EE Final Reflection

I have already mentioned how a big challenge for me was the lack of literature on my topic. However, now, looking back, I feel that I am grateful for this since it gave me the opportunity to truly understand a piece of math and make it my own by proving the methods and properties of natural osculators myself, instead of simply regurgitating information from the internet. Even though it was frustrating at times – I spent more than 2 weeks on a single proof – the satisfaction derived from seeing the property proved rigorously made it all worth it. I doubt I would have obtained the same level of satisfaction if I had chosen something not as interesting to me or if I hadn’t engaged with the content as much, even if it would have been easier. Moreover, this was particularly exciting for me since I have always loved mental math and doing computations mentally, and finding and proving such a generalized divisibility test was definitely a highlight for me.

EE Interim Reflection

Because the topic I chose was not a very common topic in Math, there were very few resources available. My main source was a book I read about Vedic Mathematics, but this book used pretty complicated language and was not easy to follow. This made it pretty tricky for me. Since my goal was to make this method accessible to the general public, I had to ensure that I could explain this in a simple manner. This would be best achieved by using simple terminology and setting up the proofs with examples and by outlining every small step, which is what my plan was. Also, the book itself did not have any of the proofs, and I had to come up with all of them myself. This experience was beneficial since it gave me a taste of more abstract and advanced mathematics, which would hold me in good stead for university math.

HL Math – Looking Back

HL math felt slightly easier than I expected it to be this year, and most of the concepts were easy to grasp and understand. Even though there were a few tricky ideas, I was able to understand these by looking at questions and building my confidence by solving more questions. One challenge for me was presenting my work with all the steps in a concise manner, since my working was often messy. I tried improving on this by forcing myself to write down every small step when solving a question, to ensure that there was a flow to the answer.

 

I think that one strategy that worked for me was approaching a problem in different ways. Often, if I came across a difficult problem or a problem with a lot of steps, I tried looking at it from a different angle and solving it in another manner. This was helpful since it gave me a better idea of how to approach problems, which helped me save a lot of time during tests.

 

Going forward, my plan is to solve questions methodically and with all the working, since I often make careless mistakes in tests. I feel that this can be best resolved simply by getting into the habit of solving questions carefully and writing all the steps to ensure that I do not make any simple calculation error or other such errors.