QUESTION 12:
A decent effort on a tough question. With an average mark of roughly 4.5/15, and a top score of 13/15, it is crucial to pick up any marks where necessary. The variety in topics combined with time restraints made this question difficult overall.
Q12a could only progress if the expression was multiplied by a multiple of sin(pi/2n). Students who failed to do so were unsuccessful, and those who did were likely to obtain the full marks. Well done to the student who used sigma notation, saved lots of time and was concise.
Q12b made students very easily fall into the trap of expanding the brackets and simplifying a long and difficult algebraic expression. To circumvent this, using (sin(theta))^2 + (cos(theta))^2 = 1 was the most ideal method to take, as opposed to using a right-angled triangle or otherwise.
Q12ci could have been done simply by using the result of Q12b, as the result was given. Make sure not to skip any latter parts as the question simplified nicely when using the correct components of each vector. Q12cii used the definition of the derivative so those who applied the limit were very successful in their answers. The integral in Q12ciii wasn't too difficult once making the substitution, but students must make sure to leave their answers in terms of T instead of t. No candidate received full marks in Q12civ as the path of the Cartesian equation is in fact a circle with centre (0,a) and radius a. The limiting value was performed successfully by those that attempted it.
Finally, Q12di was straightforward for most, if not all candidates, whereby some made minor computational errors. Q12dii deemed difficult for most however as the majority of candidates attempted to substitute tan(theta) into the cubic, instead of the factored quadratic result. Only very few candidates had perfect justification to which solution of theta was to match with each root; this was justified via the respective quadrants. A handful of candidates were awarded full marks for this question.