Setting the Pace

I have set the pace. Officially started working towards my goal (more than just this blog, real progress). I started studying for the GRE.

From all of the preliminary research that I have done, (I will tell you about it... just not now), I have found that 1) I need to take the GRE and B) the math section, or as the ETS prefers to call it the Quantitative Reasoning section, is the most important part for me to do well on, though I need to do well on the entire test. So that's where I began. The math section.

When I visited my parents' house in Olympia one weekend I made sure to pick up a GRE prep book that we had. It is the 2004 edition, a hand-me-down from my sister (like a lot of my stuff has been over the years ie: a pink bed room) that she never used because she decided that living in Japan was better. The good news is that the test hasn't changed yet, that's coming in August. So I may need to take it before then. Anyways, with my test prep book in hand and some time to kill, (at work) I set out to conquer the math section.

The math section sounds too easy. It only tests people on math up to the eighth grade level, which means that I don't need to worry about all of that high school or college stuffs that I have learned over the past seven years. This can be good and bad. It's good because the math isn't hard and I should be able to do it in my sleep. It's bad because eighth grade was a long time ago. But that is what the test prep book is for. It has all these tricks like don't solve the problem the way you normally would by you know... doing math, instead you should guess and check. That is what is going to be a problem. Since the test is timed and the ETS doesn't like to see people succeed they try to trick you by making trick questions, I won't be able to solve these relatively easy math problems the way I normally would. For example:

At the rate of f/3 feet per m minutes, how many feet can a bicycle travel in s seconds?
A) fs/60m
B) 60s/fm
C) fms/180
D) fm/180s
E) fs/180m

The Princeton Review wants me to just plug in a number like 12 for f and a number like 2 for m and 120 for s and then plug and chug. It will take some getting used to but that is what practice is for. Good thing I've got the book to tell me what to do.

Going strong since 1988
Kit

P.S. the answer is E