Math HL students - Do you find this easy?

[rawan1408]

Im currently in pre ib grade 10 and planning to go into Math HL next year and there's a math competition that I'm doing tomorrow. I was looking at past contests and doing them for practice, but i find them kinda hard which makes me rethink my decision to do math HL. 

So for the people that are in Math HL, please take a look at the questions and tell me whether you find them easy or not. http://www.cemc.uwaterloo.ca/contests/past_contests/2015/2015CayleyContest.pdf

Ones at the beginning are easy but take a look at the last few. 

 

Will I be able to get better at the kind of questions in math HL?

I'm in the IB prep math class and I'm not struggling at all and i have a 95 average.

 

[Sandy]

Hi,

 

I've taken math HL and I do find these questions easy. But that's not BECAUSE I TOOK MATH HL. We solve different type of problems for the course and these are not even there in the syllabus. Its an exam for grade 10 so they haven't really included anything that I learnt beyond that, idk about you. If you find it really difficult, you should take someone's help. Once you get used to these kind of questions, you'll be able to solve them more easily. Moreover, these are not the type of questions we are generally asked in the exam (not even in 10th) so this requires a more out of box thinking, that's what they're looking for in students.

 

Since they don't ask these kind of questions (you can check out the past papers) I can't say whether you'll be able to get better at it. This is not a school exam so they don't really stick to the syllabus like the school exams do. Like I said before, you can try to understand the questions with someone's help and then you'll be able to answer them more easily. I hope this was helpful. Good luck for the exam!

[kw0573]

This series of contests by Waterloo places a lot more emphasis in geometry and pattern recognition than IB does. The Euler contest, which I attempted once, is somewhat more related to IB but it still has geometry proof questions that IB will never ask. However IB also put questions where the easy ones are ultra easy but the hard ones are very difficult.

Cayley 2015
Q21. Not on IB because it's much below the level. I don't think any questions below 21 have a decent chance of showing up due to their simplicity of level of math, but I admit sometimes setting up the question is hard but IB is less focused on that
Q22. No apparent IB content. This is about pure problem solving and very little advanced math (like calculus or something). 
Q23. IB will find a more straightforward way of testing the concept, such as using a diagram for aid, because English is not the first language for many HL Math candidates.
Q24. Maybe on IB. Perhaps IB will put an easier version of this as a medium-difficulty question (eg 7 marks out of the paper that is 120 marks, right now it looks like 11-13 marks.). This original question won't be the hardest question on the exam because it only tests combinatorics but if you know the trick it is not very very difficult. Questions like these one-topic ones don't get hints which is also why an easier version of this might appear.
Q25. A very small chance it's on an IB exam. IB loves questions that uses multiple topics; which this question may be but it's quite subtle. For a grade 10 this may be solved with a lot of number crunching and algebra and number theory, but IB will drop some hints along the way to let you use vectors and/or calculus (hence multiple topics). Number theory, for the most part, will not show up at all on the exam.

This series of contests may prep you well for probability and combinatorics, but close to zero on all the other topics, eg trig, complex numbers, calculus etc. As opposed to these contests, IB will drop tons of hints to help you score part marks in the hardest questions.