COMMON MISTAKES!

COMMON MISTAKES! Ever since IGCSEs were introduced, examiners have seen the same errors in student performance crop up year after year. Here are the 10 most common mistakes: 1 Not understanding the layout of the question. 2 Doing the wrong question. 3 Misreading the question. 4 Not understanding the meaning of key words in the question. 5 Failing to keep an answer relevant. 6 Misusing resources. 7 Not being able to use a map. 8 Lacking the knowledge to answer a question. 9 Poor level of detail in case examples. 10 Running out of time. If you study this list carefully you can see that only numbers 8 and 9 are to do with subject knowledge –the rest are all to do with the way you approach the examination paper

Formulating aims and hypotheses: Candidates should be familiar with hypotheses as statements that form the basis of Coursework assignments. The hypotheses may investigate a geographical concept e.g. ‘A CBD has the highest concentration of comparison shops’. Collecting relevant data, analysis and drawing conclusions using the data as evidence can test these. Hypothesis: A hypothesis is a prediction or statement that you make before your data collection. A hypothesis is normally based on theory. During your investigation you attempt to prove or disprove your hypothesis. A piece of coursework may have more than one hypothesis and it does not matter if you prove or disprove it. A hypothesis should always be SMART. If your hypotheses are not SMART then it can be impossible to prove or disprove them. S = Specific M = Measurable A = Achievable R = Realistic T = Time-related

Pilot study Pilot Survey: This is basically a test that you carry out before your data collection. It is very important that you test your data collection forms to ensure that you ask all the right questions and your collection forms contain all the right categories. It is too expensive and too time consuming to going and collect data a second time, if you missed it the first time.

Scatter diagrams Scatter diagrams show the relationship between two sets of variables. By looking at the diagram you can see whether there is a link between variables. Where there is a link it is called correlation.

The English and Maths results of ten classmates are shown in the table below: To see whether there is a correlation between the Maths and English marks, you could plot a scatter diagram. The Maths mark is on the horizontal scale and the corresponding English mark on the vertical scale.

Bill's Maths mark was 60 and his English mark was 65, so his results are represented by the blue point at coordinates (60, 65).

You can see that all the points representing Maths marks and English marks lie approximately along a straight line. This shows that there is a correlation between these two variables.

The table below shows the correlations that you can deduce from different patterns of scatter

Line of best fit The 'line of best fit' goes roughly through the middle of all the scatter points on a graph. The closer the points are to the line of best fit the stronger the correlation is.

Tally charts

Isolines Isolines join points of equal value on the map They are similar to contours Isolines can be drawn when the value under consideration change gradually on the map Data for a large numbers of locations is needed to make a good isoline map

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks3/maths/handling_data/representin g_data/revision/9/ http://www.slideshare.net/geographyalltheway/igcse-geography- fieldwork-data-presentation https://ih-igcse-geography.wikispaces.com/1.10.+River+Coursework