I would assume your day the surfing edition was the rainbow one not the blue glossy one. Hurts the eyes...I started off my Year 12 by writing my own syllabus dot points (which were really awesome and colourful).
Eventually I got lazy and started using other people's.
Eventually I got even lazier and started using the Surfing series, which just spoon feeds you everything.
Plus, I like the cover (it's so fabulous).
Yeah, writing syllabus notes for maths doesn't work. The maths syllabus isn't like the ones for science. Like SunnyScience said, answer as many questions as you can for each topic, get your teeth sunk into some past papers, and get some real difficult questions in there too just to test your level of understanding. But writing up a big list of formulas is critical. Learn to love them, learn to live themFor maths, i would think its just more important to do questions for every topic, rather then making syllabus notes, although it could be a good idea to make notes on all the formulas you need etc.