New HSC Mathematics Advanced: What’s Changed?

Starting from 2020, the state moves into the first HSC of the new syllabus for advanced and extension maths after using the old syllabus for more than 20 years. As you are the very first group of students to experience the new syllabus HSC, there is limited practice material that specifically targets the new syllabus. This blog will delineate all of the syllabus changes to help you select appropriate practice questions from past papers as you prepare for the new exam.

WHAT’S OUT?

• Coordinate methods in geometry
• Plane geometry
• Applications of calculus to the physical world
• Simpson’s rule
• Locus of a parabola

WHAT’S IN?

• Discrete random variables and probability distributions
• Data representations and summary statistics
• Bivariate data analysis
• Continuous random variables and normal distribution
• HEAVY EMPHASIS on graphical representations, transformations and modelling real-world contexts

In Advanced Maths, geometry has taken the biggest hit – good news for those who find coordinate geometry a little tricky. It’s likely that this is because of the few geometry topics in university maths.The new topics lie mainly in statistics, which is very useful and practical content. Mathematical modelling is widely used in many fields: consider the current coronavirus pandemic – all the research underway relies heavily on data and statistics to work out key features of the virus, such as its incubation period, fatality rate or reproductive number.

Another thing worth mentioning is that there is A LOT more content based on function sketching, including their transformations. We suggest that you summarise a variety of different types of functions in your notes. Once you learn a new type of function, summarise its general form and basic graph and also note the visual effects of changing the different parameters of the function. Also, remember to label the axis and critical points on your graph when you finish sketching the curve (HSC guidelines allocate marks to these).

Hope this can help you in your learning!

Get in touch if you’re looking for tailored support for Maths – we’ve got a range of resources that are specially designed for the new syllabus, so that you don’t have to do dig around yourself.