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I wasn't quite sure if this was the best place for this question.

If faced with a maths exam where you can choose the questions you do, how do you approach which ones to pick?

  1. Difficulty (any particular parts which look hard)?
  2. Length of question?
  3. Being able to show off with topics you know inside out?

I'm interested to see what "frameworks" people have.

Git Gud
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Brian
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    I don't have anything against list-type questions, but in this case I'm worried that there aren't any objective enough criteria to judge whether one approach is better than another, so we'll end up with 45 answers that all amount to "this is what I like", most of which are probably just going to be slight variations on one another. – Jack M May 18 '14 at 13:17
  • Jack M, of course there won't be an objective answer. I think it's interesting to see what different things people do? (The list isn't a set of questions, but rather an example of what people might think when assessing which questions to do) – Brian May 18 '14 at 13:19
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    For exams where I knew I could do all the questions or more than I would need, I picked the first question I knew I could do quickly, and went from there. For tougher exams, the rule was read all the questions first, and pick a question I have a good idea about. – Mark Bennet May 18 '14 at 13:21
  • In a university or school exam, you should read the whole test before starting on the problems. – Sam Nead May 18 '14 at 18:07

2 Answers2

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Mabye this isn't exactly what you asked, I can tell you my experience with math olympiad tests like the imo(I didn't go to the imo though),which are exams consisting of 3 questions and 4.5 hours total. What I would do is give half an hour to each quesion first. And once I had a grasp of all of them I would proceed to do the first question (which I would probably manage to do). after that I would do the question 2 or 3 that I felt I had advanced the most during the previous 30 minutes. And if I got that one right I would head on to the remaining question.

Asinomás
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I always try to do the tasks first which I am pretty sure I can manage. If I have the feeling that I collected enough points that it is rather sure that I pass the exam then I try to solve tasks which seem to be more difficult and therefore probably give more points.

I think this is the right stategy in order not to become discouraged.