Just want to get an approximate range
I would say I memorized 70% of the formulas. The more you memorize the better, because it will allow you to go through questions at a much quicker rate.
50 or less.
+1. There’s no way I memorized 500 formulas like some posts are suggesting.
Things like Current Ratio shouldn’t be memorized as a formula IMO. Understand the concept (it’s the ratio of current assets over curret liabilities), it’s a lot easier. Not the best example I know, but you get what I’m getting at.
And some of just understood the derivation and learned to derive them rather than memorize them. For example, how the Dupont formula breaksdown. Come exam time I knew it by heart, but only because I had worked with it so much instead of sitting there memorizing the formula.
Are you guys serious? It has to be at least around the 100-150 area. I’d say there are at least 100 important formulas that you must know, and that’s being on the very conservative side. Every study guide, Schweser formula sheet shows at least 150-200.
When I say formula, I don’t mean things as basic as A=L+SE. But any important equation you have to know I would count.
Yeah, maybe you’re right. I guess what I’m trying to say is that at the end I wasn’t memorizing formulas, stuff just made sense, it just became second nature.
As an extreme example, one of the quant formulas is arithmetic average and geometric averege. They’re formulas, yeah, but they’re not formulas I memorize, I just understand the concepts.
In the PM section, you have a load of formulas which are just jumbling around the CAPM formula. I never memorized all those formulas. I knew the CAPM formula and understood the components and what the formula meant, the concept. On the exam, if I needed some jumpbling of the formula, I would just derive it from the CAPM in the exam. So 10 formulas become 1 formula, which become 1 concept = zero formulas to memorize.
There’s obviously some formulas you’ll have to just memorize, and within that set there will be the big important ones. Just keep practising and the formulas will eventually just get printed in your brain.
Yes, I am serious. There is no way I can retain 100 formuals…not me. I am sure once you go through a decent amount of problems you will realize there are only few KEY formulas.
What I suggest you to do is to write down your own formula sheet. If you do CFAI’s EOC and BB you will realize which formulas are important and recurrent. Write down those ones. Forget about the tons of formulas you will see in review material such as Schweser. Keep in mind these guys need to cover all the bases.
Also, keep in mind that the exam is more conceptual that you probably think. So you will find only few problems where you need to write down the formula and get a result. This is even more true as so move on in the program.
I had about 100-150 flashcards that i made for myself for L1. Probably 75% were formulas, the rest were concepts with key words that i felt i needed to remember (i.e. key differences between ifrs/gaap).