cjoy

Key thing is for us to identify the 10% of the wrong OAs. Here are the problems associated with this activity :- (1) When we give tests most of us usually go through only our wrong attempts and we don't go through our right attempts again and that is where the problem lies. For example if I give a Verbal set and there are 5 wrong OAs in it. I cross check my answers with the OAs and find that as per the OAs I have 30 rights and 11 wrongs. I would go back and check my 11 wrong ones. I wouldn't go and verify my 30 rights. Now say these 5 wrong OAs are a subset of my 30 rights. I would not be able to find out my mistakes and I would have a wrong idea about my level of preparation. I would also end up learning wrong concepts which would not be useful for me in my GMAT. (2) Next issues is the time that we need to spend on identifying the wrong OAs. It takes several hours only for verifying the OAs that we are not in agreement with. When I was preparing I found that most of these controversial OAs don't have a convincing answer in the forums. If instead we were going through some reliable material we can avoid wastage of time on this activity. Again this is what my experience was and it might not be applicable for others. But just in case if it is applicable for you then its better to do other material which has reliable OAs.

I found GMAT sets to be misleading and stopped attempting them after 5-6 verbal sets. OAs are worng for many questions and relying on the OAs would mislead you. If you feel that attempting these sets is denting your confidence I would suggest that you guys must not go ahead with the sets and rather take up othere material for practice.

I feel then the couple should not be allowed to come close to each other :) Coming to your question you can use this approach. We can figure out the total number of scenarios possible using 2^x (where x= total no of babies). For each distribution of babies find out the total number of combinations possible using xCy. Where y=total number of girls [since x=no of boys + no of girls. y can be replaced with total number of boys as well] Probability will be xCy/2^x

That should not make a difference. Here we need to use possessive form of the noun "people". We can have more than one representative.

@mc007bond This is what dictionary.com has to say about peoples When people means “the entire body of persons who constitute a community or other group by virtue of a common culture, history, etc.,” it is used as a singular, with the plural peoples: This people shares characteristics with certain inhabitants of central Asia. The aboriginal peoples of the Western Hemisphere speak many different languages. @surya167 IMO in the example that you have given right usage should be "People's Representative" and not "Peoples represenatative"

Please read my response clearly. I said "so ... as ... to" is wrong idiom to indicate conclusion I hope now its clear for you

IMO © In 2000 greater fraction (say 10X) of US population is old as compared to the fraction (say 5X) of old people in 1987. From 1987 to 2000 inceidence rate of sinusitis remains the same for all age groups. Let the incidence rate be Y (constant froom 1987 to 2000) for people in older age group. Number of older people suffering from Sinusitis in 2000= 10XY Number of older people suffering from Sinusitis in 1987 = 5XY This would mean out of total number of sinusitis patients the percentage contirnution of patients in older age group has increased.

Many a times DS questions are framed with a catch in it. You can do the following to minimize your DS mistakes:- (1) Try to identify if there is a pattern behind your DS mistakes.What I mean is that you can try and identify whether most of the mistakes are happenning in set theory/permutaions/probability/number theory/inequality or some other specific area. If you can find that the mistakes are in a specific area then go through that area once more and go through your mistakes that yoiu made in that area. This way you can identify why you made those mistakes and how to avoid them when a similar question comes next time. (2) If the DS question deals with inequality, divisibility or absolute values then substitue values in the equation and verify both the options. For example in case of inequality and abolute values 2,1,0.5,0,-0.5,-1,-2 is a good set of values you can use. (2) Read the question very carefully. Even if it means spending 15-20 seconds extra on reading it. This would make sure that you have got the question right and the first obstacle towrds getting the right answer is crossed. (3) Double checking the answer before confirming it. This had helped me in avoiding 2-3 mistakes in real GMAT. Regarding what to do in the remaining two weeks, I would suggest you to go through new questions in your weak area, revise the concepts (IMO no need to go through old questions) and give few full length tests.

IMO OA is correct. Press Secretary states that the decision has been made on the basis of the report. Report says that the cancelled projects were wasteful. Assumption is that the report doesn't idenitify many projects as wasteful in districts controlled by president's party. Lets say in all 90 projects in opposition controlled district were cancelled and only 10 in districts conteolled by president's party. If the report identifies only these 100 projects then fine. Bu what if the report identofes 180 projects equally distributed across the two groups. Argument assumes that something like that is not present in the report. Hence (B)

OAs given in SETs are not reliable. I had stopeed using SETs because of this problem. Anyway my choices are:- 1 . (E) Argument shows disadvantage of cable cars. An option which can show advantage of cable cars will be most effective in countering the argument. Option (E) gives advantage of cable car and in IMO is the right option. 2. (E) Argumnet compares use of insecticides for farmers who used insect resistant seeds with that for farmers who didn't use these seeds. It doesn't provide any information why the farmers who used insect resistant seeds tried these seeds in the first place. For these farmers problem of insects affecting their crops would have been more severe in the past and they may have used large quantities of insecticides in the previous years. Use of the new seeds would have brought down their use of insecticides significantly from previous years. Aswer to option (E) will make this clear 3. (D) Argument fails to take into account actual crime rate and makes it conclusion based on growth in crime rates.

Otori, Is the option B typed correctly? IMO option D would have been correct. If it was either like that of his brother Jeff, who preferred or like that of his brother Jeff, preferring IMO all options have issues. What is the source of this problem?

IMO (E) Information available from question stem * Average hourly output per worker has grown/ Productivity has increased * Leasure time has grown as total time workers spend on producing somethisng has reduced. Now let us use this information in an example. If it used to take 4 hours to produce something in the past now it takes only 2 hours. Taking a 40 hour week, in the past a worker would have produced 40/4=10 units of the product in a week. Now due to increase in productivity he needs to spend only 20 hour to produce 10 units. He is left with 40-20=20 hours. But the time he spends on leasure has grown say only by 10 hours. That leaves us with 20-10=10 hours unaccounted for. Answer should account for remaining 10 hours. Let us move to option (E) now. As per option (E) the number of units produced by a worker in a week has increased. Correlating this with our example, it would mean the worker produces 5 units extra. And in all he produces 15 units now. These extra 5 units account for the 10 hours and hence option (E) is the best choice. No other option satisfies the requirement of question stem.

I disagree because of the following reason. In option (A) chess is compared to other board games. Question stem doesn't carry any information about popularity of other board games. Consider these possibilities * Board games in general, irrespective of price, are not popular? * Chess is in fact already more popular than other board games If we take these two possibilities to be false (which will be an assumption that we will have to mae now), option (A) will be been correct. Since the question stem carried no information about relative popularity of chess with respect to other board games, choosing option (A) would be incorrect. Option © on the other hand directly contradicts the reason for unpopularity of chess as cited by the consorotium and IMO is the best option It only gives a reason which consortium believes to be the reason

IMO © Established Company -> Slide Rule Manufacturer Product they already have -> Slide Rule Innovation of Others -> Electornic Calculators Defense of existing product -> Making better slide rules

IMO C. As per ©, more we recycle plastics more it gets unrecyclable (if there is a word like this :-) ). This means -> Even if the consumer buys a plastic container of lower code now, after recycling the same plastic will become less suitable for recycling and code associated with it will increase. Soon the recycled plastic will reach its end of life (state when it has to be disposed in landfills) and will no longer be usable. This would mean that irrespective of people making a selection for plastic with lower code after recycling the plastic will get degraded and the purpose of this strategy will fail.

bm_gmat, You can find the sets at http://www.esnips.com/doc/f0f4bc1c-f936-4b04-aa55-1accce5cc6b7/GMAT-SETS-1-30 Don't rely on the OAs blindly. I felt that there were quite a few mistakes in the OAs and stopped attempting them after a while.

With 15 wrongs 33-34 would be typically the score you can expect on actual GMAT as well. Each mistake in verbal carries a heavier penalty as compared to quant. 15 mistakes in quant would result in a scaled score that would be in 40s, but 15 mistakes in verbal would keep the verbal scaled score in early 30s. Do you see same distribution pattern, of incorrect questions across SC,RC and CR, in your other tests as well? If yes that would help you in identifying your weak area and once you have done that you can start working particularly hard on your weak area.

I agree with the OA. What is Consortium's viewpoint? Few people play chess because chess is not always enjoyable? Why is it not enjoyable? Because its difficult to get matching opponents. How can we undermine consortium's view? By giving an evidence which will prove that there must be some other reason why chess is not popular. Option © uses Tennis analogy. Tennis satisfies all the criterions which consortium has laid out for chess but still Tennis is popular. Option © proves that the criterions that the consortium has laid out for a game to be unpopular are not true, and hence undermines the consortium's view in best possible way.

Let us split the information given in two parts (1) More tourists stay in Springfield than in Harristown (2) More tourists stay in Hotel X of Harristown than in Hotel Y of Springfield As per the question stem (1) and (2) are true and we need to identify an option that will cause both (1) and (2) being true impossible. Option (E), "Y is the only hotel in Springfield" is clearly the right option. If (E) is true then (2) can still be true but (1) will become false.

You will be able to find discussions on most of the 1000 SC questions at Test Magic by using the search option. When I was preparing for GMAT I found the search option very helpful for answering my queries. You may also want to refer scoretop for 1000 SC discussions. On scoretop site 1000 SC discussions have been compiled at the following link. http://www.scoretop.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=7794&PN=1&FID=23&PR=3 Hope this helps

Hey gmatnaive2, Your problem might be either related to time constraint or problem with a specific section in quant. Before being able to answer you better, I would need answer from you on the following two questions :- (1) Are these 6-7 careless mistakes happenning towards the end of the test or are they evenly distributed across the test? (2) Are these mistakes happenning in PS or DS? If these mistakes are towards the end of the test then as you said time is surely the factor. If they are distributed then more than time it seems to be some specifc section in quant that is causing trouble for you. Answer to my second question will help in narrowing down this section.

Kaplan was the second source where I came accross this question. This OE, given by Kaplan, didn't make much sense to me :)

This seems to be a wrong question in the first place. IMO there can be multiple right answer to this question. I had chosen D but one source told me that E is the OA (as per my prev post) and another source tells me that B is the OA. @Abhijit Your reasoning seems to be right. On second thughts I too feel that C is better.

OA is C. Apologies for the late reply. I had my test scheduled on 22nd. Didn't check this thread since then.

Hey Mohit, Don't get disheartened. Try to identify two things (1) Which section in Verbal you find to be tough? (2) Is the problem in Verbal due to accuracy or time constraint? If answer for first question is "Sentence Correction", try out the grammar lessons present in Kaplan Verbal Workbook. IMO its better than Manhattan SC guide. I found it particularly useful for Sentence Correction. If its CR and RC, give LSAT tests. RCs (though I never attempted RC from these) and CRs in these tests are tough, and would prepare you to face questions with any level of difficulty on actual GMAT. Coming to the second question, if the problem is with time limit then set milestones while giving a verbal test. You can divide a typical verbal test in three sections of 25 mins each and set a milestone to be at 14th and 28th question by 25th and 50th minute respectively. This would make sure that you don't spend too much time on few questions. If the problem is with accuracy then I would say do away with time limits for the first few verbal tests that you would be attempting and focus on getting the right answer. Ater say first 5 tests, set time limits which are say 20 % more than the normal time limit. Then as you keep on giving tests reduce this time limit gradually and reach the limit for GMAT.