What the 2024 exam revealed about how data is meant to be used
Why graph questions look easier than they are
Graph questions are often where students feel safest. There’s information on the page. Axes are labelled. Patterns look familiar. Compared to long calculations, they feel manageable.
The 2024 Physics exam showed very clearly that this confidence is often misplaced.
Students did not lose marks on graph questions because they couldn’t read them. They lost marks because they did not use the graphs in the way the question required.
Describing a graph is not analysing it
One of the most consistent issues highlighted in the examiner feedback was students simply describing what a graph shows.
They stated that one value increased.
They noted a decrease over time.
They restated trends accurately.
That level of response rarely earned full marks.
In Physics, graphs are not included to be narrated. They are included to provide evidence. If a student does not use the graph to support a claim, the response remains descriptive rather than analytical.
The line-of-best-fit error that keeps reappearing
The 2024 exam deliberately exposed a weakness that appears year after year.
Students drew a straight line through the first and last data points and ignored the behaviour of the points in between. The examiner explicitly noted that the central data points were placed to challenge this habit.
A line of best fit is not a shortcut. It is a judgement.
Students who lost marks here were not careless. They were procedural. They followed a remembered routine rather than responding to what the data actually showed.
When students calculate instead of interpreting
Another common error occurred when students treated graph questions as calculation questions.
They extracted a gradient or a value and stopped. The number was correct, but the task was incomplete.
Many graph questions require students to interpret what a value means physically. The calculation is only the first step. Marks are awarded when students explain what that value reveals about motion, forces, energy transfer, or system behaviour.
A number without interpretation is unfinished reasoning.
Why scale and units matter more than students expect
The examiner commentary highlighted responses where students misread axes or failed to convert units correctly before drawing conclusions.
This often led to answers that were numerically neat but physically wrong.
Graphs compress information. If a student does not attend carefully to scale and units, they are effectively analysing a different experiment to the one shown.
This is not a maths issue. It is an attention-to-model issue.
The difference between identifying a trend and explaining it
Many students correctly identified trends but did not explain why those trends occurred.
For example, they noted a linear relationship or a flattening curve but did not link it to the underlying physics. The graph became a picture rather than a representation of a physical process.
Strong responses moved beyond “what the graph shows” and into “what the graph tells us about the system”.
That shift is where marks are earned.
Why “using data” means more than quoting values
The examiner feedback made it clear that simply quoting values from a graph does not constitute using data.
Using data means selecting relevant points, comparing them, and explaining what those comparisons demonstrate. It means making an argument that is supported by the data shown.
If the data could be removed without weakening the answer, it has not been used properly.
What high-performing students did differently
High-scoring students treated graphs as compressed explanations.
They unpacked them carefully. They chose relevant features. They linked trends to principles. They explained what changes in slope or shape meant physically.
Their responses felt deliberate rather than reactive.
A practical discipline that prevents most graph errors
Before writing, strong students ask themselves one question:
“What claim is this graph allowing me to make?”
That question forces interpretation before calculation. It turns the graph into evidence rather than decoration.
What this means for Physics preparation
Graph questions need to be practised as reasoning tasks, not reading tasks.
Students should practise explaining what graphs show about the physics, not just what they look like. They should practise justifying conclusions using trends rather than numbers in isolation.
Without that practice, graph questions continue to feel unpredictable.
Working with ATAR STAR
ATAR STAR Physics tutoring places strong emphasis on data interpretation and graphical reasoning.
We train students to read graphs the way examiners intend them to be read: as evidence for physical reasoning. Students learn how to draw meaningful lines of best fit, interpret gradients properly, and explain what data reveals about systems.
If graph questions feel like easy marks that somehow slip away, the issue is rarely ability. It is execution — and that is exactly what ATAR STAR helps students sharpen.