I heard it on Bring the Pain 10 years before that show premiered.
While I normally agree with the sentiments of your post (it’s one of my SDMB peeves, as well.), the GRE is called “the GRE” in normal discourse, and is almost never referred to as “Graduate Record Examinations,” so it’s hardly an abbreviation anymore. Also, it seems that it is by far the primary use of the abbreviation, as a google search will show.
ETA: Would you object if someone talked about the SAT or GED without spelling it out?
Actually, elbows, the irked poster, DID use the term GED without spelling it out or explaining what it was. Hilarious!
What Jamaika said. “GRE” is the common way of referring to it, so that if you don’t know what the GRE is, you likely don’t know what the Graduate Record Examination is either.
It’s kinda like if I told you I watched a show on NBC last night, or told you about someone who has AIDS, or talked about DNA testing: spelling out the abbreviations wouldn’t make the meaning any more clear.
The GRE is pretty much the “getting into graduate school” version of the SAT.
Took a practice test.
490 math, 790 verbal.
I’ve got to be among the least well-rounded people out there. Today I’m learning about circles and triangles. If I can pull that math score up 100 points, it might be okay. Three more weeks until test time. I think it’s in the realm of possibility
That’s one hell of a verbal score. You should be proud if you pull of something like that on the real test. And while it would be nice if you can bring your math score up, for the programs you’re looking, it probably doesn’t matter all that much. There are certainly a lot of liberal arts PhD students (and professors!) whose quant score hover around 500.
That’ll help!
Are you me? I studied for the GRE a few years ago(2006–just before they changed the format a bit, so bear that in mind). I bought a practice book and did all the exams in it–it had a CD of 3-4 practice exams. I didn’t concern myself with the essay part, but I did practice the GRE’s odd notion of vocabulary and word equivalences (they have a word for them, but I don’t think it’s analogy–they were weird. Just go with the GREs “take” on them). I did the samples in the book as well as the exams.
Anyhoo, back to math. I did the first practice exam cold just to see. I had taken 4 years of HS math to avoid college math because I knew I would never be able to keep up. I have never taken calculus–and I graduated from HS in 1980. I didn’t know it until this thread, but I probably have some degree of dyscalculia. My first practice math test came back so low that it did not register on the scale. IMS, that means I got 11 items or fewer correct.:eek: I don’t remember the total number of math problems, but I think I would have been better off just randomly picking answers!
Truly, I suck at math. This is what I did:
Memorize the formulae given to you by the practice book. I don’t recall them now, but d=r x t is one of them. There are a few for the triangles as well. You need to know how to flip these, use these and plug various stuff into them. I get what everyone is saying about understanding the concepts etc, but you don’t have much time. Pay close attention to the practice exams and how the questions are phrased–the GRE can be tricky. You need to be able to know what the math question is asking (story problems etc). I found this hard at first, and as you can see, I didn’t end up doing great, but I did ok (for me). You can do it!
By doing the practice problems and tests over and over (about 2 hours a day for about 3 weeks), I got a 510 on the math portion. I was quite excited. I was actually disappointed in my verbal score: 770.
You are allowed scratch paper (it is provided for you, IMS) and a pencil. There is not only the computer acting as “proctor” but also a human; mine was watching over about 6 open cubicles through a glass screen. It is dead silent. I think I had headphones. There was a list of rules on the wall re eye contact and cell phones etc. The GRE testing people must work PT at the DMV–they have zero sense of humor. Best to just tunnel into your test and cubby and tune out anyone else there.
You may or may not want to spend time on the “analytical writing” portion. According to my Princeton Review book, these essays are “graded” by grad students who spend less than 10 minutes or so on each one, if that.
Oh, you’ll also need all those pi formulae for the circumference and radius of a circle etc. But NO trig (no sine and cosine, thank god).
Forgot to also say that go ahead and get your results right then. You don’t have to send them, unless you want to. IMS, there is a link of some kind that will allow you to send your results right away to the college of your choice. I chose to do that, but I was happy with my scores (and really didn’t want to bother taking the damned thing again. YMMV). GRE will send you a paper copy of your results sometime later as well.
My grasp of math improved after I figured out that you weren’t suppose to understand a proof in the same way that you understand a typical verbal explanation. Sure, you should understand each step of the proof, but intuition for the whole thing may or may not make sense.
Similarly, math problems are algorithms (and word problems involve having a sense of which algorithm to apply). The sort of intuition that works in literature or the social sciences doesn’t operate as well in this context.
If even sven has the block that I once had, TPWombat’s post might be helpful.
Could you elaborate on this?
I was as horrified by TPWombat’s post as others were, but I suspect there is truth in what you say.
I have wondered whether people who “can’t do” word problems have trouble because of poor reading comprehension, or because they’re good readers who read in the wrong way. Certainly, little words like “and,” “or,” “less,” and “is” can be crucial in math problems, while things like who’s doing what and why may be unimportant distractions. As a math teacher, I’m always looking for insight into why people struggle with math, and how they can successfully overcome those struggles.
I have to (rather) vehemently disagree re the reading comprehension being lacking in those for whom word problems are difficult. I have great capability in reading comprehension (not always evidenced here on the Dope, mind!) and have always scored quite highly in verbal skills and analytical skills–for language.
IMS there is a gap of some kind–truly in mind it is a blank–between reading what is on the paper and being able to 1. come up with the appropriate equation and 2. even knowing what is being looked for. Simple word problems are just that: simple: “The Jones family is driving to the Grand Canyon on vacation. If it is 652 miles from their house and they drive at 55 miles per hour, how many hours will it take them to get there?” pretty much anyone can do. (at least, let’s hope so, since it’s about grade 4 math, I think). If d= r x t, then 552=55 y (y=time) or just over 11 hours (11.8-and I will admit here that I don’t know how many minutes 8/10 of an hour is off the top of my head. Feel free to lemme know). PS: I was always much more interested in if the Jones were going to stop anywhere else; what did they eat, did they get along in the car, and how long did they visit, but again, I digress… 
Here is one that I know I could not solve by myself (at least not mathematically):
John’s courtyard measures 6 x 8 meters. He plans a garden with a grass border of equal width on all 4 sides. The garden must contain exactly 15 square meters of area to meet requirements. How wide a border should John create? I got this problem from this site: storyproblemsforalgebra
Apparently (per the site) it uses the quadratic formula, which I did have memorized. I will swear that no teacher ever told me the practical use of quadratics, but that is another topic for another thread. I understand that quadratics most definitely have practical applications and are useful things to have. I just cannot use them. I do like that this site does say that not one approach works for everyone, which is so true. Unlike this site:augh! which advocates NOT understanding the problem. But it does have a point, in that most word problems are designed to be confusing or misleading IME.
Anyway, in this example, what is x? y? I think one has to get the area of the courtyard, so isn’t that 6 x 8=48 square meters? I am not sure. I would most likely draw a square with a square in the actual courtyard and play around with it. I am completely serious. Laughable? I suppose, but not to me.
Once I knew how to set things up, I could plug in numbers all day and actually enjoyed working formulas through. But I still struggle (well, I don’t because I do anything to avoid having to actually DO word problems–this is why I have children) to set up the equations.
Dunno if the OP suffers from this as well. Believe me, given that I can find the metaphors and symbolism in literature and poetry with ease, it is very frustrating to not be able to “decode” word problems.
Actually, I’m the opposite. I just scored “100%” on the word problems section of my book.
I think when I see something in words, it makes me a little less angry.
I kind of picture math like a torture session by an evil wizard. He wants me to solve these meaningless riddles just to make my life miserable. He gives me a number, and I have to use his particular brand of crazy voodoo to turn it into another number. There is no good reason to solve these problems. Clearly he knows the answers- they are written right in the back of the book! But for some reason I’m condemned to turning one number into another to please this evil wizard’s sick pleasure.
It’s the same kind of misery that people who hate exercise feel running on a treadmill. But at least getting fit helps your life in a number of ways. Learning math…I guess it’s supposed to help you get better at doing math. But A. it doesn’t seem to make me much better at it and B. I never actually do math.
Word problems make me feel like I’m actually doing something. It feels more like running on a road. It’s still pretty miserable, but at least you feel like you are going somewhere.
That, and I can easily picture in my mind if my answer is way off.
I am the same way and I think it comes down to different mental styles. I have heard lots of people say that they hate word problems and I simply can’t relate. I learned over time that I am really talented at math but only when it comes down to real-world problems. I aced very difficult undergraduate and graduate school statistics because of this. OTOH, I never understood why math books simply weren’t written partially in English for people with strong verbal skills. A book full of formulas, equations, and diagrams means nothing to me but I could figure it out quickly if you told me I needed to figure out a real-world problem. I am a Systems Analyst by profession and am known to be very talented at analytical problem solving so I am not just trying to compensate.
I looked at that site and tried to understand what it was saying. “Don’t try to understand the problem”? How absurd. If you don’t understand it, how can you possibly know what to do to solve it, or know whether your answer (if you get one) is correct or even makes sense?
After poking around the site some more, and reading paragraphs like the following, I think I see what they’re getting at.
Basically, what they seem to be saying (as far as I can tell) is that it doesn’t work to try to read a relatively complicated problem, hold it all in “working memory,” and by grasping the whole thing in your mind, come up with The Answer. Rather, what they seem to be advocating is not too far off from the way I teach solving algebra word problems. I usually say something like this:
*Read the problem through, and don’t panic if you don’t understand what’s going on or what to do to come up with the answer. A good way to get started is by looking for What are you being asked to find? What unknown quantity is the problem asking for? (In your example problem, that would be “How wide a border should John create?”) You often want to let x stand for this unknown quatity (as in, “Let x = how many feet wide the border should be.”); then once you get a number for x, that would be the answer to the problem.
Then, go back and see what other information you’re given, and translate the words of the problem, a piece at a time, into algebra, maybe drawing a picture or making table summarizing the information you’re given. You can do this a piece at a time, so you don’t have to focus on the whole problem all at once. Eventually, you’ll want to put all that together into an equation, expressing that “something is something else” (e.g. the area of the garden is 15 square meters), that “is” becomes the = in your equation. Then you can use your powers of algebra to solve the equation.*
That’s it, in essence. Just draw it and see how the parts of the problem fit together (BTW, I assume you meant you’d draw a rectangle not a square)
Basically, the steps to solving it are:
- From “John’s courtyard measures 6 x 8 meters” you should draw
8
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Step 2) Then, from “He plans a garden with a grass border of equal width on all 4 sides”, you should draw
8
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| w |
| x |
| w ----------------------- w |
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| | | y | 6
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| ----------------------- |
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| w |
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(where w is the width of the grass border. From the above graph, you should get w + x + w = 8 and w + y + w = 6)
Step 3) And finally, from “The garden must contain exactly 15 square meters of area to meet requirements”, you should write x*y = 15.
Now you have three equations in three unknowns (i.e. w,x, and y), and you solve them keeping in mind that all you want for this problem is w
[Write w + x + w = 8 as x = 8-2w, and write w + y + w = 6 as y = 6 - 2w, which you can plug into the third equation to get (8-2w)(6 - 2*w) = 15, which you can solve for w]
Which of the above steps would you have trouble with, since you stated "Here is one that I know I could not solve by myself " ?
Interesting. Can you explain why you feel like finding the answer to “Cat is to dog as Monsoon is to ?” is actually like doing something, but finding the answer to “x^2 + 2*x + 5 = 0” is like a treadmill?
It seems to me that they are both “treadmillish”, in that you don’t need to know the answer to these problems right now, but finding out how to solve them will help you later on when you encounter similar things in life. I guess, depending on your work, if you expect to rarely encounter issues that require math and to often encounter issues that require word skills, I can see why someone can see the math problems as “treadmillish”. But on their face, both types of problems seem pointless and just for mental sharpening.
No, you’re thinking of Carrie Prejean, and her exact words were “math is gay.”
Math is not hard, but it is harder for some people than for others. The key to grasping math is to make sure that you really understand the fundamentals before moving on to the next topic. Learning math is a cumulative process – arithmetic before algebra/geometry, algebra before calculus, calculus before differential geometry, etc. The material builds on past material. So my general advice to someone who is very confused at some stage in his/her math development is to back up and find the fundamental gaps in their math knowledge, plug those holes, and move on from there. It can be a lot of work, but it’s well worth it.
Solving word problems requires basic modeling skills. There is a need to translate words into an abstract math model. Once you have the model, it’s usually straight-forward to get to the solution. But getting that model written down requires skills that only come from a lot of practice. Practice improves problem recognition and arriving at the right model.
They key difference would be that for me, analogies are easy, take about two seconds, and give me a little boost because I get them right. Math takes a lot of thought for me, takes forever, and depresses me because I’m pretty likely to end up getting it wrong.
YMMV.