Word Problem

[sunilrawat]

Hi,
I am having difficulty with word problems, be it DS or PS. It takes at least 2mins (sometimes more) for me to solve each problem. How do I reduce my time? for other questions I take an average of 1.5 mins per Qs...

is it ok??

[sanju09]

Hi,
I am having difficulty with word problems, be it DS or PS. It takes at least 2mins (sometimes more) for me to solve each problem. How do I reduce my time? for other questions I take an average of 1.5 mins per Qs...

is it ok??

On GMAT, the term "word problem" is customarily used as a synonym of PS, so refrain from calling it a DS. If you're maintaining an average of 1.5 minutes a question, then you're doing really good. This efficiency would enable you to spend more than 4 minutes on few difficult questions, so never mind it, provided you have answered correctly to those questions that went @ 1.5 minutes a question. Always give accuracy the top priority unmindful of how many extra seconds it takes and do practice to answer till the last question before the time is called. Few questions are designed to kill time, so maintain your good average over easier questions in order to give room to those few villainous ones.

[testprepDublin]

I think a great thing to do would be to take 20 or 30 word problems and practice translating them into mathematical statements. Don't solve them just focus on reading, understanding and translating. The more you do the faster you'll get. You should be able to do this efficiently before attempting the gmat.

Good luck!

[sunilrawat]

On GMAT, the term "word problem" is customarily used as a synonym of PS, so refrain from calling it a DS. If you're maintaining an average of 1.5 minutes a question, then you're doing really good. This efficiency would enable you to spend more than 4 minutes on few difficult questions, so never mind it, provided you have answered correctly to those questions that went @ 1.5 minutes a question. Always give accuracy the top priority unmindful of how many extra seconds it takes and do practice to answer till the last question before the time is called. Few questions are designed to kill time, so maintain your good average over easier questions in order to give room to those few villainous ones.

Well, in DS I meant the lengthy Qs, e.g "X gets $100 for working first 10 hours and $2 per extra hour. Y gets something different...then some other condition is given which leads onto another equation and so on." The point is that these problems take a lot of time to cut down to the desired data. And as for those @1.5 min my accuracy is like 8/10. I am working on further improvement.
Anyways, thanks a lot.

[testprepDublin]

I think accuracy is more important than speed when preparing. Work on getting all the questions right. After a couple of hundred correct questions you'll notice your time per question reducing naturally.

A great exercise is to take 5-10 PS questions and try to solve them with your hands in your pockets. It'll force you to think of alternative simpler faster methods.

[sanju09]

On GMAT, the term "word problem" is customarily used as a synonym of PS, so refrain from calling it a DS. If you're maintaining an average of 1.5 minutes a question, then you're doing really good. This efficiency would enable you to spend more than 4 minutes on few difficult questions, so never mind it, provided you have answered correctly to those questions that went @ 1.5 minutes a question. Always give accuracy the top priority unmindful of how many extra seconds it takes and do practice to answer till the last question before the time is called. Few questions are designed to kill time, so maintain your good average over easier questions in order to give room to those few villainous ones.

Well, in DS I meant the lengthy Qs, e.g "X gets $100 for working first 10 hours and $2 per extra hour. Y gets something different...then some other condition is given which leads onto another equation and so on." The point is that these problems take a lot of time to cut down to the desired data. And as for those @1.5 min my accuracy is like 8/10. I am working on further improvement.
Anyways, thanks a lot.

Now I got your point. Always decode a word problem to equation(s) in minimum possible number of variable(s). The variable(s) should be so chosen that it could almost directly answer the main question. It would no more be killing your time now. When a correct equation is in hand, solve it and retrieve your answer very carefully, may be you could use pick and plug trick, remembering what the variable(s) were meant for while decoding. If it was A DS then it becomes easier to decide what is missing in the equation(s) to answer the main question uniquely with the correctly decoded equation(s) in hand than with the long drawn statements in hand, as presented by you as an example here.