VP Logic Foundations Flashcards
Strategy
Pacing is not linear
While the average time per question is approximately two minutes, there are some questions you will be able to answer in 30 seconds and there are others that will require three minutes. If you are going to spend more than three minutes on a problem, be fairly certain that you are going to get an answer. The worst thing that you can do on this test is spend four minutes on a question and then still guess.
Your floor is more important than your ceiling
Many students chase what they consider to be high-difficulty questions, but in doing so leave fundamental flaws in their preparation that lead to a leaky floor, so to speak, on the exam. If you miss questions that you should answer correctly, you dig yourself a hole; the next question is then even easier, and it takes multiple questions to get back to the level at which you should have been. Do not neglect fundamentals, and be certain to double-check common mistakes that you tend to make to ensure that you don’t give back questions that should be yours.
CREATING Think Like the Testmaker
Creating is the top of the pyramid in Bloom’s Taxonomy. When you have completely mastered the GMAT, you are able to Think Like the Testmaker: You are on top of the pyramid looking down! You don’t just have good content knowledge and lots of practice with GMAT problems; you understand how the problem has been made, what makes it hard, and how to break it down. This is what sets apart the Veritas Prep curriculum from others. To break 700, you not only need mastery of skills (remembering) and lots of practice (applying), but also a deep understanding of how the test is made (creating).
APPLYING Learning by Doing
Another hallmark of the Veritas Prep curriculum is an emphasis on “Learning by Doing.” What makes the GMAT difficult is not so much the underlying skills and concepts, but rather the way those skills and concepts are tested. Rote lecturing in the classroom and rote memorization of skills have limited utility in preparation for a reasoning test such as the GMAT. To be successful, you must learn how to marry skill proficiency with strategic thinking into what we call “Guiding Principles.” Our curriculum emphasizes learning through challenging problems to help you:
- Learn how to combine skills and strategies to effectively solve any GMAT problem.
- Stay focused and engaged, even after a long day in the office.
- Most effectively utilize the classroom time you spend with a true GMAT expert.
REMEMBERING Skillbuilder
The stated goal of the GMAT is to test higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills. In order to achieve that goal, testmakers must have some underlying content from which to create questions. On the GMAT, this content is mostly math curriculum through the early high school level and basic grammar skills through the elementary school level. To succeed on the GMAT you must have a thorough mastery of this content, but most students already have a relatively strong command of this material. In order to maximize the value added from instruction in the classroom, we have taken out all core skills that simply require refreshing and/or memorizing, and put them first in a Skillbuilder section. By doing this:
- Students who need to thoroughly review or relearn these skills can do so at their own pace, and then focus on strategic thinking and problem solving during in-class time.
- Students who have a solid command of the underlying content will not become disengaged because of tedious review of material they’ve already mastered.
General Strategy for Problem Solving Questions
- Read the question carefully and make sure you are answering the proper question.
- After you read the question, look at answer choices and determine how much work you must accomplish to pick one of the five answer choices. Remember: The answer choices are part of the problem. Probably the biggest mistake people make on Problem-Solving questions is that they answer the question in a vacuum—that is, they do all the work and then look back to see if their answer is one of the five. Often, if you are actively using answer choices, it is clear which one is correct after a minimum amount of work.
- Don’t be too eager to start the problem. Your first inclination on Problem- Solving questions is often incorrect. Digest the problem thoughtfully and look for the simple, elegant solution. Because of the difficult timing on the GMAT, people are scared to spend too much time understanding a problem, but that time is usually well spent.
- Avoid careless mistakes in calculations. Try to avoid too many calculations (as they are rarely required) but when you do make them, employ methods and approaches that limit careless mistakes.
DS: General Strategy for “Yes or No” Questions
In “Yes or No” questions, you must get a definitive answer to the question in order for a statement to be sufficient. In statement (1), after factoring the quadratic equation, you learn that x could be –7 or 4. At this point there are two mistakes that students will make:
- They think it is not sufficient because there are multiple solutions, or
- They think it is not sufficient because the two results are less than 9, thus providing an answer of no to the question.
Because this statement gives you a definitive no answer to the question, it is sufficient. Regardless of whether x is –7 or 4, it is not greater than 9, so it is a sufficient piece of information to answer the question. In statement (2), you learn that x is –7, which is also sufficient by itself, so the answer is answer choice D. Remember: If a statement gives you a definitive yes or no answer, then the statement is sufficient. If a statement provides you with an answer of maybe—a yes and a no—then that statement is not sufficient.
DS: General Strategy for “What Is the Value?” Questions
In a “What Is the Value?” question, a statement must provide exactly one value in order for it to be sufficient. In statement (1), x could be any of the infinite set of real numbers between 3 and 5, so it is not sufficient. In statement (2), x could be 4 or –4, so it is not sufficient. Together, x must be 4 (the only overlapping solution between the two statements), so the answer is answer choice C.
As you will learn in the full lesson, Data Sufficiency questions are an exercise in resource management. In order to succeed, you need to know both how much information is required to answer the question, and how much information you have at any given point in time. The authors of these questions are quite adept at disguising both. As seen in this question, the authors can craft situations in which you’re apt to make an assumption about a variable, perhaps that it is positive or that it is an integer. In this way they can make you think you have more information than you actually do. But they can also disguise how much information is necessary. Were the question to lead with the introductory phrase “If x represents the number of chickens on a farm,” how would the answer be entirely different?
In the GMAT Logic portion of this lesson you will learn about leveraging facts to draw conclusions, an important skill for Data Sufficiency. You will also learn to master the above answer choices—which will never change! The often-intimidating Data Sufficiency question format offers you as many competitive advantages as it does threats. Over the duration of this course, you will learn to appreciate those opportunities and to harbor significantly less anxiety over the threats.
General Strategy for Sentence Correction Questions
Contrary to popular belief, the Sentence Correction question format is as much a problem-solving exercise as the other question types. Here, the question may seem to hinge on difficult subject-verb agreement (agreement by location) and an important idiomatic principle of countability (little vs. few).
But an appreciation for the question format can take you beyond those rules and in a great many cases overcome your lack of pure grammar knowledge. Here, recognize that without the changes in the answer choices (“Decision Points”), you might not notice what is wrong with the original. The sentence is merely describing the nutrients as “little,” meaning that there are miniature nutrients and not, as required for this to be logical, a scarce number of nutrient. In the Sentence Correction lesson you will learn to play the answers off of each other looking for meaning differences—the true skill being tested in Sentence Correction. This “Decision Point” strategy will allow you to succeed on Sentence Correction problems with only a solid base of grammar skills. Much as you saw in the square-root-themed Problem Solving example, an efficient approach to logic and problem solving will take you much, much further than the mechanical application of facts, formulas, and rules.
General Strategy for Critical Reasoning Questions
In the Critical Reasoning lesson, you will learn about the different types of questions that exist (Strengthen, Weaken, Inference, and Method of Reasoning). This a Strengthen question, in which the goal is to insert a new premise that improves the quality of the conclusion.
Do you see how they make this question difficult? Answer choices A, B, D, and E all seem to matter in your preconceived view of athletic performances. However, only one of them specifically improves the relationship between the exact conclusion and the stated premises. As you will learn in the full Critical Reasoning lesson, beware of the seemingly relevant answer choice that does not exactly match the content of the argument and the specific conclusion.
In the Critical Reasoning lesson, you will learn the types of questions and application of logical principles upon which Critical Reasoning questions rely. But from this example, walk away with this: The authors of the GMAT are quite adept at setting traps that will punish you for making assumptions or entering with preconceived ideas. Much as you saw in the Data Sufficiency example, in which assuming that a variable had certain traits that were not made explicit, your job is to use the facts that exist to answer a question— to only make decisions based on what is known, and not on what you expect to see.
General Strategy for Reading Comprehension Questions
As you will learn in the lesson, the key to Reading Comprehension is your reading approach. In a passage such as this, it is easy to get bogged down in the complex, scientific details and spend way too much time reading material that is not important. By employing the “STOP” reading approach, you will learn how to read only for core information required for the broader, “Universal” question types, leaving precious time for the more difficult detail-oriented questions (that you must go back to the passage for).
