How the heck do you expect someone to do it if they don’t understand it? Seriously! That makes no sense at all!
I took through Differential Equations in college, and there are parts in my notes where I sat in lectures, writing down each step but I didn’t know how the hell he got from step D to step E since it didn’t make sense, so I had WHY?!?!?! gouged into my paper in frustration. When it finally clicked, I’d calmly draw an arrow down from the gouged WHY and write out, in regular English, the reason why you did that step. ONLY then would I have a chance of getting the problem(s) right.
While this is definitely not the advice I would give to someone struggling with maths, I think I can at least sort of see where it came from. The advanced maths courses at the university level (as in the materials beyond the standard calculus, linear algebra and differential equations) do require a much deeper level of understanding than what is required in earlier courses. Problems at that level are usually more about coming up with proofs rather than crunching number or solving equations. (One of my professors said, ‘This is maths, not accounting!’)
Nonetheless, this absolutely does not mean that you don’t need any understanding unless you’re doing advanced maths! ‘Monkey maths’ is not going to take you very far at all. It is going to be much more difficult than necessary if you try to do something that you don’t understand.
Just to point out, and don’t mean to harp on it, but most dycalculic people understand the math perfectly well. The problem is transposing, wrong operations, wrong order of operations, failing to “see” numerical parts of the problem (reading 44x+11 as 4x+11) – these things give wrong answers to relatively simple multi choice questions.
let’s say the problem is 44x+11=55
X is 1 (44x=44)
But if you read it as 4x+11=55, you’re going to get something with a decimal. And when all the multichoices are whole numbers, you KNOW you did something wrong, so now you go back and check, and maybe you see the problem and maybe not, but with the “no backsies” rule on the GRE you can’t leave it for later - you have to move on. In fact you already spent too much time on a problem you recognize as a very basic and straighforward one. So you guess randomly, and end up doing maybe slightly better than if you had actually put in no effort and simply guessed randomly. Except, you tried as hard as you can imagine trying and then the crying starts.
Thanks guys! Right now, yeah, it looks like I am heading for the 400’s. If I could swing a 600, I’d be thrilled. It seems like that might be possible, and that’d be awesome.
And yeah Kyla, I got that book based on your recommendation earlier, and it’s been great. Thanks!
Just remember, you don’t have to learn all the math you took before to do well. They only give you a very small subset of problems on the real test and it it more about reasoning than actual math. Just practice those and those only. Everything else is a waste of time. The practice tests and prep books show you what those types of problems are. Don’t think back to high school because it has nothing to do with that. People that want to go into math intensive graduate programs have to take the real Math sub-test which you don’t have to do.
My engineering program is the opposite. They don’t care about the math part because everybody gets the same score. They care about the verbal because it can set you apart.
What did “proceed” mean? Guess, or skip the question?
I’m going to sound like an old fogey, but with everyone getting the same paper test and skipping around, you would get relative scores among that group that rank the members. That feels more objective to me. But I take the point that this new method is fair.
If all you learn is rote, you’ll never be able to apply it in the real world, or handle a test that phrases things ever so slightly different.
I used to teach college computer science, but actually used a lot more math when I taught woodworking to 4H kids. I think a lot of those kids learned more math from me (What size board do you need? What angles do we use on the compound miter saw for this cut? How much weight can this bookshelf support?) than they did from the kind of teachers you’re talking about.
I remember a physics prof I had in college: He put a problem on a test that involved calculating the volume of a sphere. I forgot the formula, but I had taken calculus, so I used the back of the sheet to derive it. I got the answer right, but he marked it wrong because he saw my calculations and dinged me for not memorizing the formula. I argued that it’s a hell of a lot more important to understand the formulas and know how to derive them than it is to try and memorize them all. I still got it marked wrong.
Now the professor is just plain idiotic. Calculating the volume of a sphere is clearly not even a physics problem. Why the fuck does he even care how you do it?
You can’t every skip the question-an answer must be given before you move on. The test requires you to do exactly what you’d do on a paper test. There are some questions you know off the bat you’ll never be able to get right unless you’re really really bright and the type to get a 400 on that section, in which case you wouldn’t be guessing any of them.
Anyway, “objectively” speaking, you end up doing the same thing on the CAT as you would on a paper test-you spend 20 seconds eyeballing the problem, you panic a little and then you make your “best guess”. The only difference is that on the paper test you more or less have the comfort of telling yourself that you’ll “come back to it.” The CAT forces you to do at that moment what you’d have done anyway, which is flip back to the questions you have no idea how to do and desperately fill in any answer while pressed for time.
Then there are questions you partially know how to solve, or, you’re not a math genius and you take the “long way” or, you’d know how to solve but it takes you longer than the test gives you time to spend on each sum. On these types of problems, it’s worth spending the 1:45-the “guess” you make at the end is way more accurate than the situation above. However, you HAVE to move on. Here’s the deal-even if you’re taking the test on paper, you really don’t have more than X amount of time per sum-unless you want to run out of time, you unconsciously make the same type of time allocation decisions.
On the GMAT you have to do 37 problems in 75 minutes and the math is harder than on the GREs (way longer calculations or more “obscure” tricks). What sucks about the CAT isn’t it’s lack of objectivity-it’s the fact that the computer is basically sitting there judging you and that creates an impetus to overallocate time in order to “beat” the computer. This is a stress you don’t have on paper exams. Basically on paper you don’t have a software program that makes a grumbly little noise and “sorts” you based on whether you got it wrong or right. The paper test lets you sort yourself. In the end it’s about the same-the trick is making the same time allocation decisions you would have made on paper and letting go of the idea of “beating” the computer. As I stated above-there’s a widely spread theory that you cannot achieve a good score unless you get the first 7 to 10 problems correct. This is how a ton of GMAT takers mess up-they get obsessed with the time consuming problems the computer starts dragging out at questions 7-12 and end up having 20 sums left with 20 minutes. I just guessed the ones I knew were selecting for engineers from MIT and still ended up with a really high score. It kind of helped that the verbal portion is like the brokedown version of the LSAT with grammar questions thrown in.
The biggest benefit to the test is that they give you the score right on the spot, so you don’t have to spaz out and wait for them to be posted, the way it used to be.
Not exactly–I honestly could be leaving a question to come back to when/if I have time at the end, which I truly could have. I may want to see the whole test on one run-through and know that I can come back for another pass. Some will take 1:45 and some will take a few seconds…I don’t have to allocate an exact amount per question and may have plenty of time to come back, giving me more than X amount of time per question.
You are not obligated to take 1:45-2 minutes per question. That’s the longest you can take per question if you assume that every question is equally hard. Obviously the first question should only take 40 seconds. You “gain” time. You end up losing it just as fast on questions 7-12. The point is being disciplined. You must be disciplined whether you’re taking it on paper or computer-even if you are leaving it “honestly,” you are going to get the same hard questions on paper as you are on computer and you’re going to get tangled up in them and lose time if you’re the type of person to get tangled up in questions. If anything, I feel like the CAT forces you to play your hand and cut your losses upfront so you don’t have to go through the dramz of going back and frantically trying to fill in the right bubble on the scantron because you skipped around.
Here’s the thing? Have you ever taken a CAT or are you just going on gut instinct here? So far I’ve taken the SATs (stone age, pencil/paper), the SAT IIs, APs, LSATs (pencil/paper), a couple of bar exams and the GMATs (and all the school exams in between). Historically I was a lazy student (this has changed), so the main reason I got into undergrad is because of my test scores. I’m also signed up for the GREs because several business schools have started accepting them and I’m curious about what score I could get given that the quantitative portion is easier. Having taken a variety of different tests from the old way to the new-I really don’t think the CAT is that big a deal. You just have to get over the hump of having a chess partner of sorts and the innate desire to show it wrong, and it’s the same thing.
The other thing is that I really question people who need to have everything exactly their way in order to get a “good” score or do well. I think it punishes everyone else who sits through the stress and still manages to produce.
I gather it’s some kind of test. Math, likely. For what, I have no idea.
Is it like a GED?
Are you really so rushed for time you couldn’t spell it out on first usage (like they do in papers and magazines.)?
You can’t be bothered to make yourself clear/understood and yet you fully expect your readers to do a little googling to understand your terminology? Really?
This has to be one of my pet peeves about the Straight Dope.