silly mistakes (2 Viewers)

[011235]

i'm trying to focus in my trials prep on silly mistakes as they are what are costing me the most marks.

im listing down the recurring ones and thinking if my answer is reasonable - does anyone have any other tips to minimize silly mistakes?
a good number of them just occur for stupid algebra things such as writing a + instead of - or vice versa in long algebraic manipulation parts. this is most evident in things like long-winded (indefinite) integrals where its hard to check easily or differentiate back.

Is it better to spend a little bit more time going more slowly to avoid the silly mistake occuring in the first place, or improving my detection of silly mistakes when checking? (i normally have around 40 mins left after getting to the last question but not having checked)

 

[pikachu975]

I found that saying what I was writing in my head sometimes helped identify silly mistakes since I was saying it in my head... Also yeah getting it right the first time is 100% better than going back and checking imo because it's soo hard to find mistakes the second time.

 

[mmmmmmmmaaaaaaa]

Following on, spending just a little extra time on the question so that you hopefully won't make these silly mistakes will also prove to be beneficial. It seems as though you will be able to do this given the amount of time you have left

 

[Run hard@thehsc]

Honestly this might not sound useful, but often I found I made silly mistakes when I considered questions to be too easy and just did them subconsciously. By making myself more aware (based on past experience), I started to spend a couple extra seconds at every step just to ensure that I do not make silly mistakes. Also in tests where some qs are simply not doable, I ensure that I have successfully collected all the marks for the easier ones to mitigate the damage the harder ones might do...

 

[Average Boreduser]

i'm trying to focus in my trials prep on silly mistakes as they are what are costing me the most marks.

im listing down the recurring ones and thinking if my answer is reasonable - does anyone have any other tips to minimize silly mistakes?
a good number of them just occur for stupid algebra things such as writing a + instead of - or vice versa in long algebraic manipulation parts. this is most evident in things like long-winded (indefinite) integrals where its hard to check easily or differentiate back.

Is it better to spend a little bit more time going more slowly to avoid the silly mistake occuring in the first place, or improving my detection of silly mistakes when checking? (i normally have around 40 mins left after getting to the last question but not having checked)

what I did to somewhat battle silly mistakes is through rechecking answers. This may be through plugging the resulting answer into equations, plugging in different x values to verify where polynomials move, etc.