{"id":6691,"date":"2011-04-14T09:00:06","date_gmt":"2011-04-14T17:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/?p=6691"},"modified":"2011-03-24T12:41:41","modified_gmt":"2011-03-24T20:41:41","slug":"kaplan-important-gmat-skills-working-with-circles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/kaplan-important-gmat-skills-working-with-circles\/","title":{"rendered":"Kaplan: Important GMAT Skills &#8211; Working with Circles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/kaplan_smaller.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-5647\" title=\"kaplan_smaller\" src=\"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/kaplan_smaller.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"122\" height=\"42\" \/><\/a>Circle problems are among the most common types of geometry questions that appear on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kaptest.com\/GMAT\/About-the-GMAT\/index.html\">GMAT<\/a>.\u00a0 As such, you must make sure that you are fully prepared for these problems on test day.<\/p>\n<p>The first key to circle questions is understanding what a circle really is.\u00a0 A circle is defined as a collection of all of the points that are equidistant from a center point.\u00a0 This distance is defined as the radius of the circle and the diameter is defined as twice the radius.\u00a0 For this reason, the radius of a circle is the key measurement when working with circles.\u00a0 On circle problems, knowing or solving for the radius will almost always be essential.<\/p>\n<p>After the radius, the most important number to understand is \u03c0.\u00a0 \u03c0 is defined as the ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter.\u00a0 Thus, the formula for finding the circumference of a circle is 2\u03c0r.\u00a0 You should also know the formula for the area of a circle, which is \u03c0r<sup>2<\/sup>.<\/p>\n<p>Once you understand the fundamentals and formulas of a circle, you must also be prepared to calculate sector areas and arc lengths.\u00a0 Sector area is the area of a slice of the circle, and arc length is the distance between two points along the circle.\u00a0 These are both calculated by setting up a ratio of the angle measure the arc or sector creates in the center of the circle to 360.\u00a0 This ratio is equal to both the sector area to the total area of the circle and the arc length to the total circumference of the circle.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, when thinking in terms of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kaptest.com\/GMAT\/About-the-GMAT\/quantitative-section.html\">Data Sufficiency<\/a> and having ENOUGH information to solve a given problem, keep in mind that if you have any ONE of the following:\u00a0 Area, Circumference, Radius, or Diameter, you can solve for all of the others!\u00a0 By keeping these rules in mind you will be able to solve the vast majority of circle problems quickly, saving time for more advanced problems that appear later in the test.\u00a0 For examples in action and more tips on circles, see the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=CuGbgZIekKA\">Kaplan GMAT Video on Circles<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>~Bret Ruber<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Circle problems are among the most common types of geometry questions that appear on the GMAT.\u00a0 As such, you must make sure that you are fully prepared for these problems&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,558,718],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gmat","category-kaplan-blog","category-data-sufficiency-gmat","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6691","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\/120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6692,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6691\/revisions\/6692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}