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Brian Galvin is the Director of Academic Programs at Veritas Prep, where he oversees all of the company\u2019s GMAT preparation courses<\/a>.<\/p>\n At any given time, the Forbes magazine list of the richest people in the world will include multiple members of the Walton family, with money coming from family patriarch Sam Walton\u2019s Wal-Mart fortune.\u00a0 For one person to become a billionaire is an unthinkable feat; for a man to ensure that each of his children will not only be a billionaire, but rank highly on the list of the world\u2019s richest people, is an unbelievable feat.\u00a0 And Sam Walton owes much of it to a concept that will serve you well on the GMAT: the mathematical concept of \u201cgreater than\u201d (represented as >) includes numbers just a tiny fraction above that limit.<\/p>\n Walton\u2019s competitive advantage in his first retail stores was that he was willing to accept a smaller markup on his items in order to attract more customers with a low price.\u00a0 He knew that \u201c> $3.00\u201d included, for example, $3.01, and not merely rounder (and more profitable) numbers like $3.50 and $4.00.\u00a0 Content with a modest profit-per-item if it eventually brought him a massive number of items sold, Walton built an empire on fractional profits \u2013 billions of dollars a penny at a time.<\/p>\n On the GMAT, you can employ this same ideology \u2013 after all, business schools love a business model that leads to billions of dollars \u2013 to conquer difficult Data Sufficiency problems.\u00a0 Inequality problems often require this concept.\u00a0 Consider the question:<\/p>\n If x > 0, is x ><\/span> 6?<\/p>\n (1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 x2 <\/sup> >\u00a0 35<\/p>\n (2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 x3<\/sup> >\u00a0 217<\/p>\n Statement 1 may look pretty tempting, as if x2<\/sup> is greater than 35, you might think that it must be 36 or higher, making x at the very least 6.\u00a0 But x2<\/sup> can be 35.01, in which case x would be just slightly less than 6.\u00a0 Because of this, statement 1 is not sufficient.\u00a0 Statement 2 is, indeed, sufficient.\u00a0 If x3<\/sup> were 216, x would be 6; since we know that x3<\/sup> is greater than 216, then x must be greater than 6.<\/p>\n Particularly when dealing with exponents and roots, using fractions and decimals may seem cumbersome, or may not even occur to you.\u00a0 But in cases like the above, it\u2019s crucial that you consider the potential for those small, fractional shifts off of the value in the inequality, as the GMAT loves to test your ability to recognize those Waltonesque marginal changes.\u00a0 You don\u2019t need to fully calculate these minute values if, like Walton, you simply consider what would happen if you took the \u201cobvious\u201d value and shaved it by a mere fraction.\u00a0 Calculate the value for the integer, and then move the decimal slightly to see what the change would be.\u00a0 As Walton found, those tiny insights can lead to your posting huge numbers.<\/p>\n Read more GMAT advice on the Veritas Prep blog<\/a>. Ready to sign up for a GMAT course<\/a>? Enroll through GMAT Club and save up to $180 (use discount code GMATC10)!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Brian Galvin is the Director of Academic Programs at Veritas Prep, where he oversees all of the company\u2019s GMAT preparation courses. At any given time, the Forbes magazine list of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gmat","category-uncategorized","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3399"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3870,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3399\/revisions\/3870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}