OG12 & 2nd Ed. Review question difficulty levels

[buckpm08]

Hello,

I've poked around a bit looking for an answer to my question without success. If someone could kindly answer or point me in the right direction, I would appreciate it very much.

I understand OG questions are ordered by increasing difficulty. What I would like to know is the difficulty level of each question for all sections. For example, what is the difficulty level (300-500, 500-600, 600-700, 700-800) of Problem Solving questions 100-130 from OG12. I thought the Archer might have it but as far as I can tell, it's not in the Lite version.

Thanks for you help.

Patrick

[StaceyKoprince]

It's not anywhere - that information has never been released. We can guess - but we don't know for sure.

It shouldn't actually make any difference at all to your studies though. :) You look at a question. You can either do it in the expected timeframe or you can't. If you can, then you spend a little time to figure out whether there are any even faster / better / easier / more elegant solution methods. If you can't, then you spend more time figuring out other things - how to work faster, how to know what to do, how to do it, how to guess, etc.

If you're trying to use that data to gauge how good you are / how much you're progressing / what your score might be... that doesn't actually work either. :) Doing problems from a book in a static fashion is very different from doing an entire adaptive test under timed conditions.

Do let me know though - I'm curious why you want that data.

[buckpm08]

Stacey, thanks for your response. When I looked at the assessment report created from my last two CAT exams and the BasicMathDiagnostic I noticed something. I seem to be doing better when I'm answering questions in the 300-600 range but much worse when answering in the 600-700 range.

Problem Solving Total Right Wrong % Right
300 - 500 21 20 1 95%
500 - 600 12 10 2 83%
600 - 700 18 6 11 33%
700 - 800 11 1 10 9%
Data Sufficiency
300 - 500 1 1 0 100%
500 - 600 7 6 1 88%
600 - 700 16 8 8 50%
700 - 800 4 1 3 25%

I have studied all quant question types and I do have some question type weaknesses, but I think the drop off is from not recognizing how to solve problems fast enough. When I reviewed the questions in the 600-700 range that I answered incorrectly, I could solve almost all of them correctly without knowing the answer if I gave myself unlimited time.

So I was thinking that it would be more efficient if I used my practice time to focus on questions in the 600-700 range. Since I time myself when I practice (40 mins for 20 questions), at the very least, this would force me to figure out how to solve questions in this difficulty range faster.

"If you can't [answer a question in the expected timeframe], then you spend more time figuring out other things - how to work faster, how to know what to do, how to do it, how to guess, etc."

I think we're saying the same thing here. I guess what I need is a set of questions that I how to do but not fast enough. :) Maybe a rough estimate of the difficulty level for OG problems would do it. Is this possible or do you have another suggestion?

Thanks again,
Patrick

[StaceyKoprince]

Got it - okay, I understand.

It makes sense (obviously! :) that you'd do better on lower-level questions. Here's the thing: sometimes studying lower-level questions actually helps you to learn to do better on higher-level ones. For instance, a lower-level question in the same area might have aspects in common with a higher level one - so studying the lower-level one (figuring out additional shortcuts, or really understanding why it works the way it does) can actually then help you on similar higher-level ones.

Also, the trend is only a trend on average - you'll have times that you do get lower-level question wrongs (maybe more consistently in certain areas of weakness) and so you want to make sure that you're still studying those areas.

Of course, you do also want to study the higher level ones; you just don't want to limit yourself to those, that's all.

I could solve almost all of them correctly without knowing the answer if I gave myself unlimited time.

Sadly, we'll never have unlimited time. It's great that you've realized part of the problem is not recognizing what to do / what the problem is testing. One of the ways you get better at that... is going back over those easier problems again and asking yourself very specific questions. HOW did I know that this (easier for me) problem was testing XYZ? What are the specific clues? Does this other, harder problem that I didn't recognize have ANY similarities with other easier questions that I did know how to do? What are those similarities? How can I use that knowledge to get "into" the harder problem? Etc.

Use the easier ones to really pick apart your process / knowledge (and also to look for shortcuts and guessing methods), then apply that knowledge to the ones that are harder for you.

So now you know my answer to your last question right? Go study some of the easier-but-not-super-easy problems. Here's a guide to the kinds of questions to ask yourself:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/a ... roblem.cfm

When doing a set of problems, probably the first 20 to 40 in OG are going to be mostly too easy for you - and probably the last 40 or so are going to be too hard. So pick from the group in between, but do hit a range (of easier to harder) within that.