Craig Barton’s podcast, Episode 11: University transition and oral assessments with Paola Iannone, examines the transition to university mathematics and the potential power of oral assessments. I note from Craig that Paola Iannone’s Big 3 includes Kevin Houston’s blog. Also from Kevin Houston, see his ‘How not to get a good mathematics degree‘ and ‘How to get a good mathematics degree‘, and a pdf file you can download: 10 Ways to Think Like a Mathematician.
You can download a free pdf copy of Stephen Siklos’ Advanced Problems in Mathematics. Whilst written to support students taking STEP examination papers, Advanced Problems in Mathematics is excellent preparation for any undergraduate mathematics course.
Following each question, you will find a discussion and a full solution. The clear Contents page lists all 75 problems.
Further Resources
- Recommended Mathematics reading from the University of Oxford (scroll right down the page).
- Nrich – Prepare for university
- Loughborough University – Developing your mathematical skills
- Open University Courses (free)
- Underground Mathematics
The Helm Project
If you have not come across the HELM Project before, the project was designed to support the mathematical education of engineering students and includes an extensive collection of notes which include very clear worked examples. Whilst the workbooks cover the basic engineering mathematics and statistics teaching for first and second year students in a typical UK undergraduate engineering degree many of the workbooks include content appropriate for A Level Mathematics and particularly, Further Mathematics. For easy access to these resources, the HELM Project Workbooks are hosted by Loughborough University’s Mathematics Learning Support Centre. Alternatively, the complete set is hosted by the Open University. To access the Open University resources you will need to create an account (easy and free), this will also give you access to the numerous free online courses.
Looking at Loughborough University’s Mathematics Learning Support Centre as well as providing access to the workbooks, we can additionally read about the past, present and future of the resources and see the details of the HELM consortium members and their roles.
You will see from Loughborough’s description that each workbook varies in length from 25 pages to 75 pages (average 50 pages), and includes Mathematics (and Statistics) for engineering simply explained, worked examples, tasks and exercises with answers provided. Note the last workbooks in the series, Workbook 49 is a Student’s Guide and Workbook 50 a Tutor’s Guide.
The Student guide includes a description of the format of the workbooks and a comprehensive list of contents.
