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by lunarpower » Thu Jul 24, 2014 8:59 am
Ah, yes. C is worded incorrectly.

This is where you'll discover that I'm "special". I am very severely dyslexic; I can't read sentences in a straight line.
Ever see those refrigerator magnets with words on them? That's what every sentence looks like to me at first. I just see a random cloud of words, and I have to mentally assemble them into a sentence, in an order that makes sense.

Where I'm going with this is... I'll often read things like choice C and understand exactly what they mean--and not even notice that there are HUGE mistakes in them.

Here's what C should say:
Were there any customers who bought ten or more gallons at an XT gasoline station during the promotion who would have bought XT gasoline in lower quantities, but more frequently, if the promotion had not been in effect?

This should make a lot more sense now.
(:
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by feedrom » Fri Jul 25, 2014 12:17 pm
You're really special, Ron!

Severe dyslexic person with 800 on the gmat!!! I just read about some dyslexic people who are genius. But in the gmat field, hem, there maybe only you.

So could you share some tips that help people who have the similar issue but are not genius? If yes, I have some questions below:

1- How could you get over a feeling of burden when you see lots of words questions, most of them are verbal questions. This feeling can wear energy out, especially for a 4-hour test.

2- How could you understand exactly what questions ask or points of statements without reading details? I mean how could you not make mistake and not put your own assumptions there.

3- How could you avoid lots of mistakes in solving questions such as calculating, forgetting conditions and so on? I know dyslexic people often have carelessness problems.

Thank you so much & Have a nice weekend,

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by lunarpower » Sat Jul 26, 2014 5:34 am
feedrom wrote:1- How could you get over a feeling of burden when you see lots of words questions, most of them are verbal questions. This feeling can wear energy out, especially for a 4-hour test.
There are a couple of good ways to respond to this.

1/
First, I take issue with the "lots of words" thing. If you think about this test in a way that's well adapted to it, the "lots of words" complaint doesn't ring as true.

The parts of the test with the most words are the RC passages. The good news about the RC passages is that you don't need to read most of the words!
When you're reading the passages, it's best to skip the details as soon as you've figured out (a) what kind of information is present, and (b) why (= what idea is supported/explained/illustrated by those details). Delving any further into the details will start to have a negative impact on your big-picture understanding, since no one can really think competently about big- and small-picture notions at the same time.

CR passages are not terribly long in the first place--and, with an appropriate focus, they become even "shorter".
E.g., let's say you're solving a CR problem dealing with an argument about whether a particular marketing promotion will work. Well... If this argument is a giant wall of text, then you're in trouble. But, if you take a moment to realize the true focus--"Hey, this is about marketing, so ultimately it's the consumer's decision that matters"--then it shouldn't be so overwhelming anymore. Just read it from the appropriate point of view and it's much less hard to see which things are important (and in what ways) and which things aren't.

Also, I love reading. I read stuff all the time. If I have to wait in line anywhere for more than thirty seconds, I'll have some article (on a smartphone or something) in my hand. If a traffic light turns red, I'll read some quick thing. My dogs take three and a half minutes to eat their food, so that's three and a half more minutes of reading potential.
This is a self-reinforcing cycle, like a chicken and egg thing: I read a lot because I like reading... but I also like reading because I read a lot.
I don't think there's any way to shortcut this part. If you're not the kind of person who fundamentally likes the written word, then you just aren't going to be as good at it. Like just about anything else in life.

2/
My whole life has been lived to the tune of a series of chronic, irritating, but NOT debilitating problems. Basically, just constant pains in the *ss, but nothing fatal.
E.g., I had really bad asthma as a kid, so that was always annoying (and sometimes downright life-threatening) when I played sports. And I played a lot of sports.
I've also had lifelong sleep problems, such that I got 15-25 hours of sleep per week for somewhere between twenty and twenty-five years. So, a majority of things in my life, including ALL school-related things and ALL things during daytime hours, have been "doing ____ when I'd rather take a nap".
And there are other, more personal things that I don't care to discuss here.
The point is that I pretty much haven't done anything that hasn't been accompanied by some sort of nagging annoyance. So, well, I'm just accustomed to it. Life is not always a party.

What I'm talking about is pretty close to the Finnish concept of sisu.

You can google this if you don't know what it is. Be warned, though, that most English-language articles about sisu tend to describe it in terms of "heroic" things (e.g., the Finnish stand against Russia in the 1939-1940 Winter War). This is somewhat of a distortion, since 99.99% of typical Finnish examples of sisu involve much more mundane things. Like slogging through the days and weeks and months with not nearly enough sleep. Or, well, slogging through stuff with lots and lots of words.

It's actually such a long-standing thing that, by this point, I don't like doing things that are easy. I get bored by them instantly, and, if I'm forced to keep doing them, I start to hate them. Eh.

You now know way too much about me.
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by lunarpower » Sat Jul 26, 2014 5:44 am
2- How could you understand exactly what questions ask or points of statements without reading details? I mean how could you not make mistake and not put your own assumptions there.
When it comes to things requiring attention to detail, I'm just ... well, slow.
Ridiculously, shamefully slow.
If you saw how long it takes me to get through things that are entirely details, and that don't really have a big-picture component (e.g., start-up instruction manuals for electronic devices), you would probably think I'm mentally handicapped. No joke at all.

What I lose there, though, I make up by being really, really fast to recognize the big picture.

You're going to have the same kind of trade-offs. You'll be faster at some things and slower at others--and you should just eat it. You should NOT try to artificially speed up the things that you're slower at. Just be slow at them, and let the balance work itself out.
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by lunarpower » Sat Jul 26, 2014 5:44 am
3- How could you avoid lots of mistakes in solving questions such as calculating, forgetting conditions and so on? I know dyslexic people often have carelessness problems.
This one is simple.

"¢Â Write EVERYTHING down. Absolutely everything. If there are conditions, write them down directly next to wherever you're going to use them. (If you're going to use them in multiple places, write them down multiple times. Do it.)
Do NOT tell yourself that "this will take too long". It won't.

"¢Â Know which processes you make the most mistakes on. Double-check those.
Personally, I can't subtract to save my life. (If you ask me what 36 minus 9 is, I will ALWAYS, unhesitatingly, tell you that it's 25.) So, whenever I have to subtract stuff, I double- or triple-check it.

"¢Â Know which processes you're better at. DON'T double-check those.
E.g., as a result of keeping food diaries for the last 10+ years, so I'm pretty darn good at adding numbers (and multiplying by 4 and 9) at this point. If I have to do those things, no checking is needed.

"¢Â SLOW DOWN.
The U.S. Marines say, "Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast."
They're right.
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by lunarpower » Sat Jul 26, 2014 5:51 am
Oh, and, I forgot two more things.

"¢Â DO NOT label mistakes as "silly mistakes" or "carelessness".
Both of these labels will prevent you from actually addressing the issue.
The former just trivializes the issue, as though God just dropped mistakes on your head while you weren't looking.
The latter is too vague, and precludes the search for specific ways to combat the mistake.

"¢Â For every mistake you make, MAKE A CONCRETE PLAN to battle that mistake.
Usually, this plan is something VERY basic and VERY common-sense (e.g., "Always double-check subtraction", or "Write down the conditions next to where you'll be using them"). But you still have to make a plan.

The word CONCRETE is of the utmost importance here.
Most people come up with stuff that has good intentions but is ultimately meaningless. The worst offender is "Be more careful!", which means absolutely nothing at all.
"Be more careful", by itself, is totally stupid and meaningless, because "careful" is not some single monolithic thing that you can just dial up or down (like, say, your talking speed). It's also wrongheaded, because "careful" is a zero-sum thing: If you're more careful about thing X, then there ALWAYS must be some thing Y about which you're less careful, since attention is finite.
In short, you need to think in terms at least as specific as "I need to be more careful about _____. And, as a trade-off, it's ok to be a bit less careful about _____, since I'm better at it."
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by feedrom » Sat Jul 26, 2014 3:34 pm
Thanks Ron! Your words always have incredible power of inspiration. Your story has more...

SISU! I like it! Ultimately, attitude is what counts most. Other things can be found today or tomorrow, as long as we possess SISU. (it would be easier to have if it were "sushi")

And don't worry about your personal revelation. Some readers may really know what you talked about. It's not a personal problem. It's a problem of flesh-and-bone beings. But the way you deal with it makes you really special.

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by lunarpower » Mon Jul 28, 2014 10:20 am
Cool, thanks. It's most rewarding, to me at least, to post stuff that makes people think about life beyond just this exam. So, good to know that's happening in the mind of at least one reader.

The whole sisu thing needs to be tempered, though, by an honest evaluation of whether you're actually doing things right.

They say practice makes perfect, but... not necessarily. Rather, as one of my track coaches insightfully and pithily put it, "Practice makes permanent."
If you're going to march inexorably in a certain direction, to the extent of persevering even against long odds ... well, you'd darn well better make sure it's the RIGHT direction.

There are a lot of very wrong/ineffectual ways of thinking about this exam (e.g., trying to memorize a hundred rules for CR). If you're thinking about the test in one of those ways, then all the sisu in the world isn't going to help.

Some people are insightful but lazy. For them, the sisu thing is the hard part that requires effort.
Others are conscientious and dedicated/stubborn by nature. For such people, perseverance comes naturally--but the hard part, for them, is to keep looking at the proverbial compass, and to make severely, often uncomfortably honest judgments of their current progress.
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by 700upup! » Wed Oct 08, 2014 6:46 am
Dear Ron,

I still cannot understand choice C. please explain it

Thanks!

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by sagarock » Fri Aug 05, 2016 9:10 am
MITCH SIR,my specific question is can words such as any ,few,some as it is shown in option c can ever strengthen or weaken an evaluation argument question? Thank you.

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by GMATGuruNY » Tue Aug 09, 2016 4:35 am
sagarock wrote:MITCH SIR,my specific question is can words such as any ,few,some as it is shown in option c can ever strengthen or weaken an evaluation argument question? Thank you.
I would be skeptical of an answer choice with some or any.
This line of reasoning is constrained to strengthen, weaken and evaluate CRs.
Generally, some = at least one.

C: Were there any customers who bought ten or more gallons at an XT gasoline station during the promotion who would have bought gasoline at the same station in lower quantities, but more frequently, if the promotion had not been in effect?

Possible answer:
Yes, there was ONE customer who would have bought gasoline in lower quantities but more frequently.
Information about one customer does not help us evaluate whether XT's promotion was a success.
Eliminate C.
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