changing my approach to quant

[aleph777]

I'm looking for advice on reshaping my study strategy for quant...

I took my last math course a decade ago--and that was pre-calc in high school. I decided to extend my GMAT study period from 2-3 months to 4-5 because of how anemic I am in the math department, and so I've been going very slowly over the past 2 months through the ManhattanGMAT series of books. I started with the Foundations of GMAT Math Strategy Supplement, and I'm now about half way through the 3rd volume of their study series. And, of course, I've been making flash cards and studying them diligently on the subway twice a day.

Regardless of concept, I consistently get only about 50-70% of the questions correct in both the drill sections and in their recommended OG Problem Sets. On top of this, I'm SLOOOOOOW.

I feel like it might make sense to take a big step back and start over with the Foundations again. Does anyone have recommendations on how to most effectively refresh?

Thanks!

[uwhusky]

https://www.gmathacks.com/ has a pretty good collection of math materials relating to GMAT. It also has bunch of extra questions that are specific to each subject you can purchase to practice.

It has also been 10 years since I took my last real math course, and I know exactly how you feel. It will take a while and lots of practice before some of the missing links are connected again.

[Brian@VeritasPrep]

Hey aleph777,

I love the title of this post, and think you're on the right track. Changing my own approach to quant has made math infinitely easier and actually more enjoyable, and I've loved being able to teach it this way.

Here's what I'd suggest - forget the flashcards and struggle through the logic of math. Memorizing math is a hard way to go - it's easy to "blank" on a formula, misremember a detail, or become locked into a plug-and-chug, tunnel-vision mentality that doesn't provide you with flexibility if a question is asked in just-different-enough a way as to make that formula irrelevant while keeping the concept fully in play (the GMAT loves to do this, as it's much more a test of "how you think" than of how much math you know).

If you try to prove concepts to yourself, you'll know them, and not just have memorized them. Think about exponents for example. You could memorize that x^a * x^b = x^(a+b), but knowing why that's true is so much more powerful:

x^2 * x^3 means:
xx * xxx

Well, there are 5 x values multiplied together, and that can be expressed as x^5, so it's clear from that example that you'd add the exponents and not multiply. And that thought process - prove the concept with small numbers - has other advantages:

1) It's flexible - you can prove other rules the same way, so you're less responsible for memorizing multiple things
2) It's guaranteed - if your memory fails, you can fall back on logic and prove what you've forgotten
3) It's a deeper understanding - you're a lot less likely to forget something if you know why it works. "Not memorizing" is, in many cases, a better way of memorizing.
4) It's wholly in line with what the GMAT rewards. "Number Properties" questions are all the rage right now, and there are some hard-and-fast rules that you can memorize (although I'd much rather prove "Odd * Even = Even" and "Even + Odd = Odd" to myself with small numbers (1 and 2) than rely on correctly memorizing each sequence of the same word). But others just need to be experimented and proven - you can find patterns throughout math. For a pretty neat example, check out this post: https://www.beatthegmat.com/remainder-q- ... 61475.html

I applaud your decision to change your approach, and think that you'll get a much deeper, more flexible understanding of math if you focus on true understanding. Veritas Prep's Math Essentials and other math books teach that methodology if you're interested, and sometimes simply struggling through problems is the best way to force yourself to learn.