New South Wales Higher School Certificate Mathematics Extension 2
(Online since January 1, 2001)
Mediocrity is something you can buy. Excellence is something you can download from the internet for free!
November 9, 2009
Peter Sullivan's Keynote presentation on the national curriculum at the 2009 MANSW Conference:
Towards an Australian Curriculum
October 28, 2009
The website http://www.angelfire.com/ab7/fourunit/index.html has been updated with links to solutions to the HSC exams from 2009.
Also, a new website 4unitmaths.com has been created to now have 200 papers. Don't confuse this with fourunitmaths.com which is just a simple redirect to this website.
September 28, 2009
Submission for the National Curriculum in the Senior Secondary Years Position Paper
September 22, 2009
Video of Structure and Randomness in the Prime Numbers lecture at ANU given by Terry Tao
MP4 file: http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/tv/fora/anu_terrytao_full.mp4
September 16, 2009
Terry Tao's public lecture at UNSW
August 24, 2009
All that effort adds up to a gold medal - SMH article on Sampson Wong
August 20, 2009
Senior Secondary Years Curriculum Position Paper (Submissions due September 30, 2009)
July 19, 2009
Terry Tao's lecture he gave at the 2009 IMO
July 16, 2009
Congratulations to the Australian team's Andrew Elvey Price and Sampson Wong for their Golds, Aaron Chong for his Silver, Stacey Law and Alfred Liang for their Bronzes and Dana Ma for her Honourable Mention!
July 9, 2009
Elementary proof of the probability integral
Although 4 unit students can understand it, many from other states won't be able to understand it.
ACARA are creating a mess. They are deliberately keeping everything as vague as possible. Also, they are often contradicting themselves. It's becoming a farce.
The BOS said their syllabus is to be implemented in 2010. Now they are saying to use the old syllabus in 2010.
ACARA are saying theirs is for implementation in 2011. But with a 1-year-in-schools-first rule, coupled with the fact the national syllabus won't be ready till the middle of 2010, it is clear it won't be implemented in 2011.
Some have suggested this farce has gone on long enough and have said a new syllabus from the BOS or ACARA will never be implemented.
All we are getting is constant vagueness, contradictions and delays.
June 3, 2009
The NCB have been replaced by ACARA which extends their influence from strictly only curriculum to also now include assessment and reporting, in accordance with the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Act, 2008. Their new website is www.acara.edu.auMay 6, 2009
The NCB have released the updated shape paper for mathematics and consultation report today.
March 31, 2009
More Delays
The decision taken at the last Board of Studies meeting on March 31 regarding the implementation of new Stage 6 Maths curriculum is as follows.
The Board of Studies agreed:
(i) to endorse the Stage 6 Mathematics syllabuses.
(ii) to advise the Minister not to approve the Stage 6 Mathematics syllabuses for implementation at this time pending the outcomes of the national curriculum development.
(iii) that the Board use the Stage 6 Mathematics syllabuses as the basis of its advice to the National Curriculum Board concerning the national syllabuses.
(iv) that the issue be revisited at its December 2009 meeting to consider progress of the national Stage 6 Mathematics syllabus.
The Office of the Board wanted to hold off implementation indefinitely, pending National Curriculum development, however the teacher reps on the Board opposed this because: The current syllabuses were not reviewed in 1996 as others were and are therefore dated; the new syllabuses are ready and teachers want them – especially new courses; it is unknown when the National Curriculum will be implemented, especially in stage 6.
The result of the debate was that the Board decided to review the decision to implement in December.
March 19, 2009
Correction to Proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.
In line 7 on page 495 on older versions of the online pdf file, 
should be replaced with 
The file http://users.tpg.com.au/nanahcub/flt.pdf has now been corrected.
It is glaringly obvious, but for some reason has eluded everyone for the 15 years it's been on the net till now!
I thank Andrew Morrow for bringing this to my attention.
February 26, 2009
Submission for the National Mathematics Curriculum Framing Paper
January 1, 2009
The Delay.
The Syllabus was due for release December 2008.
Due to confusion in the Drafts, Bill Pender said in his submission that the only reasonable thing to do is to delay the release of the Syllabus. But of course the Board of Studies in their unreasonableness decided to not delay it. That is, until the Minister told them to delay it. So it will now be delayed.
Practice papers
Teaching Resources
Barbarians at the Helm, by Derek Buchanan
How NOT to find the surface area of revolution, by Derek Buchanan
Terry Tao's Powerpoint presentation at Sydney University, February 7, 2008
Hard Problems on youtube. This is a trailer of a new movie released on January 8, 2008 about the 2006 IMO.
Johan Wastlund's Elementary Proof of the Wallis Product Formula for pi
Yet another proof of the irrationality of e
Alf van der Poorten's 28 online Number Theory lectures (28 mp4's)
Professional mathematics versus amateur mathematics
Syllabus (from boredofstudies server)
Submission for Stage 6 Syllabus Review
New Topics for the Draft Writing Brief and Writing Brief
Extract of Response to the Draft Writing Brief
Sample HSC Questions for the Draft Syllabus
Mathematics Extension 1 website
A new Mersenne prime, 243,112,609-1 has been found on August 23, 2008 on Edson Smith's computer and is the largest known prime to date and has 12,978,189 digits 316,470,269,...,511 which you can download at http://prime.isthe.com/no.index/chongo/merdigit/long-m43112609/prime-c.html It is the first discovery of a prime with more than 10,000,000 digits and hence the $100,000 prize can thus be claimed. There is another prize for the first discovery of a prime with more than 100,000,000 digits for $150,000. More info on these prizes are at http://www.eff.org/awards/coop More info on this discovery is at http://www.mersenne.org
Also, on Monday, Jan. 15, 2007 the largest known twin primes were found by Eric Vautier. They are 2003663613x2195000±1 both of which have 58711 digits, the smaller of which is at http://users.tpg.com.au/nanahcub/LargestTwinPrime15-1-2007.txt. Add 2 for the larger one (i.e., replace the last digit, 7, by 9).
Summary of the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem
Online videos on Fermat's Last Theorem: uktv ; msri
Bill Pender's Harder 3 unit inservice
English translation of Hilbert's radio address
International Mathematical Olympiads 1959-2003
International Mathematical Olympiad, 2004, Athens, Greece
International Mathematical Olympiad, 2005, Merida, Mexico
2008 IMO and YouTube of Australian Team for the 2008 IMO
1916 LC, 1989 HSC and 2001 HSC
Another proof of the irrationality of e
Alternative solution to 2003 HSC Q3(a)(iv)The General Conic and Dandelin Spheres
Proof of the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra
University Mathematics
Proof of Fermat's Last Theorem
Proof of the Taniyama-Shimura-Weil Conjecture
Proof of Poincare conjecture - part 1
Proof of Poincare conjecture - part 2
Proof of Poincare conjecture - part 3
The Riemann Hypothesis - Part 1
The Riemann Hypothesis - Part 2
Lagarias Equivalence to the Riemann Hypothesis
Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture
Other websites
MonkeyTeX - an online LaTeX editor - one that doesn't require anything to be installed. Too many philistines are using Word. They should stop being philistines and start using LaTeX. If monkeys can do it, why can't you?
Valentin Vornicu's Mathlinks forum
Higher School Certificate Online
The American Mathematical Society
Last modified on November 9, 2009 by
Derek Robert Buchanan
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Copyleft: Derek Robert Buchanan, 2001
