<p>I have a question about the type of problem that is commonly known as the "Weird Symbol Problem" on the Mathematics portion of the SAT Reasoning Test.</p>
<p>I have read and studied numerous examples of this type of problem in various SAT study guides.</p>
<p>However, I have also been subscribing to "The Official SAT Question Of The Day" service, from the College Board website, for the past year and a half. </p>
<p>I have been printing out a copy of every Math problem they have sent me during the past year and a half. </p>
<p>During this time, this site has not sent me one single "Weird Symbol Problem." </p>
<p>Not a single one.</p>
<p>This leads me to the following question: </p>
<p>Has the College Board abolished the "Weird Symbol Problems" for the Mathematics portion of the SAT Reasoning Test?</p>
<p>I looked through the math sections of the most recent “Official SAT Study Guide” from the collegeboard (i.e. the blue book), and they are discussed on p257. So, that’s one piece of evidence supporting that they are still there.</p>
<p>These problems haven’t been abolished, though I wouldn’t count on finding more than one on a particular version of the test. This is only one of the many types of questions that you will face on the math section.</p>
<p>There is generally one of these problems (I call them “wacky functions”) per test.</p>
<p>For those keeping score using released (QAS) tests, here they are (grouped by difficulty L1-L5):</p>
<p>May 2006 / Sec. 6 / #2 — forward evaluation
Oct 2006 / Sec. 8 / #3 — forward evaluation with exponents</p>
<p>May 2007 / Sec. 7 / #2 — forward evaluation
Oct 2007 / Sec. 6 / #5 — with primes
May 2009 / Sec. 6 / #4 — forward evaluation with exponents
Jan 2010 / Sec. 9 / #5 – forward evaluation with exponents</p>
<p>Jan 2008 / Sec. 3 / #10 – forward evaluation with exponents
Jan 2009 / Sec. 8 / #8 — forward evaluation
May 2010 / Sec. 2 / #12 – forward evaluation </p>
<p>Mar 2005 / Sec. 2 / #8 — double evaluation with parentheses
Jan 2007 / Sec. 2 / #15 – forward and reverse evaluation
Oct 2008 / Sec. 7 / #18 – simultaneous equations
Oct 2009 / Sec. 4 / #15 – forward evaluation with odd integers</p>
<p>Oct 2005 / Sec. 8 / #16 – integer logic
Jan 2006 / Sec. 2 / #20 – with algebraic comparison</p>
<p>Out of 16 tests, there were 15 of these problems.</p>