I have never met anyone who is better at algebra than he or she is at arithmetic. As good as a person may be with algebra, that person’s going to be even better with real numbers (arithmetic). How can we use that to our advantage on the test?

Algebra and arithmetic are very similar, but algebra uses variables where arithmetic would use real numbers. On certain GMAT problems, we can taken a problem in which we were given variables and use real numbers instead “ we’re turning algebra into arithmetic!

Note: a lot of my students will complain that this method takes too much time. Of course it does when you first start studying it. You’ve been doing algebra for years, but most of you are just learning how to turn algebra into arithmetic. Think how slow you were when you first started learning algebra. Put in the practice and you’ll pick up the speed!

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