Geometry and Permutation and Combinations

I have what may be excellent news. The degree to which geometry and permutations and combinations questions are discussed in the GMAT community far outpace the way that GMAC actually tests these topics. In 2000-2001, GMAC made a pretty strong shift away from weighting Permutations and Combinations. Probability, Permutations, and Combinations now COMBINE to be ~4-5% of quant questions. Of that, probability is, by far, the heaviest weight. And permutations and combinations are rarely, if ever, of the complexity broadly discussed among students, tutors, and courses...those topics just look "cooler" than arithmetic and algebra, so people like talking about them...except for you, maybe.

Nothing on the GMAT is there because schools care whether you know the content; it's only there to test how you think. Do you think business schools care at all whether you can do 8th-grade geometry? They are looking for the next business tycoons. They want the next Musk, Jobs, Gates, Bezos, not the next middle school geometry teacher. So what's the GMAT trying to test? Option 1: geometry, permutations, algebra, absolute value. Option 2: creative and elegant solutions, figuring out what matters and what doesn't, out-of-the-box thinking, problem solving. If you agree that it's Option 2, look for ways to answer math questions (especially geometry and algebra) without doing the textbook math when there's a math topic that doesn't resonate.

Check out these posts:
Geometry: https://gmatclub.com/forum/a-circle-o-with-a-radius-of-4-is-inscribed-by-a-regular-hexagon-what-326191.html#p3028431
Permutations and Combinations: https://gmatclub.com/forum/team-a-and-team-b-are-competing-against-each-other-in-a-game-241461-20.html#p3024125

And if you search for the following in the PS forum, you'll find some questions that fit the description of avoiding the textbook math:
ThatDudeKnowsBallparking
ThatDudeKnowsPITA
ThatDudeKnowsHiddenPlugIn
ThatDudeKnowsPluggingIn