Higher Applications of Mathematics

Course Overview

The Higher Mathematics Application course is a new course starting in 2024/25 at MGS. Building on skills built in National 5 Maths Applications students develop students' financial literacy in real-life contexts, show students how they can use appropriate digital technology to manipulate and model mathematical, build arguments, assess risk, and make informed decisions in familiar and unfamiliar situations.

Students can use skills built in this course in other areas of study example being;

using data on the Arctic Sea ice extent (total area) to predict the trend in area for the next several years to link with a geography topic
using t-tests to determine if there is a statistically significant difference in the number of watts of power produced by different solar panels to link with a physics topic
exploring how practical tasks can be managed and organised using a Gantt chart to link with a technologies topic.

Course Assessment

Assessment for this course consists of one external exam during the SQA exam diet as well as a project completed throughout the school year.

Question Paper (calculator) worth 65 marks and lasting 2 hours and 5 minutes.
Project worth 30 marks with 8 hours of teaching time allocated throughout different parts of the year.

Entry Expectations and Progression

The Higher Applications of Mathematics course builds upon knowledge previously obtained throughout a pupil's time at school. Any pupil wishing to undertake the course should have already achieved their National 5 Applications of Mathematics or National 5 Maths qualification.

There is no progression to Advanced Higher Maths from this course however there is a progression to Advanced Higher Statistics (not currently offered at MGS).

Course Content

The Higher Mathematics Applications course consists of four overarching topics:

Mathematical Modelling
Statistics and Probability
Finance
Planning and Decision making

Pupils will study the following within these topics:

Mathematical Modelling

Modelling different situations using graphs, formulae and charts
Evaluating the impact of tolerance on models
Interpreting outputs
using mathematical software effectively to sort, present and edit data.

Statistics and Probability

Tree Diagrams
Venn Diagrams
Understanding types of data
Population and samples
Outliers
Statistical Diagrams
Distributions of data
Measures of location and dispersion
Correlation and Regression
Hypothesis testing

Finance

Interest Calculations
Credit Cards and Loans
Saving Products - risks involved as well as saving to a goal (pension)
Insurance Products
Taxation
Inflation and purchasing powers
Borrowing
Financial planning strategies

Planning and Decision making

PERT charts and critical paths
Gantt charts
Risk and expected costs

Home Learning

Homework is set fortnightly to allow students to recap key ideas in class. This is set online on Google Classroom. There are other useful resources on Google Classroom.

Independent Practise can be found on the Achieve platform linked below. At least an hour of independent work is expected each week using either online resources or textbooks uploaded onto Google Classroom below.