How to I Start to Solve a DCG Problem?
To be successful in DCG, you need to be able to take a small amount of key knowledge and solve a problem you haven't seen before. There are some key questions you can ask yourself that will help with this.
It's often quite difficult to see the way through an entire DCG problem at the start, don't worry about this. Just go through it step by step, picking up marks as you go. Definitely don't get hung up trying to visualise the answer - this is very difficult particularly in an exam situation.
- What are the Facts and Terms & know about this problem?
- What are the Key Skills I know?
- Apply either of your key skills of facts to start
- Can I work backwards through my key skills or facts?
- How can I simplify the problem?
- Can I rotate a solid onto a standard plane to make things easier?
- Can I create an auxiliary view that simplifies the problem?
- Can find the original shape of a cut solid?
- Project what you know to another view (usually plan or elevation but can include an auxiliary)
- Work from the easy stuff towards the hard stuff - don't be afraid to park sections of the problem and then come back to them.
Exam Strategy & Timing
If you would like to lose a large amount of marks while working very hard, ignoring the time allocated for each question is probably the best method available.
A very simple guide is as follows
Someone who shows great skill and elegance on one question and who fails to answer the rest of the paper will fail. You must be brutally strategic with your time and energy.
A very simple guide is as follows
- The examiner is trying to give you the first third of the marks. Relatively simple stuff.
- Get the key procedures right along and you get the second third of the marks
- You may have to work for the final third with some creative problem solving.
Someone who shows great skill and elegance on one question and who fails to answer the rest of the paper will fail. You must be brutally strategic with your time and energy.
- Take 5 minutes to read the paper
- 15 minutes for short questions
- 35 minutes for long questions
- If you have any spare time, go back over anything that's unfinished
- If you've finished everything, READ OVER YOUR ANSWERS. You'll be amazed at the silly mistakes that can slip in.
Facts & TermsThere are relatively few basic facts in DCG to learn, they include:
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Key SkillsThere are several key procedure that are worth learning so that you can reproduce them without too much thought. A good measure of how well you know it is can you work backwards, for example given a dihedral angle can you find missing points on the plane?
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