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SAT Study Guides
1.4 SAT Math - Avoiding Mistakes
Overall, what else should you be looking out for? Careless mistakes. Careless mistakes. Oh, and did you hear about careless mistakes?
Why are we being so annoying right now? Because it's annoying to see really smart students continue to make careless mistakes, especially on a test that isn't testing your math skills but is testing whether or not you fall for tricks. Because you know what? Every time you make a careless mistake, you're falling for another trick. How foolish of you!
Careless mistakes are things like not using the order of operations properly, assuming a number is prime without checking to be sure, forgetting to put the negative back in when you finally get an answer, answering for the wrong variable, adding when you should have subtracted... Probably the same sorts of things that you get wrong on math tests, except math tests in school all tend to be on one chapter or concept, so it's easy to realize your pattern of mistakes and fix it before you get an F. Not so on the SATs. The questions are in random order in terms of concepts tested, and you want to hear something really sneaky? The other four answer choices you're given? Those aren't made up, or accidental. The four wrong answer choices are specifically designed to be the ones most likely to be chosen if you do something wrong. Isn't that just a little diabolical? But it's true. The SAT testmakers have been doing this for years. They know, for example, that people forget that two negatives become positive, so they have for your choosing enjoyment, a negative option in the answers. They know that students forget the difference between factors and multiples, so you can bet that any question that asks for one has the other as an answer choice. So you're tooling along feeling confident in your answers, thinking to yourself, "wow, this test is easy!" when in fact you've been messing up here and messing up there and you're walking away with a lower score than you should have. How to prevent that? Be careful.
SAT Rules & Tips
Some rules and tips to help you prevent those careless mistakes, and help you answer judiciously:
1) Read carefully. You must. A single word can change the whole point of the question.
2) Do NOT simply play around with the numbers to see if you get something interesting. If you know how you SHOULD solve it (for instance, you see two fractions separated by an equals sign, and you know you should cross-multiply) but the numbers are really ugly and are making you freak out, take a deep breath and jump in – it will generally work itself out. However, if you have NO IDEA what the heck you’re doing, or supposed to do, or what the question the asking, SKIP IT. You have a four out of five chance of getting it wrong if you just mess around.
-Trick to Watch Out For: Overly Obvious Answers. The testmakers love to put in answer choices that are way too easy to get to in the hopes you’ll jump to a quick conclusion and get it wrong. Take, for example, this question:
17. Susan goes to work at an average speed of 60 mph. Assuming she takes the same route and makes no stops, if she averages 40 mph on the way home, what is her average speed in mph for the entire trip?
(A) 40
(B) 48
(C) 50
(D) 52
(E) 60
So what's NOT the answer? (C). It's just too obvious. On a Number 17 question (one of the hardest on the test), they're not going to give you a simple average that you can do in your head. (FYI: The answer is (B) 48. This is a weighted average, which will be discussed under Averages.)
Ten-Second Rule: If you solve a hard question in ten seconds or less, you got it wrong. Easy questions should be easy, so they might go fast. Hard questions should be hard. If it's not hard, you're doing it wrong.
3) Always re-read the question part of the answer before answering. The testmakers like to give you a bunch of steps to do, and then ask you something a little different than what you'd expect. For instance, they'll give you something like a(a - 14) = 29 +
| 28 |
| --------- |
| 2a |
| a |
| --------- |
| 2 |
4) Use numbers wherever you can. Make them up. We'll get to a more specific version of this later, but in general, if they give you something vague, pick a number to put in instead. In the weighted average question above, if you pick a number for Susan's distance, the question is much easier. It can be 12 or it can be 120. It doesn't have to be incredibly realistic, it just has to fit the bounds of the question. Make the questions concrete. Vague is confusing.
5) Write down all your work on paper. People don't want to do this. They want to impress their friends and neighbors with all their great mental math skills. You're not David Blaine. You're not Criss Angel. Write down your work. It's an insurance policy. If you go through all that work like in the question above, and then you look down at the answer choices and what you got isn't there, you're going to get frustrated and want to give up. That's going to stress you out, because you feel like you're wasting time and HOW could you get it wrong you so knew the answer and this test is so stupid and frustrating and I could be sleeping right now and oh shoot how long have I been sitting here fuming?!? But if you have all your work written down, you simply look to the answer choices, don't see your answer, and calmly think to yourself, "Hm. Let's see what happened." You look at what you did and realize you accidentally added when you should have subtracted. A quick fix, and you confidently move on to the next question.
6) Use your calculator. It's a gift. Don't do math in your head, and if you can't help yourself because you're just that fast, check your work on the calculator.
These last two rules bring us to the most important overall rule you will ever learn. Ever.
Let Yourself Feel Like an Idiot.
Hopefully, you're not an idiot. Even if you are, embrace it. Here's why: People, especially high school students, get prideful. You get nervous. You know you should probably do that multiplication problem in your calculator, but it makes you feel special and smart and superior to be able to do 102 x 56 in your head. Your parents or your tutor or your math teacher or your girlfriend make that impressed face with their mouth and nod, impressed, when you do things like that. They're not taking the test with you. No one, not the head cheerleader, the captain of the football team, the head of chess club, the valedictorian, or your math teacher, is standing behind you, looking over your shoulder, and getting ready to make fun of you. No one cares. Therefore, it's imperative that you allow yourself to feel stupid. Let go of your pride. Be so in the habit of writing things down and using your calculator that you type 1x1 into your calculator and then do your own Self-Directed Eye Roll at how stupid you have to be - but do it anyway. "Do people really get 1x1 wrong?" Yup. Because they accidentally put down 2. The stress of a timed test makes us do silly things, and the key is NOT to say, "Well, I just won't be that silly," because you will. You won't be able to help it. The key is to say, "Sigh. I feel like such an idiot, but let's plug it into the calculator and double-check." Now you're getting a high score, with less careless mistakes. Go you.
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