The first question

Part 1

Paper 2 has no parts, so you choose the method

Both papers give you the same 90 minutes, the same scientific calculator and the same formula book. What changes is how much help the question gives you.

The table describes 2021 to 2025. In 2020 Paper 1 had 11 short-response questions for 45 marks (60 in all) and Paper 2 was worth 40 marks.

In Paper 1 the parts of a question walk you through it. In Paper 2 nobody tells you which technique to use or the order of the steps. The first question in Part 2 does that job. Run it on every question in both papers, so that it is automatic by the time you reach Paper 2.

Part 2

Work down the list and stop at the first yes

The order matters. Each question catches something that would otherwise be caught wrongly further down. A table of travel times between islands has two columns of numbers, but it is a network. A latitude in a data table is just a variable. Ask in this order, and the first yes is the game plan you open.

“Joined” does not need a drawing

Questions 1 and 2 are about the situation. A network can arrive as a table of activities and what must be finished before each one, a table of costs or times between two groups, a written description of what connects to what, or a list of places you are expected to join up yourself.

Paper 2 has given a table of tasks (2020 Question 6, 2024 Question 4), of road lengths (2022 Question 4), of travel times (2024 Question 2) or of pipe flow rates (2025 Question 3) and expected you to draw the network yourself. 2024 Question 5 gave a distance table with two entries to build from coordinates. If things have to be connected, scheduled or allocated, you are in Game plan 6 or Game plan 7 whether or not anything has been drawn for you.

Game plans 3 and 5 overlap on money

Compound interest is a geometric sequence and simple interest is an arithmetic one, so a money question can sit in either game plan. The words “recurrence relation” do not decide it, because both game plans use them. Decide on what the question is about.

• •You are given an interest rate per period, and the question is about a compound interest investment or loan, a loan balance, a repayment, an annuity or a perpetuity. That is Game plan 5. Set up the recurrence or the formula there, then finish with the formula from the formula book or by iterating the recurrence.
• •Dollars grow or depreciate by a ratio or a difference you have to find, as in the two investment models of 2021 Paper 2 Question 4 or the vehicle value of 2025 Paper 2 Question 2. That is Game plan 3. Simple interest is an arithmetic sequence, so it goes there too.
• •Money with no interest at all, such as a song paid 0.175 cents a play (2021 Paper 2 Question 7), is a sequence question with a unit conversion. That is Game plan 3.

Some Paper 2 questions need two game plans

A Paper 2 question often joins two ideas, and sometimes they come from two game plans, as in 2023 Question 5 and 2024 Question 5. Answer the first question to find the game plan that frames the answer, then run the list again on what is left. Game plan 8, Part 2 lists the Paper 2 questions that have joined topics, with the game plans each one needs.

Part 3

Before you write anything, know the conventions that hold in every question

These apply in both papers and in every topic. Most of them come from what the subject reports ask teachers to practise, and the marking guides reward them.

Symbols and models

1. 1Use the question’s own symbols. If the stem defines $n$ as weeks and $t$ as temperature, your model uses $n$ and $t$. The 2022 subject report asks for exactly this: use the given symbols if the question defines them, otherwise define your own.
2. 2Define your variables in one line before you use them. The marking guides accept other letters when you define them (“Accept alternative variables, e.g. t and P”, 2021).
3. 3Name the model in words before you substitute. In 2021 Paper 1 Question 20, two of the four marks were for naming the model and identifying $t_1$, $d$ and $n$, before any arithmetic. Finance guides often give a mark for identifying $i$ and $n$, and that mark can be implied by your later working.

Accuracy, rounding and units

1. 4Carry full accuracy through the middle. The 2022 subject report asks you to work “without early rounding”. Keep the calculator value and round once, at the end.
2. 5Rounding is set by the question. Money: round to the cent as you iterate a recurrence, and round the final answer as the question directs, which is the nearest cent unless it says otherwise. A number-of-periods answer is the first whole period that reaches the target.
3. 6Write the unit on every final answer. Run a unit sweep: two different units in the stem means a conversion is needed. Check which unit the answer should be in.
4. 7Round sensibly in context. Birds and people come in whole numbers. Say that you have rounded and why.

Finishing the answer

1. 8Answer the question actually asked. Additional, difference and total are different quantities. Minimum time, float, critical activities and staffing are four different questions. Reread the last line of the stem before you write the last line of your answer.
2. 9Follow-through marks exist. “Use your result from Question 19a)” signals them, but follow-through is allowed in most multi-step questions even without that wording. A wrong earlier value used correctly still scores, so never leave a later part blank.
3. 10Cancel a mistake the way the paper asks. Rule a single diagonal line through the work and use the additional response space. The instructions on every paper say so.

When a question asks you to evaluate a claim, give advice or justify a decision, finish with calculate, compare, conclude.