Order of Chapter Completion in Study Guides

[andreas.apostolatos]

Hello MGMAT Team,

Started a class yesterday, and am about to start day 1 of HW.

I noticed that the weekly planner recommends to complete chapters/in action problems in the study guides in a different order than the natural sequence of chapters in the guides. For example, in the number properties guide, the order of chapters is:

Chapter 1. Divisibility and Primes
Chapter 2. Odds and Evens
Chapter 3. Positives and Negatives
etc. etc.

While the weekly planner advises to complete the study guid in the following order:

Day 1: PEMDAS, DS Strategies (reading and in action problems)
Day 2: Divisibility and Primes (reading and in action problems)
Day 3: Odds and Evens and Positives and Negatives (reading and in action problems)

Should we follow the weekly planner and "jump around" in our completion of the study guides, or is it just as OK to complete each study guide from start to finish in order of the chapters.

I know this is a bit of a nitpicky question, but in case certain things need to be prioritized or focused on in a certain order, I want to know from the start.

Thanks much!

[RonPurewal]

Hello MGMAT Team,

Started a class yesterday, and am about to start day 1 of HW.

I noticed that the weekly planner recommends to complete chapters/in action problems in the study guides in a different order than the natural sequence of chapters in the guides. For example, in the number properties guide, the order of chapters is:

Chapter 1. Divisibility and Primes
Chapter 2. Odds and Evens
Chapter 3. Positives and Negatives
etc. etc.

While the weekly planner advises to complete the study guid in the following order:

Day 1: PEMDAS, DS Strategies (reading and in action problems)
Day 2: Divisibility and Primes (reading and in action problems)
Day 3: Odds and Evens and Positives and Negatives (reading and in action problems)

Should we follow the weekly planner and "jump around" in our completion of the study guides, or is it just as OK to complete each study guide from start to finish in order of the chapters.

I know this is a bit of a nitpicky question, but in case certain things need to be prioritized or focused on in a certain order, I want to know from the start.

Thanks much!

hi --

you are probably best off following the order of topics in the study organizer spreadsheet; that order is the best approximation to a cumulative ordering of topics. in other words, the study organizer generally contains "prerequisite" topics before it contains topics for which those prerequisites are required.
for instance, it should be fairly clear that PEMDAS is a prerequisite for just about everything else; hence, PEMDAS is the first topic in the number properties section of the study organizer.

where there are discrepancies between the order in the study organizer and the order in the strategy guides, those discrepancies are mostly a relic of previous editions of the strategy guides. in other words, adjusting the order of topics in a spreadsheet is quite an easy thing to do, but changing the order of anything in the strategy guides is a massive undertaking (requiring new typesetting of every page in the entire guide, since a reordering will affect the pagination of even the topics that are not affected).
therefore, many topics remain "out of order" in the strategy guides even after we determine that their order should be switched in the study organizer; for instance, PEMDAS is still the last topic in the number properties strategy guide, even though a convincing argument could be made for placing it first.

--

in any case, that's probably much more information than you really wanted; the short answer is "follow the study organizer".