The quadratics unit was generally an easy and fun unit to learn. I was able to understand how graphs really work, and the parent function, which is the most basic form of all types of graphs. I strongly think that this unit makes everything that we have learned about graphing make sense, as we had to work with a lot of graphs. Moreover, I realized by learning this unit how the construction of buildings and bridges requires a lot more thought than I think it did.

 

              In terms of the content that we learned in this unit, I feel that most of the topics that we learned were quite quick to understand, while others took more time. Out of the three forms of a quadratic equation, vertex form, factored form and standard form that we learned, I think that vertex form was one of the easiest ones. This is because in vertex form, there were not many new concepts to learn, other than transformations and a few word problems involving vertex form, which were quite repetitive and easy. For instance, most of the word problems in vertex form were asking for the maximum value, or required to sub in values into a modeled function to solve for another unknown value. This was a concept that we already had done multiple times before in math, except that this time it was with quadratics. Whereas for transformations, I liked how there was a specific way and order of transforming parabolas, which made it easier to grasp the topic. Furthermore, standard form was also a very easy concept since in this topic, one of the biggest topics was using the quadratic formula, which was simple as we just needed to sub in a few values into a consistent formula to get the answer. Also the word problems in factored form also had similar word problems, such as finding the maximum value, except this time, the way of solving the question was different. Lastly, my least favourite unit was factored form as there was a lot to learn in this unit since there were so many different types of methods for factoring and we had to do a lot of trial and error to get to the answer. This concept was made tougher when questions that are not possible to factor were included in our homework, since it was time consuming to solve these questions as it would take so long to just confirm whether or not a question was actually not factorable.

 

              Overall, by looking at my assessments, I think I was consistent with my marks for the most part, but there were definitely times when I got lower marks. My best grades were in vertex form and standard form, since I found these topics much easier to grasp compared to factored form. In factored form, as I mentioned before, there was too many ways of solving that it was tough to know what method to use at certain times. However, I am glad that I made these mistakes now, instead of making them on the final exam, which would have caused my mark to suffer more. For the future, I know that I need to sometimes calm down and not stress so much about the result of an assessment, but rather doing the best I can, especially during TIPS. This will allow me to do better on the assessment, as I will be thinking about ding good rather than getting a good mark. Also, it would help me do better if I managed my time wisely during tests, as that will allow me to have enough time to go over my work to avoid silly mistakes.