance to help you clear up any doubts when using the calculator. IB allows for many models of calculators, and each of them is slightly different from the other; therefore, make sure that you know how to use the model you have at home.
Oftentimes, the first one or two sub-questions are considered as ‘free points’. Whenever you see a question starting with the words ‘write down’, then the answer to the question is either something you have already found, or it is given directly in the text of the question - you are only asked to interpret the number a certain way.
IB questions never provide unnecessary information; therefore, make sure that you utilise every piece of data or detail stated in the problem. If you find yourself confused by the amount of information provided in the question, try to declutter it. Write down what you are given clearly and concisely. If there is no drawing provided, make one yourself and mark all of the details given. This will help you visualise the problem at hand and make it easier to see what is needed to find the expected final solution.
If you are going over your final answers before giving away the exam and find that you have made a mistake at the beginning of a question, do not cross the answers out!
If you ignored a negative sign somewhere or incorrectly wrote down a final answer from your calculator, not everything is lost. Many exam questions allow for follow-up marks, meaning that if your answer numerically is incorrect in part a) but the rest of your answers applied the correct formulas and showed clear understanding, then you will not be penalised for getting incorrect values in any further sub-questions. If you find yourself having enough time to redo the question, feel free to do so! If you don’t, you can rest assured you will only lose a point once for an incorrect solution.
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