{"id":13754,"date":"2017-05-23T17:23:24","date_gmt":"2017-05-23T17:23:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/?p=13754"},"modified":"2019-09-05T15:53:41","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T15:53:41","slug":"un-educated-guessing-on-the-gmat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/blog\/un-educated-guessing-on-the-gmat\/","title":{"rendered":"Un-Educated Guessing on the GMAT"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Manhattan<\/p>\n

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<\/i><\/b>As any good GMAT student knows, you can\u2019t possibly answer every question correctly. In fact, if you get the first couple questions right, you will rapidly get into territory where most people can hardly figure out what the questions mean. And if you take extra time to dig into those questions and try to figure them out, it bites you in a big way when you run out of time toward the end. So we quickly learn that if you can\u2019t figure out a good plan to solve a problem, you need to go ahead and take an educated guess.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sounds great, but it\u2019s not actually that simple, is it?<\/span><\/p>\n

The problem is, educated guessing on the GMAT is actually really hard to do. It might seem easy when you look back at a problem that you\u2019ve already done and say, \u201cWell, if I didn\u2019t have time, I could have at least guessed that the answer would be positive for this reason or that reason.\u201d But on the front end, when you\u2019re looking at a problem that you can\u2019t solve, there\u2019s a pretty good chance you don\u2019t understand it well enough to make an educated guess either. I know I can\u2019t, and I know I\u2019ve listened to lots of people explain their \u201ceducated\u201d guess and thought, \u201cThat was more lucky than educated.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the solution? Un-educated guessing on the GMAT!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe \u201cPure Guessing\u201d would be a better name. Or \u201cAnswer-Based Guessing.\u201d Or \u201cQuick and Easy Guessing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That really gets at the point, though, doesn\u2019t it? If we need to guess primarily for the sake of saving time and mental energy, we can\u2019t afford to put too much time and mental energy into our guessing on the GMAT. So we need strategies that can be applied quickly and easily. And now that you\u2019ve hung with me to this point, you\u2019re probably ready for an actual strategy! So here it is.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Data Sufficiency, Always Guess Sufficient<\/b><\/h4>\n

How\u2019s that for quick and easy? But there\u2019s some solid reasoning behind it if you think about how DS works. To prove a statement insufficient, you just need examples, a yes case and a no case, or two different values. But to properly prove a statement sufficient, you need to use logic or algebra to show that you get a definite answer. So what\u2019s harder? A few test cases or a logical\/algebraic proof? Most people would agree that the proof of sufficient is harder. So in a situation where you\u2019re looking at a statement and can\u2019t prove it either way, it makes sense to guess that you\u2019re in the harder situation (sufficient). <\/span><\/p>\n

Another way to think about it is that when a statement is difficult to work with, it most often means there aren\u2019t very many values that fit with the statement. In other words, the statement is very constraining, and that means a challenging statement is actually more likely to be sufficient than insufficient. <\/span><\/p>\n

And to be clear, you still go through the step-by-step of evaluating each statement and, if necessary, evaluating them together, but if you can\u2019t decide at any point, you guess sufficient. Some examples:<\/span><\/p>\n