IR TA asking for a tedious claculation

Question

Hi Experts, Recently I have come across an IR Table Analysis question that asked to compare between the MEANs and MEDIANs of 3 columns, each containing 21 ROWS and further each FIGURE was like 358,146 or 516,770. At first glance only I was intrigued, but I thought there may be some SHORTCUT. But the explanation suggests to use CALCULATOR OR just ESTIMATE

By estimation too, we actually get very close values to the medians. My question is: Is it a good IDEA to just GUESS this kind of Q and move on?? Because after spending 2-3 min if I find that I am in the middle of sea :roll:

that would be fatal to IR Section, where time is SO limited. Any suggestions will be highly appreciated.

~Binit.

KyleWiddison · Answer

On IR, guessing on a few questions is a good idea because you don't have to get all questions right to get a top score and timing is often an issue on IR. If you want to complete all questions you can only spend 2.5 minutes on each question. Even if you are skipping 2 questions, you'll have 3 minutes per question. That means any question that would take you over 3 minutes to complete is a great candidate for skipping.

KW

KW

OptimusPrepJanielle · Answer

Hello binit,

If you're fine for even average or above average on IR it's more than reasonable to guess on a few questions. It's simply not worth the mental energy. You don't want to exhaust yourself before you even start quant. Get familiar with the question types as you study and learn which ones are easier for you to answer. When those come up especially, try to bank on those. If you find yourself at the 2-2.5 minute mark on any question move on.

I hope that helps!

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi binit,

Since many Business Schools have publicly stated that they don't use the IR score as part of the application process, you shouldn't spend too much of your time or energy worrying about IR. While I would not recommend that you abandon the subject entirely (you should do a reasonable job in preparing for IR and dealing with it on Test Day), no individual IR question is worth that much trouble.

That having been said, it's possible that "your way" of dealing with this particular question IS the issue - there might be a faster way to get to the solution. As such, you might consider posting it in the IR Forum here:

integrated-reasoning-ir-177/

You will likely gain some perspective on how best to tackle the prompt.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

IR TA asking for a tedious claculation

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