Quick answer
The Formulae and Tables booklet is the official reference book handed out in every state exam. Roughly the first 35 pages cover maths, from area and trigonometry to calculus and statistics, and the rest serves physics, chemistry and applied maths. It is free in the exam, so the only real skill is finding things fast.
Every student in the exam hall gets the same small booklet, and most people never open it properly until the week before the exam. That is a waste, because it is the one piece of help you are allowed to bring to a paper you are otherwise sitting from memory. Here is what is inside, what is not, and how to stop it being a stranger on the day.
What the booklet is
The Formulae and Tables booklet is published by the State Examinations Commission and is the only reference material allowed in most state exams. Your superintendent hands it out; you do not buy it, borrow it or bring your own. It comes in English and Irish, and the same booklet serves Junior Cycle and Leaving Certificate.
Most schools sell a copy for classroom use, and that copy is worth having, because the point of it is not what it contains but how quickly you can find things in it.
What is in the maths pages
The booklet runs to around 93 pages, and roughly the first 35 are maths. The sections you will actually use, in the order they tend to come up:
Length, area and volume. Perimeters, areas of the standard shapes, surface areas and volumes of solids, and the area approximation rules, including the trapezoidal rule.
Trigonometry. The identities, the sine and cosine rules, area of a triangle, radian measure, and the compound angle formulas that come up in the harder Higher Level questions.
Coordinate geometry and geometry. The line, the circle, distance and midpoint, and the theorems you are expected to name rather than reinvent.
Algebra, indices and logarithms. The quadratic formula, log rules, and the manipulation rules people forget under pressure.
Sequences and series. Arithmetic and geometric formulas, including sums to n terms.
Calculus. Standard derivatives and integrals in a table, plus the rules.
Financial maths, statistics and probability. Compound interest and amortisation, the normal distribution tables, standard deviation and the probability rules.
The later pages carry material for physics, chemistry and applied maths, which is why the booklet looks thicker than the maths ever needs.
What is not in it
This is the part that catches people. The booklet gives you formulas, not methods. It will hand you the quadratic formula but not tell you when factorising is faster. It gives the trigonometric identities but not which one unlocks the question in front of you. Nothing in it explains a single step of reasoning, and none of the strand specific tricks that come up in Paper 1 and Paper 2 are printed anywhere.
There is also a quiet trap: some formulas you might expect are simply absent, and a few you learn in class are written slightly differently from how your teacher writes them. Finding that out in the exam is not the plan.
How to actually use it
Treat it as a tool you have to practise with, not a safety net you unwrap at the end. Three habits do most of the work.
Use it in every practice session from now on. If you have been doing past papers with formulas written on the page beside you, you are training for a different exam.
Learn where the sections live, not the page numbers. Page numbers vary by printing, but the order does not. Knowing that calculus tables sit after sequences saves ten seconds a question, and ten seconds a question is a whole extra question over a paper.
Write the formula down even when you are stuck. Marking schemes give real credit for correct method, and a formula quoted from the booklet is often the first mark of a part you cannot finish. That is the same logic behind attempting every question, which we walked through in our guide to studying for the mocks.
One small thing worth doing this week
Open your copy, find the maths section, and stick a small tab or fold a corner at trigonometry, calculus and statistics. Then do one past paper question from each of those areas using only the booklet. You will learn more about it in forty minutes than in three years of it sitting in the bottom of your bag.
Test yourself: 3 quick questions
Real Higher Level questions from the H1 Owl bank.
The correlation coefficient between two variables is r = -0.92. This indicates:
The sign of r gives the direction (negative means one variable tends to decrease as the other increases) and the size gives the strength. Since -0.92 is close to -1, the linear relationship is strong and negative.
In a class of 30 students, 18 study French, 12 study German and 6 study both. A student chosen at random studies German. The probability that they also study French is:
This is conditional probability: P(French | German) = P(both)/P(German) = 6/12 = 1/2. The condition "studies German" shrinks the sample space to the 12 German students, of whom 6 also study French.
X is normally distributed with mean 50 and standard deviation 10. Given that P(z < 1) = 0.8413, the value of P(X > 60) is:
Standardise first: z = (60 - 50)/10 = 1. Then P(X > 60) = P(z > 1) = 1 - P(z < 1) = 1 - 0.8413 = 0.1587, since the table value gives the area to the left of z.
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Frequently asked questions
Do I have to bring my own Formulae and Tables booklet?
No. The superintendent provides one in the exam. Having your own copy at home is for practice, not for the day itself.
Is the same booklet used for Junior Cycle and Leaving Cert?
Yes, the same publication serves both, and it is available in English and Irish.
Does it have every formula I need?
Not quite. It covers most of them, but a few things you meet in class are missing or written differently, which is why practising with it beforehand matters.
H1 Owl drills the part the booklet cannot help with: knowing which formula the question wants and what to do after you write it down. Five minutes of Leaving Cert maths a day, worked solutions that show the step you missed, and an indicative grade so you always know which strand needs work. Join the waitlist below and get access first.