“Many a true word is said in jest.”—I don’t know, but I heard it from my mother.

Once upon a time in America, when I was a boy, my father, an engineer, said to me, “You can make numbers do anything you want them to do.”  This was the beginning of my cynicism.  But never mind that.  My father was fluent in four languages: English, German, French, and Algebra.  My father was also a very honest man.  His comment relied on the fact that most people can’t read Algebra—he just let people fool themselves.  Teaching GMAT classes, I combat the fact that many people can’t read Algebra.  Like my father, the GMAT exploits that weakness and lets—nay, encourages—people to fool themselves.  Thus, for many, preparing for the quantitative portion of the GMAT is akin to studying a foreign language.  (I know that even many native speakers feel that preparing for the verbal portion of the GMAT is also akin to studying a foreign language.  But that’s a different topic.)  In any case, you want to make your Algebra as fluent as your French. . .yes, for most of you, that was one of those jokes.

I know that some of you disagreed with the above and feel that the problem is an inability to understand math.  But that’s not true, at least on the level necessary to succeed on the GMAT.  If you really didn’t have enough synapses, they wouldn’t let you out without a keeper—because you couldn’t tip, or comparison shop, or count your change.  It’s a literacy problem.  Think about the math units in the course.  Truthfully, the first one is often a death march.  By the end, as country folk say, I often feel like I’m whipping dead horses.  On the other hand, the lesson concerning probability and combinations, putatively a more advanced topic, usually goes really well.  Why?  Because folks can read the words and understand their meaning.  Conversely, folks just stare at the algebraic symbols as if they were hieroglyphics.  The problem is that putting a Rosetta Stone in the book bag would make it weigh too much. . .kidding.  But if you can’t read the hieroglyphics, the mummy will get you—just like in the movies.

It really is a literacy issue and should be approached in that fashion.  You still don’t believe me?  You want specific examples?  I got examples, a pro and a con.  On the affirmative side, I once worked one on one with a man who came to me because his math was in shreds.  Because he couldn’t read what the symbols were saying.  Partly because his mother had once said, “Your sister is the one that’s good at math.”  As far as the GMAT is concerned, she was wrong, and so was your mother, if she said that.  Anyway, one day I gave him a high level Data Sufficiency word problem concerning average daily balances on a credit card.  He looked at it for about 30 seconds, and he didn’t write anything on his scrap paper.  Then he turned to me and said the answer was blah blah.  And he was right.  I looked at him and said, “How did you do that?  You’re not that good.”  (Yes, this is also an example of how mean I am to private students.)  But—and here’s the real punch line—he said, “It was about debt; I understood what the words meant.”  And there you go.  As a by the way, he worked very hard, became competent although not brilliant quantitatively, scored 710—97%V, 72%Q*—and went to Kellogg.

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Exciting news for iPhone users! Our new Pocket GMAT app is now available for FREE in the iTunes App store. Containing over 350 GMAT quant flash cards, the app uses an adaptive algorithm developed by Manhattan Prep instructors to help you target cards you most need help with. Allowing you to work on your GMAT quant anywhere and at any time, the Pocket GMAT app is sure to be an indispensable tool for iPhone users.

Pocket GMAT is available for the iPhone and iPod Touch and was built with our friends at Learningpod, who are focused on making great practice and assessment questions free for everyone. In addition to the adaptive algorithm, there is also a sequential practice mode that lets you flip through the cards however you want. You also have the ability to enter a Target Date to keep you on pace and track your progress. The flash cards are organized into “KeyRings” by topic and include algebra, number properties, word problems, geometry, fractions, decimals, and percents.

You can download the app via the iTunes App store, here.

In the first part of this article, we took a look at how to read MSR passages and take some light notes. We finished off with a problem—now let’s talk about the solution! (Note: click on the link earlier in this paragraph; you’re going to want the tab text when reading through the solution.)

Here’s the problem again:

 “Based on the information in the passage and tables, it can be determined that the average monthly meat consumption, in pounds, by the residents of Barras in the AD 1000s was which of the following?

“(A) 9,600

“(B) 10,000

“(C) 16,000

“(D) 17,400

“(E) 18,000”

How did it go? Our first task is to figure out where to go. Which tab is likely to be most useful in answering this question? They ask about meat consumption and also specify Barras in the AD 1000s.

Both tables (in tabs 2 and 3) talk about Barras and meat consumption, but this question asks about pounds—that sends us to tab 3.

Read the key up at top. The table shows average monthly meat consumption (good, that’s what we want!) in pounds for a 4-person family. We want pounds. Do we want a 4-person family?

Nope. The question asks about the total consumption in pounds for the residents of Barras. We’re going to need to do a little calculating here.

In the 1000s, Barras’s average monthly consumption per 4-person family was 160 pounds. Per person, then, consumption was 160 /4 = 40 pounds. Hmm, now what?

We need to know the total number of residents in Barras in the 1000s. Where did they tell us that?

Right! Tab 1 gave some information about population at the end of the paragraph about Barras. The passage says that there were 400 residents, on average, in the AD 1000s.

400 residents multiplied by 40 pounds per resident is a total of 16,000 pounds.

The correct answer is (C).

What did you learn about MSRs from this problem? I think there are 3 key takeaways, which I list at the end of this article; try to come up with your own before you read them.

Let’s try another problem from this MSR; give yourself about 1.5 to 2 minutes total to answer all three parts of this problem.

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Here are the free GMAT events we’re holding this week. All times are local unless otherwise specified.

9/4/13– Washington, DC – Free Trial Class- 6:30PM- 9:30PM

9/4/13– San Francisco, CA- Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM

9/4/13– Online- Free Trial Class– 8:00PM- 11:00PM (EDT)

9/5/13–  Encino, CA – Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM

9/5/13– New York, NY –GMAT Preview at New York Center– 6:30PM- 8:30PM

9/5/13– GMAT Preview at Madison Center– 6:00PM- 8:00PM

9/5/13– Irvine, CA- Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM

9/5/13– Los Angeles, CA- Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM

9/7/13– Online- Free Trial Class– 2:00PM- 5:00PM (EDT)

9/7/13– Madison, WI – Free Trial Class– 2:00PM- 5:00PM

9/7/13– Boston, MA – Free Trial Class– 2:00PM- 5:00PM

9/8/13– Online- Free Trial Class– 10:00AM- 1:00PM (EDT)

9/8/13– London- Free Trial Class– 5:30PM- 8:30PM

9/8/13– Bellaire, TX- Free Trial Class – 6:00PM- 9:00PM
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Given that Integrated Reasoning may become more important for those who want to go into consulting or banking, let’s take a look at a Multi-Source Reasoning (MSR) problem!

In this first part, we’re going to take a look at how to read and take notes on the MSR text. In the next article, we’ll do a problem that goes with the text. This MSR is from the free GMATPrep test, so if you have not yet taken GMATPrep, don’t read this article yet! Put it away and come back to it after you’ve seen the problem yourself.

MSRs appear as three tabs of information. I can’t format things into tabs here, so I’ll just show it all to you one after the other. You have about 2.5 minutes per question on IR. This MSR has a total of 3 associated questions, but I’m only giving you one in this article. Spend about 2 to 2.5 minutes on the read-through, leaving yourself about 1.5 to 2 minutes to spend on each question.

Tab 1

“An archaeological team has been excavating three ancient village sites—Barras, Agna, and Cussaia—looking in particular at kitchen waste dumps as a way to understand the villages’ dietary patterns and trading relationships. What follows are brief summaries of their findings.

“Barras: The best data come from stratified finds in this oceanside village, which was inhabited from AD 600 to 1300 and was the only one of the three villages to produce seafood, its main dietary item. Though Barras residents hunted on land and raised crops, this provided relatively small amounts of food. As Barras’s overall prosperity rose, there was more food available per person, and its population increased from an average of 100 residents in the AD 600s to 400 residents in the AD 1000s to 600 residents in the AD 1200s.

“Agna: Agna was established in an inland forest around AD 800 and its residents mainly hunted but also ate considerable amounts of fruit, nuts, and other forest-vegetable products. They also traded meat to Barras for other goods. With no open fields, Agna grew no grain.

“Cussaia: Predating Barras, Cussaia depended heavily on raising grain crops and eventually obtained seafood and meat via trade. It traded directly only with Barras, because a mountain range separated it from Agna, though some products may have been traded between Agna and Cussaia via Barras.

“Additionally, there is no evidence that any other village traded with Barras, Agna, or Cussaia prior to AD 1300.”

—

Tab 2

“Barras: Percentages, by Estimated Weight, of Dietary Items Consumed per Person per Month”

Century	Seafood	Meat	Grains	Other
600s	65%	10%	10%	15%
700s	65%	10%	15%	10%
800s	60%	15%	15%	10%
900s	45%	30%	12%	13%
1000s	45%	30%	12%	13%
1100s	60%	10%	20%	10%
1200s	55%	25%	10%	10%

—

Tab 3

“Barras, Agna: Estimated Average Monthly Meat and Seafood Consumption (lb per 4-Person Family)”

Century	Barras		Agna
	Seafood	Meat	Seafood	Meat
600s	240	37	not applicable	not applicable
700s	250	38	not applicable	not applicable
800s	275	70	60	240
900s	258	172	66	180
1000s	240	160	66	186
1100s	275	45	8	240
1200s	265	120	45	240

—

That’s a lot to read through in only 2 minutes or so. The key is to be able to divide the info into three categories:

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Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

They manage to pick such interesting topics for Reading Comprehension, don’t they? It’s always the kind of thing you’d choose to read at home in your free time!

Wait. No, that’s not quite right. But the topics are relevant to business school…well, occasionally. Hmm. Read more

Imagine two students sit down to study GMAT questions together. The first takes out 100 addition questions and gets all of them right. The other takes out 100 of the most-difficult, 800-level GMAT questions one can find, and gets all of them wrong. Who benefits more from this type of studying? It’s an absurd thought experiment since it’s fairly obvious that neither of these students is benefitting much from their study method. But over my years of teaching the GMAT, I’ve seen far too many students who fit too closely into one of these two camps. Students who are great at quant but not at verbal, yet spend all of their time doing quant questions because they are “more fun”. Other students are determined to score 750 and spend all of their time and effort doing as many 700-800 level questions as they can find, not seeing an improvement, and thinking that the solution is to see more 700-800 level questions. This isn’t some profound discovery, but too many students miss this critical point:

You get better at the GMAT by identifying a weakness, learning a better/faster method to attack that weakness, and practicing that method until it becomes habit. Repeat.

Note that this doesn’t mean that you have to do 50 rate questions and by question 50, you’ll be a master at determining the train schedule between two different towns. Nor do you need to do every question in every GMAT-related book you can get your hands on. If you’ve been to a Manhattan class, you’ve seen first-hand that our instructors’ goal is not to do as many questions as we can cram into a class. There are some topics in class where we only look at 4-5 questions, but we spend an hour breaking down the methods, key words, traps, and wrong answer choices that will be similar to the methods, key words, traps, and wrong answer choices that students will one day see on the real test. The goal is never to see why Answer Choice E is a trap answer. It’s to see why Answer Choice E fits into a certain category of trap answers and learn how to avoid that category of trap answers come test day.

So how does this relate to your own studying? Let’s talk about what a productive 1-hour study session might look like by examining what many of my own study sessions looked like while I was studying for my GMAT.

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When under pressure, do you tend to sit back and assess the situation in a thoughtful way, or do you instead recall everything you know and start jotting down formulae such as W=RT on your scratch paper? If you have a tendency for the latter, this blog post is for you.

I’ve recently had a few tutoring students who all suffered from the same issue: they try a problem in a relaxed state and can easily solve it, sometimes without even putting pen to paper… But when they are in the midst of a practice test (and even more so in a real test) they can see the same problem and spend 4 minutes on it, with a lot of messy algebra, and often times they just give up and move on (the right thing to do under that circumstance!).

The Quant section of the GMAT may feel like a math test, but I assure you it is not. It is a cleverly designed assessment of your thinking faculties, and if you turn on ‘autopilot’ you are no longer thinking. In order to succeed on this test, you have to think your way through each problem.

When I take the GMAT, I imagine that I’m hanging out with my buddies at the bar – we’re telling each other jokes and sharing brain teasers. Here’s how it works:  you’re all just out having a good time, there’s no pressure, maybe you’ve had a couple of drinks so you only try to solve those brain teasers that you think you can solve in 2-3 minutes or less. If the brain teaser seems too hard, you just give up (and no-one will think less of you!)

I suspect that your approach to the following problem would be completely different if your mindset is a ‘bar’ mindset vs. an ‘autopilot’ mindset:

I’m driving at a constant speed and it took me 4 hours to finish the first 1/3 of my trip. How long will it take me to complete the rest of the trip if I double my speed?

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Here are the free GMAT events we’re holding this week. All times are local unless otherwise specified.

8/5/13– Glendale, CA – Free Trial Class- 6:30PM- 9:30PM

8/5/13– Washington, DC- Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM

8/5/13– Online- Free Trial Class– 9:00PM- 12:00AM (EDT)

8/5/13– New York, NY- Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM

8/7/13– Durham, NC – Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM

8/7/13– Dallas, TX- Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM

8/7/13– New York, NY-Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM

8/7/13– Online- The Last Minute MBA Application presented by mbaMission– 4:00PM- 5:30PM (EDT)

8/7/13– Bellaire, TX- Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM

8/8/13– San Francisco, CA- Free Trial Class– 6:30AM- 9:30PM

8/10/13– Boston, MA – Free Trial Class– 10:00AM- 1:00PM

8/10/13– Online- Live Online GMAT Preview– 2:00PM- 3:30PM (EDT)

8/10/13– New York, NY – Free Trial Class– 2:00PM- 5:00PM

8/11/13– Online – Free Trial Class– 7:00AM- 10:00AM (EDT)

8/11/13– New York, NY – Free Trial Class– 5:30AM- 8:30PM Read more

We invite you to test your GMAT knowledge for a chance to win! Each week, we will post a new Challenge Problem for you to attempt. If you submit the correct answer, you will be entered into that week’s drawing for a free Manhattan GMAT Prep item. Tell your friends to get out their scrap paper and start solving!
Here is this week’s problem:

A total of m different points are selected on a particular line, and a total of n different points are selected on another line parallel to the first, where each of m and n is greater than 1. In how many different ways can a triangle be made with its vertices at three of the selected points?

A. m²n + mn²

B. mn(m + n – 2)

C. 

D. 

E. 

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