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STEP Support Programme

General discussion

Writing conventions - STEP II and III

6 June 2018

Hello,

My apologies for having suddenly disappeared from the forum and stopped answering, returning to school has quite messed up with my schedule.

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Negative r values in polar co-ordaintes

26 May 2018

Say r=cos2(theta). When the angle is between pi/4 and 3pi/4 r will be negative, and the same between -pi/4 and -3pi/4. However when sketching the graph on desmos, and looking at everyone else's solutions to question 4 STEP 3 1998 the graph exists in these regions. But both in my further maths a level and the markscheme for STEP 3 2015 question 3, it states that r cannot be negative. So in summary can r be negative or not?

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Year 12 preperation

9 May 2018

Hi, i'm currently in year 12 at the moment and i'm preparing for step paper 2 and 3 in the summer of 2019. The STEP website has advised me that if i am going to do step 2 and 3 in year 13, that i should start working through the foundation assignments this year. I started the foundation assignments at the end of last year and have now gotten near to the end of the foundation modules; the point where the STEP questions go beyond what i have currently learned in my a level Maths and further Maths studies.

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S2 2013 q 12 mistake possibly

8 May 2018

Part (ii) of this question implies that the denominator of E(x) is (alpha + beta). I think it should just be beta. You have to create Probability Density Functions for X and Y: they are not Poisson because not all integer outcomes are possible. They are Poisson divided by e to the minus lambda times beta (for X); and divided by e to the minus lambda times alpha (for Y). This also has consequences for the variance calculations.

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Important info about 2018 STEP exams

8 May 2018

Hi all - hope the revising is going well!

Please have a look at http://www.admissionstesting.org/for-test-takers/step/about-step/. There is some important information here about the new answer booklets being used for 2018.

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Foundation Assignment 2 Q1ii

4 May 2018

There seems to be a mistake in the mark scheme: it says (x+y)^2 when it should say (x-y)^2.
Also, even if that were correct, there is another mistake in that it says:
x(x−y)−y(x + y)−(x + y)^2 = −2y^2 , which I'm fairly sure isn't true.
Could someone please take a look at this and make any necessary changes (assuming I'm not being stupid, which is, to be fair, quite likely)

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STEP Entry deadline

23 April 2018

Just to remind you all, the deadline for "Standard entry" for STEP is 17:00 BST on Friday 27th April.

(The final deadline is on the 11th May, but you will have to pay a "late fee" if you miss this Friday's deadline!)

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Typos

19 April 2018

I'm not sure if I should report all typo I encounter, so please just tell me if I'd better stop.

In the meanwhile, here is another one : in STEP III Pure, the last sentence of page 5 is unfinished (because for this integral ---> $I_{-1}$ does not converge)

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STEP II statistics topic notes - small typo

17 April 2018

Hello,

Just to report a minor typo in STEP II Statistics topic notes : The Poisson distribution (page 2) defines P( X = r ) = f(n) instead of f(r)

Hope this helps !

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Is this method ok?

9 April 2018

For the STEP 3 complex numbers assignment q1 part 2:
$x^4+1=0\\
x^4=-1\\
x=e^{i\frac{\pi}{4}},e^{i\frac{3\pi}{4}},e^{-i\frac{\pi}{4}},e^{-i\frac{3\pi}{4}}\\$
We know all the solutions satisfy $x^n=1$, so taking one of them:
$(e^{i\frac{\pi}{4}})^n=1\\
e^{i\frac{n\pi}{4}}=1\\
\frac{n\pi}{4}=2k\pi\\
n=8k\\$
For k being an integer. As they are all primitive roots, we want smallest k where n is a positive integer, so taking $k=1$, we get $n=8$.
If you use the $e^{i\frac{3\pi}{4}}$ solution instead we get:

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Useful Links

Underground Mathematics: Selected worked STEP questions

STEP Question database

University of Cambridge Mathematics Faculty: What do we look for?

University of Cambridge Mathematics Faculty: Information about STEP

University of Cambridge Admissions Office: Undergraduate course information for Mathematics

Stephen Siklos' "Advanced Problems in Mathematics" book (external link)

MEI: Worked solutions to STEP questions (external link)

OCR: Exam board information about STEP (external link)