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Most people dislike absolute value, and inequalities can tie us up into knots. Put them together, and we can have some major headaches! Let’s test one out.

Set your timer for 1 minute and 15 seconds for this Quantitative Comparison problem and GO! Read more

Here are the free GRE events we’re holding this week.

12/5/12 – New York, NY – Free Trial Class – 6:30-9:30 PM

12/5/12 – Washington, D.C. – Free Trial Class – 6:30-9:30 PM

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Many word problems seem to require us to write formulas in order to solve. Certain problems, though, qualify for a neat technique: Smart Numbers. We can actually pick our own real numbers and use them to solve!

Set your timer for 2 minutes for this Fill-In problem and GO! (© ManhattanPrep)

* Lisa spends 3/8 of her monthly paycheck on rent and 5/12 on food. Her roommate, Carrie, who earns twice as much as Lisa, spends ¼ of her monthly paycheck on rent and ½ on food. If the two women decide to donate the remainder of their money to charity each month, what fraction of their combined monthly income will they donate? (Assume all income in question is after taxes.)

 

(No answer choices given; this is a fill-in-the-blank)

 

We’ve got two women, Lisa and Carrie, and they each spend a certain proportion of income on rent and on food. Annoyingly, the fractions don’t have the same denominators; even more annoyingly, the two women don’t make the same amount of money. All of that will make an algebraic solution challenging.

Here’s what an algebraic solution would look like. Let’s call Lisa’s income x. She spends (3/8)x on rent and (5/12)x on food. Add these together:

(3x/8) + (5x/12) = (9x/24) + (10x/24) = 19x/24

Subtract from 100%, or x:

24x/24 “ 19x/24 = 5x/24

Lisa donates 5/24 of x, her income, to charity. What about Carrie?

Carrie’s income is equal to 2x (because she makes twice as much as Lisa). How much does she spend on rent and food?
Read more

Here are the free GRE events we’re holding this week.

10/22/12 – Online – The GRE with Jen Study Hall – 8:30-10:00 PM

10/22/12 – New York, NY – Free Trial Class – 6:30-9:30 PM

Looking for more free events? Check out our Free Events Listings Page.

Here are the free GRE events we’re holding this week.

10/15/12 – Online – The GRE with Jen Study Hall – 7:00-8:30 PM

10/15/12 – Boston, MA – Free Trial Class – 6:30-9:30 PM

Looking for more free events? Check out our Free Events Listings Page.

Here are the free GRE events we’re holding this week.

10/8/12 – Online – Mondays with Jen Study Hall – 7:00-8:30 PM

10/14/12 – New York, NY – Free Trial Class – 2:00-5:00 PM

Looking for more free events? Check out our Free Events Listings Page.

This is the second part of a two-part article on the topic of translating wordy quant problems into the actual math necessary to set up and solve the problem. Click here for the first part.

Last time, we discussed the basics as well as these two tactics:

1. Translate everything and make it real
2. Use a chart or table to organize info

Today, we’re going to dig a bit deeper into how the test writers can make translation really challenging.

Task 3: finding hidden constraints

The higher-level the problem, the more likely it will be to contain some kind of constraint that is not stated explicitly in the problem. For instance, I could tell you explicitly that x is a positive integer. Alternatively, I could tell you that x represents the number of children in a certain class. In the latter case, x is still a positive integer (at least I hope so!), even though I haven’t said so explicitly.

Here’s another example, from page 35 of our Word Problems book:

If Kelly received 1/3 more votes than Mike in a student election

If we say that M equals the number of votes case by Mike, then how would we represent the number of votes cast for Kelly?
Read more

I’ve spoken with several students recently who are struggling with translating wordy quant problems into the actual math necessary to set up and solve the problem. Some people make too many mistakes when doing this, and others find that, though generally accurate, they take more time than they can afford. In the next two articles (this is part 1!), we’re going to talk about how to translate efficiently and effectively.

We’re going to do this by example: I’ll provide short excerpts from actual problems, and then we’ll discuss how to know what to do, how to do the actual translation, and how to do everything efficiently. Note that I’m not necessarily going to provide the full text of problems “ and, therefore, we’re not going to solve fully. That’s not our goal today.

The Basics

Before we dive into more advanced issues, there are some basics we all need to know. We’re not going to spend a lot of time on the basics because all GRE books out there already explain this; I’ll give a quick introduction and, if you need more, seek out one of the standard books on this topic (in Manhattan Prep’s books, you’ll find this info in the Algebraic Translations chapter of the Word Problems Strategy Guide).

First, when the problem introduces certain people, objects or other things, we will likely need to assign variables. Cindy can become C and Bob can become B. Next, the words will give us some kind of relationship between variables.
Read more

Here are the free GRE events we’re holding this week.

10/2/12 – Washington, D.C. – Free Trial Class – 6:30-9:30 PM

10/2/12 – Los Angeles, CA – Free Trial Class – 6:30-9:30 PM

10/4/12 – New York, NY – Free Trial Class – 6:30-9:30 PM

10/7/12 – Online – Free Trial Class – 3:00-6:00 PM

Looking for more free events? Check out our Free Events Listings Page.

Here are the free GRE events we’re holding this week.

9/24/12 – Online – Monday’s With Jen – 7:00-8:30 PM

9/26/12 – Dallas, TX – Free Trial Class – 6:30-9:30 PM

Looking for more free events? Check out our Free Events Listings Page.