VeritasPrepBrian wrote:
Great advice, MisterEko - and not only does that boost confidence but it also helps you to get a better feel for what kinds of information you might need in the "trickier" statement. In your example, x = 6 for statement 2 may get you to recognize that statement 1 only works if x is positive or something like that. Because you're actively starting to work with the problem, you're getting your mind around how to solve it, and that can be extremely helpful.
While we're on that - here's another tip about "the easier statement":
When a statement is clearly insufficient on its own, you MUST make a decision about whether:
-You need that information to make the other statement work (you're shooting for C)
OR
-They're trying to make you think you need that statement, but the other statement actually already tells you that information (so it's A or B)
This is a strategy we call "Why Are You Here?" - you need to determine why the "weak" individual statement was provided. For example, consider the question:
How many integers x exist such that a < x < b?
1) b - a = 6
2) a and b are nonintegers
Statement 2 is clearly insufficient - it tells us nothing about x and the range of a and b is infinite. So, here, you can infer that "nonintegers" is a decision point for you - do you need to be told that a and b are nonintegers, or is that something that's embedded within statement 1 or that's just unimportant?
Because you know that you need to make this decision, you should test statement 1 with both integers and nonintegers:
Integers: 7 - 1 = 6, values of x are 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 ---> answer is 5
Nonintegers: 7.5 - 1.5 = 6, values of x are 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 ---> answer is 6
Now we know that statement 1 is insufficient on its own (we got two answers) and we knew that statement 2 was no good, so the answer is C. And by using the weaker statement, statement 2, as a decision point, we could efficiently derive all of that.
Isn't it nice when we discover ways to beat the GMAT with its own weapons?