Integers

Integers are numbers sans a fractional part such as 3, 2, 1. A number like 2.25, which is a decimal, is not an integer. Integers can also be negative, such as -3,-2,-1 but do not have a fractional part as well. Positive integers are defined as being whole numbers. The 0 is also an integer but is considered to be positive or negative.

Factors

Factors are considered to be numbers that divides equally into another number. For example the number 3 is a factor of 12 because 12/4=3. It is also a factor of 6 because 6/2=3 or 9 because 9/3=3.

Primes

Prime numbers are whole numbers that only have two divisors, the actual number itself and one. For example, the number 7 is a prime number because its only two divisors are 7 and 1.

Greatest Common Factor

The Greatest Common Factor or GCF for short is the largest number that divides two numbers evenly. In order to determine the Greatest Common Factor is by setting up a prime factorization of two numbers and comparing common factors. The largest common factor between the two numbers is the GCF.

Least Common Multiple

To find the least common multiple, you perform a prime factorization in the same manner as one would do for the GCF. However, the least common multiple is the smallest number of a multiple of two numbers.

Units Digits

Unit digits are the number to the right of the tens position. For example, the units digit for the number 364 is 4.

After reviewing basic topics such as the ones previously described, creating a study schedule with practice questions is a good way to see where your strengths and weaknesses are. Once, you know where your weaknesses are, study accordingly.

Why then would anyone be reluctant to prepare for these questions and build on their strong suit? The answer is most likely boredom. Let’s be honest. Many GMAT reading comprehension questions are flat-out boring. You start by reading a long tedious passage about a topic for which you care very little. Then, you are asked to recall certain things from the passage. The problem is that you can’t recall much of anything, but your instinct tells you to try and answer the questions anyway. This is how incorrect answers are born.

Here are some quick tips for handling any GMAT reading comprehension passage:

It’s an Open-Book Test

Use the computer screen to refer back to the passage to locate the exact spot in the GMAT reading comprehension passage where the answer can be found. If an answer choice cannot be directly supported by the passage, it is incorrect and should be eliminated from consideration. If you are certain the answer choice must be correct, and yet still cannot find support for it at a specific place in the passage, then it is a really good wrong answer. The test writer should be congratulated.

Read the Context

When heading back to the passage to find the answer to each question, spend some time reading several of the lines above and below the portion where you expect to find the answer. A clever test-writing technique is to include words in a question that can be misinterpreted by only re-reading the one line of the passage containing those words. Read for context, and not just for key words.

You Have the Answer

After reading a GMAT reading comprehension question and returning to the passage, express an answer to yourself in your own words. This is a powerful tool. With practice, you will find that this will allow you to eliminate all but the correct answer simply by comparing each one to what you came up with yourself.

Time is the Enemy

The biggest enemy on the GMAT test is time. If you had all weekend to take the GMAT, it would be a walk in the park. With the clock ticking down, each strategy you employ on the GMAT sentence correction questions must be designed for maximum accuracy and maximum efficiency.

For instance, the first answer choice is always just a restatement of the sentence as written above. While this answer has the same odds of being correct as any of the others, it is not worth the time and brain power reading that sentence again in your head. Although this will only save seconds, on the GMAT seconds count.

Separate the Wheat from the Chaff

At first glance, the answer choices to most GMAT sentence correction questions may provide you with another time-saving strategy. If you notice that there is a similarity in two or three of the answer choices that does not appear in the others, start your grammatical analysis of the sentence there. If you are able to figure out which construction is correct for that small part of the sentence, you can freely eliminate the answer choices that contain the improper structure.

The brain has a tough time thinking about five things at once. That is why standardized tests do not really need to contain content that is too terribly difficult to still result in a normal distribution. Most folks review each answer choice one at a time, eliminating them as they go. When time is the enemy, this is too inefficient. Do yourself a favor and look for those similarities.

Prepare

Business schools take GMAT scores very seriously. You would not walk into a potential employer’s office for a job interview and scribble down a resume in the waiting room, would you? Mastering the GMAT sentence correction questions are a great way to increase your score. Just like a math problem, there is always one right answer and four wrong ones It is quite unlike the Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning portions of the exam that ask you to pick the “best” answer. If you don’t prepare a GMAT sentence correction question strategy before you take the GMAT, you may give away points that would have been easy to grab.

The conclusion above would be properly drawn if it were also true that in Argonia

1. the average accident insurance rate for all drivers rises whenever a substantial number of new drivers buy insurance
2. the average cost to insurance companies of insuring drivers who drive less than the annual average is less than the average cost of insuring drivers who drive more than the annual average
3. the lower the age of a driver, the higher the insurance rate paid by that driver
4. insurance company profits would rise substantially if drivers were classified in terms of the actual number of miles they drive each year
5. drivers who have caused insurance companies to pay costly claims generally pay insurance rates that are equal to or lower than those paid by other drivers

Highlight to see answer: B

Please post your explanations in the comments below!

The personnel director’s conclusion assumes which of the following?

1. No other performance rating system is as good as the current system.
2. The company’s best-performing employees received high ratings.
3. Employees who received low ratings were dissatisfied with the system.
4. Employees who receive high ratings from a performance-rating system will like that system.
5. The company’s best-performing employees were motivated to perform well by the knowledge that they would receive performance ratings.

Highlight to see answer: B

Please post your explanations in the comments below!