Cambridge International AS & A Level Further Mathematics Coursebook

I have worked with both Lee and Martin in the course of my time teaching in China where I have spent much of my time in the last few years delivering the CIE Further Mathematics programme to high ability Chinese students. The non modular course delivered has not had a dedicated text book which has at times caused problems for teachers new to delivering the material and Lee and I ( we used to work in the same organisation) have spent time advising and mentoring further mathematics teachers within our group of school centres.The new syllabus to be first examined in 2020 is different and now consists of 4 papers ( 2 pure, I statistics and 1 mechanics) and allows also for an A/S qualification. The book that Martin and Lee have produced is very large and detailed covering all aspects of the course and I think it will be particularly beneficial to Chinese students who like to work through text books ( sometimes on their own) and will enable them to rapidly work through their material. Many excellent examples and explanations with detail appear and the standard of example questions should be particularly relevant to the new course ( particularly with fewer relevant past exam paper material) and the pictures at the start of each chapter help to raise interest and practical relevance. New topics to the course such as hyperbolic functions, further differential equations ., Wilcoxon Test and probability generating functions are all well described. Lee and Martin have spent great amounts of time and thought to producing this clear and detailed volume. I look forward to using this book with the many students I will be teaching next year and I am sure it will be an excellent book for teachers and students studying at Further Maths levels ( both for A/S and A Level) and possibly as a reference book for other teachers also. William Arnold (Head of Mathematics Department )Hangzhou Foreign Languages A Level Centre

Muito bom

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The book is very useful and covers all the topics that are enlisted in the syllabus of the subject.

Was debating between 3 and 4 stars until I finished it back-to-back and began on the exquisite OCR/AQA Further Maths by Cambridge University Press textbooks which are some of the best I have seen (note: the OCR syllabus does not overlap perfectly with CIE). Plus, I kind of hate Amazon, so prefer not to write positive reviews, but I am a realist, so know the reviews here will be read. This is the first ever CIE Further Math textbook and it is a significant improvement on nothing. It is also economical, all merged into one. However, I would strongly agree with the Japanese reviewer, in that it really needs more iteration. As with various CIE textbooks, there are a myriad of errors in the answers, or impossible proofs (though I think the newer non-further series are getting better). Some errors are ludicrously obvious, such as a probability table whose probabilities do not add up to 1 (Exercise 12A answer to question 6), and others that appear to be very complex questions but are instead disorienting misprints (Cross Topic Review Exercise 4, question 1A). It takes a certain level of fluency, time, perseverance, self-confidence, to spot them all, that might hinder a proportion of candidates. Secondly, despite the quantity of errors, the quantity of questions is, at times, lackluster, especially on newer syllabus content in which there is no abundance of corresponding past paper questions to make up for. However, I found that CIE exams are quite gentle on the new syllabus content in exam papers, perhaps as a result. Overall though, the tutorials are good. Though I do recall, when just starting on pure 2, the text encourages you to always convert hyperbolics to Euler format, then soon provides you with a question that cannot be solved by doing this. Though past experience with Maths textbooks has taught me that questions and tutorials are sometimes nefariously placed in opposite order. For the above reasons I, personally, would split the book into two - applied and pure - add more questions, and have them checked more thoroughly. The tutorials could stay the same. But I am aware there may be monetary constraints that may be causing the issues in the 1st edition to have occurred, and the 2nd edition to be delayed. On the flip side, you could just invest in the series of Hodders CIE Further Maths textbooks alongside this one, as their answers are available via their website (i.e. easy for them to correct), and I have found them to be good. The equivalent series by Collins unfortunately does not have publicly available answers. I don't like to stray too far from official textbooks, myself, as I presume they are what examiners browse when setting exams. Overall I want to say that Cambridge International is a very satisfying exam board. I did all the content relevant to the current Further Math syllabus in just about every past paper ever released, and it is extremely rare to find errors in the real exams (from memory, I recall only one error in a centre of mass of a solid question). So, you should try this textbook (especially if there is a 2nd edition since this review), but just be aware it is not perfect (yet). In the words of an imaginary posh lady: "and if there are errors, all the better for it!" (i.e. to keep you on your toes).