Author Topic: Stuff you hate  (Read 171647 times)

FaustWolf

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Re: Stuff you hate
« Reply #615 on: May 12, 2008, 01:02:33 am »
Oh man, permutations...*shivers*.

No doubt it's one of those tests you have to pay for as well.

ZeaLitY

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Re: Stuff you hate
« Reply #616 on: May 12, 2008, 01:39:53 am »
Here are the biggest offenders. What does the last one even mean? The blue circled answer is the correct one. I guessed on all of these anyway.

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placidchap

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Re: Stuff you hate
« Reply #617 on: May 12, 2008, 11:00:56 am »
What are you going to grad school for?  I thought you were a Business student?  Last time I checked you don't need to know permutations for business.

FaustWolf

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Re: Stuff you hate
« Reply #618 on: May 12, 2008, 11:18:26 am »
Is the answer to the last one "5"? It's a horrible ruse, not giving you instructions on how to "read" the table. In any case, I'd better snatch these for GRE practice. Was this a math subject test ZeaLitY, or a general graduation test of some sort?

And, dare I ask, do they even allow you to use calculators on this test? 'Cuz, ya know, it's not like you'll ever have a calculator available to you when you need to do math in real life. The only situation I can think of in which calculator-less math skills would come in handy is if you get shipwrecked on a deserted island populated by super-advanced monkeys who force you to churn out trigonometry answers under threat of having your skull bashed in with coconuts.
« Last Edit: May 12, 2008, 12:48:49 pm by FaustWolf »

Thought

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Re: Stuff you hate
« Reply #619 on: May 12, 2008, 02:20:08 pm »
To be fair, Faust, it isn't like the time restrictions on standardized tests are all that realistic either. If we start trying to apply context to standardized tests... well that just wont due.

If one is going to go through all the work of solving a math problem, why even bother with multiple choice? (oh yeah, because multiple choice is cheaper than an actually effective medium.)

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Re: Stuff you hate
« Reply #620 on: May 12, 2008, 03:45:54 pm »
Here are the biggest offenders. What does the last one even mean? The blue circled answer is the correct one. I guessed on all of these anyway.

What's the problem with them?

The last one? Well, I've not seen this sort of thing ever before, but the value where the vertical and horizontal intersect is equal to their sum. Ie. x + 4 = 1. Therefore you know x = -3. Keep doing that till you can find both the values of m and n.

Why would you need a calculator for this? I guess maybe for the trigonometry. Eh... no. Calculator doesn't help you. It's just that, see, the middle bottom angle there is 180-2x, eh? Well, the entirety of the left triangle is 180. So call the unknown N, it's 180 = x + 180 - 2x + N, you get N = x. Both are isocoles triangles. Therefore AD = BD = BC = 6.

Hadriel

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Re: Stuff you hate
« Reply #621 on: May 12, 2008, 04:31:44 pm »
Or even simpler; you could just recognize that the triangle on the right is equilateral and that its side length is the same as the one it gives you, automatically meaning the requested side length is 6.

For the division problem, all you have to do is factor 96 into the factors on top, which renders it 8*3*(2^2), meaning that 96^2 = 8^2 * 3^2 * 2^4.  Thus you have your answer.

The first problem can be done by noticing that it takes nine iterations for the sequence to reach -4, thus meaning n is 10.  The fence problem is just adding together 200 plus the length of that quarter-circle, which will be 50π, which is slightly larger than 150, leaving 357 the closest number.  Finally, the task force problem features six possible arrangements of men and three possible arrangements of women, meaning 18 possible task forces.

(edited to include all incorrect problems, because I'm bored, but apparently not bored enough to list the problems in the right order)
« Last Edit: May 12, 2008, 04:48:39 pm by Hadriel »

Thought

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Re: Stuff you hate
« Reply #622 on: May 12, 2008, 04:48:05 pm »
As Faust pointed out, that last one is nasty because it presents a chart and doesn't inform the reader how to interpret it. That isn't very nice as it requires one to re-arrange ones "mental grammar," as it were, to make sense of the "equation." To offer a linguistic equivalent, it would have been similar to a question asking information about the following sentence:

"Hates Zeality being tested on math"

Such a sentence is, effectively, no different than "Zeality hates being tested on math," but I switched the sentence construction (so it goes verb, subject, object, indirect object rather than the normal subject, verb, object, indirect object).

To relate that back to that problem, the problem reads "+" "X" "4" "1", with "=" being "gapped." One has to rearrange the "grammar" of the equation to make sense of it. "+" is essentially a verb for math, "x" being the subject, "4" being the object, and "1" being the indirect object.

Once that has been done, it is just simple addition (and subtraction); any 2nd grader should be able to do the majority of it. However, it also is a trick question. On a math section of a test, one has the expectation of being tested on math (silly expectation, I know, but blame the name). That problem is really just a thinking problem in the guise of math; it is testing how flexible a person's mind is, not how good they are at math. Thus, it is breaking a person's expectations. Very sneaksy.

Oddly, the test isn't uniform in testing one's "metathinking" apart from one's ability at math. Take the third problem, for example. With a 7th grade understanding of math, one could easily determine that the answer is around 350 (as the length of the hypotenuse is easy to roughly estimate, and the added length of the rest, to take into account the curve of the quarter circle, wouldn't that significant). If there had been a random distribution of answers, that is all one would need to do in order to find the answer. But no, the answers aren't randomly distributed; the designers specifically put two numbers that are unusually close together in the answer options (all other possible answers are around 50 apart, but two are only 10 apart). The problem would have been incredibly easy to solve if the test makers had played fair. But no, instead of being able to just change one's perspective, one really is forced to figure out one quarter the circumference of a circle to be sure one is getting the correct answer.

Indeed, from that page, I am not even sure if the designers were really aware of what they were testing in the first place.
« Last Edit: May 12, 2008, 04:50:18 pm by Thought »

FaustWolf

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Re: Stuff you hate
« Reply #623 on: May 12, 2008, 06:04:01 pm »
Why would you need a calculator for this? I guess maybe for the trigonometry. Eh... no. Calculator doesn't help you. It's just that, see, the middle bottom angle there is 180-2x, eh? Well, the entirety of the left triangle is 180. So call the unknown N, it's 180 = x + 180 - 2x + N, you get N = x. Both are isocoles triangles. Therefore AD = BD = BC = 6.

True enough for that problem, but often they'll ask you to solve trig questions that require previous memorization of what the sine and cosine of 60o are, etc., etc. If it's been years since you committed those babies to memory, you're pretty much farked. In my math-monkey island analogy, I'd be coconutted to death. Unless there's a way of deriving those facts on the fly? I'm open to suggestions. The best I've come up with is that you must, at the very least, memorize what a 30-60-90 and 45-45-90 triangle "look like" in terms of side lengths.

This is turning into The Compendium Guide to the GRE.
« Last Edit: May 12, 2008, 06:11:04 pm by FaustWolf »

Thought

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Re: Stuff you hate
« Reply #624 on: May 12, 2008, 06:12:04 pm »
This is turning into The Compendium Guide to the GRE.

Ooo, is this a new Fan Project? Crono Calculus? Lucca Literature Review? Marle Mathematics? Frog Physics? Robo Writing composition? Ayla Art? Magus .... I got nothing for Magus.

Hadriel

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Re: Stuff you hate
« Reply #625 on: May 12, 2008, 06:23:27 pm »
If there was a GRE Fucking People's Shit Up subject test, I guess we'd have material for Magus.  Though he was a prince of Zeal, which means he probably had an excellent education.  Considering their level of technical advancement and his native intelligence I'd be surprised if he couldn't hack the test program and give himself a perfect score.
« Last Edit: May 12, 2008, 06:26:58 pm by Hadriel »

ZeaLitY

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Re: Stuff you hate
« Reply #626 on: May 12, 2008, 08:24:02 pm »
I'm not sure; I had no idea the GRE even existed, since everything down here uses the GMAT. And it's just a test to get into business school; as real life and college have proven, I haven't used any of this since leaving high school.

I managed to do "okay" on the math part today. We had no calculator, just a big erasable clipboard. Fortunately, I obliterated the verbal and English section so much that my final score scratched the average of the Ivy League schools. You could say it's a tinge below their average (of 700 usually), and it's all because of that damn, dirty math.

I hate that Firefox crashed and lost all the tabbed favorites, which is how I store threads on the Compendium for updates. I'll have to include a message in the next update that if something doesn't appear, it should be resubmitted.

x_XTacTX_x

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Re: Stuff you hate
« Reply #627 on: May 12, 2008, 09:14:01 pm »
Woah. I've only just finished up my first Algebra course, and that whole sheet of equations blew my mind.

I wish you massive amounts of riches and concubines on this epic mathematic quest, good sir.

Kebrel

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Re: Stuff you hate
« Reply #628 on: May 12, 2008, 09:50:18 pm »
I just took my AP Calc A.B. test and I think i did pretty good on the thing as a whole. Free response was a pain at the end.

FaustWolf

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Re: Stuff you hate
« Reply #629 on: May 12, 2008, 09:56:03 pm »
Free response? Does that entail an essay question!?