A large proportion of A level Mathematics teaches the skills and concepts necessary to understand differential calculus. As well as being a mathematically interesting topic, it is used in the real world application of many mathematical models, including those used for stock markets, how rockets and aeroplanes fly, and how populations of species develop. In the Mechanics topics in Paper 2, differential calculus is developed to understand Newton’s Laws of Motion. In the Statistical topics in Paper 3, students are introduced to the notion of hypothesis testing which allows them to tackle questions such as ‘are stuents more intelligent than boys?’