crisronaldo wrote:
Congratulation on your admirable result. Appreciated for your sharing strategy, especially in Critical reasoning. In this field (CR), I have a few questions as below:
1. What is your rationale (or why do you think) that only read the sentence carefully which includes the “exact word” in the question without reading the premise (“reading it from end to end”) is the enough condition to solve the CR question? (I don’t mention the case the question includes this plan, this substance as you have already solved a
OG example)
2. In your side, is there any risk that you could choose the wrong answer if you follow up this strategy? If yes, pls explain the reason.
3. Could you take an examples (level 700+) and give explanation based on this strategy without reading other premise?
4. You mention that Strengthen and Weaken are easiest types, while Assumption and Inference is harder. In my side, the approach to Strengthen, Weaken and Assumption is similar as one must find the assumption to break Strengthen, Weaken and Assumption question types. As such, the level of difficulty is the same among these types, except for that Assumption need additional negation testing.
Is there any wrong in my mind? And could you give more explanation why in your side, the assumption is harder than Strengthen and Weaken?
Look forward on your response. Great thanks!
Here is a question somebody send me to answer. It is one that I only need the first sentence to answer. Although, I must warn you it required a lot of reasoning and ultimately, I did go back to read half a sentence more to confirm my answer:
It is ludicrous to assert that the math department's new policy, allowing the use of non-programmable calculators during exams, is discriminatory. Though a calculator can be expensive, and some students will not be able to purchase one, the department is not requiring that students use one, it is only allowing them to do so if they desire. Thus, any student who does not purchase a calculator for use on his exams will not be penalized; he or she will be no worse off at exam time than he or she was prior to the policy change.
To which of the following would the opponents of the math department's new policy be most likely to refer, in an attempt to have the new policy abolished?
A. The difference in speed between a top-of-the-line calculator and a bottom-end one is significant.
B. Each individual student's performance is evaluated against the performance of his or her fellow students on math department exams.
C. The university student services department will make available to all students calculators that can be borrowed as library books are.
D. Much of the math being tested on most of the exams in question is so complex that it requires a calculator-like mind to do the necessary computations.
E. When calculators were not allowed, more than half of all students failed their math exams
Step 1: Read the question. This is WEAKEN: "Opponents", "abolished". Topic of discussion: "new policy". They do not specify what is the new policy so I read up.
Step 2 & 3: First sentence explains what is the "new policy": "allowing the use of non-programmable calculators during exams". It also denied that this policy is discriminatory which means the opponent must have cited "discriminatory" as their reason to oppose. For something to be discriminative, it must benefit some students more than other --> I must find a way to show that calculator use in exam room affects students differently. I stop reading here but will come back to confirm my choice.
Step 4: Skim through choice:
A. Compare between different type of calculator --> could affect student differently --> leave it
B. It didn't mention calculator but it did mentions student, more importantly it mentions comparison between student (evaluation) --> leave it for now.
C. This answer actually support the policy since it equalize all student chance --> eliminate
D. Type of math are not the one being debate, it also do not mention calculator but rather "calculator-like mind" (there are 2 different thing) --> out of scope --> eliminate.
E. We don't care about "When calculators were not allowed", we care about when it is allowed --> out of scope --> eliminate.
Step 5: I have two good candidate left A and B.
The simple way would be come back up and read a bit more then choose, the hard but take less effort way is to reason them first
A. A seems like it could be the correct answer because different calculator --> different speed --> different student performance --> discrimination right? Actually, you must note that although calculator is the subject of debate, the end result of the debate is the students' performance. This is important to note because one of GMAT favorite "seemingly right but ultimately wrong" answer types is the one that allows you to make a reasonable assumption which is actually not supported in the text. While "different calculator --> different speed --> different student performance" sound logical, it is just your mind saying it's a possibility. There's no guarantee that speed affects student performance, it's possible that the student with the fast calculator just spend half of his/her exam doing nothing and get the same score as everybody else
.
B. B basically mean that the grade are curved, which means if your class perform better and you remains the same then your grade goes down. I choose this question immediately because it's the only one left. But to be sure, I read up. For this fact to be the detergent, I need information that show by introduce the calculator, they are improving some performance and leave other the same. If you look up, you will see clearly this is the case. --> CHOOSE
To answer some of your questions:
1. Reading from end to end make your mind lazy, you read the words but might not be able to create a coherent line of reasoning. By starting with the question, you are more proactive in your reading and allows you to reason. And I don't just read the sentence with the "exact word" alone, if the sentence require more clarification (in previous case: "scale", in this case: none), I will read on further. What matter most is don't read more than you need, it will confuse you. Also, tracing the line of reasoning backward actually help you point out the assumption in lots of case.
2. Even if you follow this strategy correctly and think clearly, you can get around 95% correct (which is what I hope for in GMAT CR anyway). The reason is simple, there is a chance that you actually miss some information in the part you don't read. To minimize this, if I have more time than I need, I will take it slow and actually read back up if I am unsure about my answer. If I am short on time, I just move on.
3. I hope the question about satisfy, although as you see, in the end I did look up. If I don't have the time, I will choose it on the base that it's the only answer that don't have a mistake in it.
4. I think which type is easier depend on the person. For me weaken and strengthen is easier because the type of answer are often typical. You are right about weaken and strengthen are mostly backing up or breaking down an assumption. I found that Assumption in general are a bit harder because in one line of reasoning, there could be more than one assumption. The answer could include one correct assumption and one that require another extra minor assumption (from our side) to match with the reasoning and I often get that wrong.
close
24 Mar 2015, 21:07
. I'm completely serious, the difference is big enough and constant enough to be noticed.
