Hey guys!
My school and along with some of my friends are told that we will be using mathematica instead of a handheld CAS device, which is a fairly new implementation in both methods and spec. I, having dropped my maths grades immensely over the course of the last semester, am very worried about this and was wondering if anyone else was in the same boat or if this truly is as beneficial as the teachers make it seem to be. If anyone who has used mathematica whether for VCE or other pursuits before, please enlighten me on the deal about it and any tips and or advice is greatly appreciated!!
USING MATHEMATICA
2 months later
cynopoly hello! My school uses mathematica and it is a piece of software you download on your laptop. You kinda use coding to graph and solve problems (nothing super difficult but you need to make sure when you type in commands you put everything in correctly). It is SUPER helpful once you get the hang of it. You can factorise, graph, do calculus and even a bit of probability on there. I think there are a few videos on youtube that give a thorough breakdown of how to use it but yeah thats it. Hope I helped and feel free to ask any questions 
- Edited
heyyyy my school uses mathematica as well! I absolutely hated mathematica until I did methods 3/4 in yr 11 but that's because [1] I had to get used to it (started using it from yr 10) and [2] the school also made the methods 1/2 sacs use mathematica in a very inconvenient way. It really helps to use mathematica to check regular textbook questions after you've solved them by hand or any math questions you're doing to get the hang of it.
I'm going into year 12 this year and I absolutely love it! In my opinion mathematica is better than CAS because it's actually much faster to solve methods 3/4 probability questions and more convenient in general.