I'm just not able to get Quants for the life of me

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Ace_28

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I’m getting decent scores in all other sections except Quants which I’m just not able to grasp . I’ve tried to memorize all the formulas and concepts but I still have a hard time understanding probabilities, standard deviations, coefficient correlation, variance covariance, one tail two tail, z test f test etc.
I think this section will be the one which will screw my scores. Any preparation advice for the last 10 days?
 
not need to memorise all formulas try to understand basic concepts and practice a lot (re do EOC 1-2 times).
 
Memorizing formulas may not be effective if you can’t apply them. At this stage it would be best just do as many questions as you can and make sure you understand anwers to those. Qbank(display answer after each question) is good for this purpose and the EOC have good explanations too.
 
Once you understand the basic properties, the formulas become much easier to remember…. Get to work!!!
 
If you have trouble now, wait til you get to L2.
BTW, you’re going to need to know correlation for all levels. It’s not that hard. Just do a ton of practice questions.
Some people think that just because Quant weight is relatively low in L1 and L2 (and 0 weight in L3), that it’s not that important and can be blown off, but the calculations keep popping up in different study sessions in all levels.
 
Clark_CFA_Candidate wrote:
If you have trouble now, wait til you get to L2.
BTW, you’re going to need to know correlation for all levels. It’s not that hard. Just do a ton of practice questions.
Some people think that just because Quant weight is relatively low in L1 and L2 (and 0 weight in L3), that it’s not that important and can be blown off, but the calculations keep popping up in different study sessions in all levels.
Click to expand...
Can you give examples of some of the quant in L2?
 
hei.so wrote:
Clark_CFA_Candidate wrote:If you have trouble now, wait til you get to L2.
BTW, you’re going to need to know correlation for all levels. It’s not that hard. Just do a ton of practice questions.
Some people think that just because Quant weight is relatively low in L1 and L2 (and 0 weight in L3), that it’s not that important and can be blown off, but the calculations keep popping up in different study sessions in all levels.
Click to expand...
Can you give examples of some of the quant in L2?
Click to expand...
You should probably wait and ask on June 2; concentrate on Level I Quant (and Ethics, and Econ, and FRA, …) for now.
 
I would say without a shadow of a doubt that quant is my strongest topic. Econ is by far the hardest topic and is the most worrying. FRA is a hit and miss. Ranges from really easy (such as ratios and inventory) to extremely hard (income tax).
 
hei.so wrote:I would say without a shadow of a doubt that quant is my strongest topic.
Click to expand...
What’s your background?
hei.so wrote:Econ is by far the hardest topic and is the most worrying.
Click to expand...
You’re not alone there.
hei.so wrote:FRA is a hit and miss. Ranges from really easy (such as ratios and inventory) to extremely hard (income tax).
Click to expand...
If you’d like some help with income taxes, post a thread.
 
hei.so wrote:
Clark_CFA_Candidate wrote:
If you have trouble now, wait til you get to L2.
BTW, you’re going to need to know correlation for all levels. It’s not that hard. Just do a ton of practice questions.
Some people think that just because Quant weight is relatively low in L1 and L2 (and 0 weight in L3), that it’s not that important and can be blown off, but the calculations keep popping up in different study sessions in all levels.
Click to expand...
Can you give examples of some of the quant in L2?
Click to expand...
http://www.cfainstitute.org/CFA Program Study Session/2013_LII_SS03.pdf
 
S2000magician wrote:
What’s your background?
Click to expand...
Well… you could say that I’m a naive 22 year old. I graduated last year BBA concentration in finance. It’s just that math has never been a problem for me. And I’ve done a couple mocks to confirm >70% with little variation. Econ has been all over the place from 60% to 30%. Ethics has been around 50% to 65%, etc.
S2000magician wrote:
If you’d like some help with income taxes, post a thread.
Click to expand...
I have been posting. Accounting was difficult for me in university. It was really hard to grasp the treatment of certain items in GAAP vs IFRS. I spent a lot of time on it so I do get the gist of it (CF, BS, IS, revaluation method, depreciation, etc.). Income tax is new though. I understand the basics of it, such as carrying value > tax base = DTL. Hopefully it’ll be simple in L1.
But you are correct, I shall wait until June 2 (or mid July) to see where I stand in this program.
EDIT: I think we’re hijacking this thread.
 
i’ve been having the same problem as you have.
for some schooling in statistics and probability, i’d suggest you watch khan academy’s videos on their website - https://www.khanacademy.org/math/probability
for the life of me, i couldn’t understand the IS/LM curve but these guys really really helped me out.
best of luck for your exam.
 
Try not to panic and focus mostly on the sample questions within each Chapter and the end of chapter questions. Focus less on memorizing and regurgitating formulas and instead just xerox the Summary statements at the end of each chapter. Go over those repeatedly along with revisiting the EOC questions. I had a lot of trouble with Quant as well but having it revisited in Portfolio, Corporate, Fixed etc did help give me a larger framework. And don’t listen to anyone warning you about L2!! One step at a time.
 
bit late now, but if you want to do well in level 2 and level 3 quants, do the coursera.org Intro to Financial Engineering course. It’s free and will practically teach you how to do what the CFA course talks about.
I wish it was around when I did quants. It’s very hands on and pretty hard. (I haven’t completed it yet).
 
WOW! what is this website? Does it have free courses for any topic? How does it work and how do they make money?
 
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