<p>Does anyone else fine the Trig in the Barron's book to be kind of hard and unhelpful?? </p>
<p>On the test are they going to do a bunch on radians and sector lengths/arcs or will it be more like the law of sines and the law of cosines??</p>
<p>It's kind of freaking me out because I for some reason don't have that much trig background. </p>
<p>Will knowing stuff like polar coordinates and all the laws be enough, or is it like hardcore thinking trig on the test?</p>
<p>First of all radians are a must! While there may not be too many questions requiring radians I’m sort of skeptical about whether or not you have the Trig background in order to do well. Radians are like the first thing they teach in pre-cal and are very very easy. Also sectors, and arc lengths are very standard questions, although Barron’s are a tad harder. You should also know the double, half, addition, subtraction angle formulas, confuction, and Pythagorean identities, and (maybe Heron’s Formula?). Also I’ve heard they like to use problems with angles of depression (look at CB’s sample problem in their Math I/II book) so it might be useful to know how to do those as well. Usually there is between 8-10 Trig questions so you should definitely make sure you’re feeling confident about it before taking the test. Polar Coordinates, Parametric Equations, etc usually only appear periodically on the test - so don’t worry too much about them, but they’re pretty easy to do, so if you know how it could get you some extra points.</p>
<p>I am finished with every single math class in high school plus AP Statistics. I happened to transfer school districts (actually states) during my pre-calc education. So there’s some stuff missing and some overlap in what I learned. This is probably why basic trig is more difficult while polar coordinates and parametric equations are okay for me. Not sure how that works.</p>
<p>Nobody taught me radians, they just started talking about it in class one day at my new school and I was like, “hmmm… I did not learn this…” I think Barron’s is confusing me more. Will the trig questions on the actual exam be like Barron’s??</p>
<p>Well Barron’s is harder, there is no doubt about that. However you could see questions similar to Barron’s at the end of the test. That being said CB’s trig questions tend to be pretty easy, however if you don’t understand radians…</p>
<p>lol I understand them. Never learned them, so I was just wondering if there’s going to be really difficult trig later one. Barron’s had some weird questions though.</p>
<p>Are you talking about the ones in the review or the ones in the back? I thought the review section was much, much more difficult than the model tests they give except for the triangle questions, which required trig knowledge. Although I haven’t taken the real thing yet, I have a feeling the questions on the real test will not be as difficult. However, I would classify them as more time consuming than difficult, since the reason I didn’t get to answer them all was that they consistently took me a good 3-4 minutes each punching everything into my calculator to figure everything out. However, besides that, I don’t really recall any trig problems that couldn’t be solved in under a minute. Maybe you should familiarize yourself with radians?</p>
<p>I’m talking about the review questions, not the practice tests.</p>
<p>Well, then there’s nothing to worry about. The review is twice as difficult as the tests, which are (apparently) significantly harder than the actual test.</p>
<p>Yeah, and I’m probably sucking at it a lot more b/c I absolutely cannot focus. I feel like, “hey it’s math, either I get it or I don’t.”</p>