<p>Here's the website with the complete Xiggi method:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.admissionsadvice.com%5B/url%5D">www.admissionsadvice.com</a></p>
<p>Go to Join the Discussion, Preparing for College, Test Prep, Xiggi's musings</p>
<p>entomom - congratulations on both post #500 and reply #500 in this thread! :)</p>
<p>GCF...in the consolidated blue book math answers thread you wrote:
"673 / 12 / <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/...d.php?t=154968">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/...d.php?t=154968</a>"</p>
<p>but it actually is the solution to problem 16 on that page, not prob 12. 12 isnt even on that page lol. just a typo im sure, but i figured i should let u know so u can correct it to say 16.</p>
<p>(i would have pm'd u but u don't accept them...)</p>
<p>Xiggi or anyone I have a question that hasnt been answered so far</p>
<p>I have pretty good scores but my problem is testing exhaustion. I lose focus about halfway through the test and I do worse the more practice tests I take. The questions just kinda...blur...and I know how to do them, but i cant focus
I know the advice is to have a snack, but this doesnt really help because food just distracts me
WHAT SHOULD I DO?????? i need to focus on the problems and really think about them</p>
<p>try adderall pills.</p>
<p>ALL YOU NEED TO LEARN NEW VOCAB IS:</p>
<p>BLUE TAC.</p>
<p>BLANK FLASHCARDS.</p>
<p>WRITE UNKNOWN WORDS ON 10 CARDS (EVERY NIGHT OR EVERY OTHER DAY) AND STICK THEM ANYWHERE IN YOUR BEDROOM ( I HAVE THEM ON MY WARDROBE, MY SHOES, MY DOOR, MY COMPUTER, MY WALL, MY LAMP.)</p>
<p>BEFORE YOU SLEEP AND AFTER YOU WAKE UP. JUST TAKE A QUICK GLANCE.</p>
<p>use the words. say them out loud and make pertinent sentences out of them.</p>
<p>e.g.</p>
<p>Effusive - emotionally unrestrained</p>
<p>Forest Whitaker was rather effusive at the Oscars last night.</p>
<p>This "Blue Book' that you all are referring to is the College Board Official SAT guid right? aghh I have the Princeton Review SAT Prep w/ DVD and the Barrons with CD (includes flashcards as well).</p>
<p>Great, now I have 2 of the wrong books and I'm more stressed out than ever!</p>
<p>Just ask someone older than you if they have one (that's what I did). or you could just go out and buy one</p>
<p>do you really think it's worth it? I mean..my parents already think that 2 books is overkill. I'd buy it on my own, but only if you all highly recommend it and think I'm screwed without it?</p>
<p>the books I got from older person were like 6 of them</p>
<p>"A girl rides her bicycle to school at an average speed of 8 mph. She returns to her house using the same route at an average speed of 12 mph. If the round trip took 1 hour, how many miles is the round trip.</p>
<p>A. 8
B. 9 3/5
C. 10
D. 11 1/5
E. 12</p>
<p>PR offers this solution: First the problem is a hard problem (level 5). TCB assumes that the common student will not attempt to solve the problem and pick the trick answer of 10 since it represents the average of 8 and 12. The common student second choice will be to pick a value that is stated in the problem: 8 or 12. PR provides the strategy to eliminate those Joe Blogg answers. Again, the conclusion of PR is to end up with two choices and pick between B and D. In their words, the student will be in great shape!</p>
<p>What's my issue with this? In my eyes, a 50-50 chance is really not good enough. When you consider how this problem can be solved, the recommendation to guess becomes highly questionable.</p>
<p>What could a student have done? Use a simple formula for average rates -an opportunity that PR strangely forgets to mention. Is this formula really complicated? I could detail the way I developed it while working through similar problems, but the reality is that millions of people have seen it before. Im absolutely convinced that many good tutors teach it, but you wont find it in the typical help book. Here it is:</p>
<p>[2<em>Speed1</em>Speed2] / [speed1 + Speed2] or in this case:
2* 8 * 12 / 8 + 12. "</p>
<p>Can somebody please elaborate on this problem???!! I use 2 methods (the first I got 10 which is wrong) and a second method which I got 9.6 which is right. I don't understand how I get different answers to 2 methods which seem right to me.</p>
<p>METHOD 1:
Point A=home
Point B=school</p>
<p>rate of AB=8
rate of BA=12
AB=BA therefore rate of ABA=(8+12)/2=10 mph average speed throughout
Riding at 10 mph for an hour=10(1)=10 mph</p>
<p>Answer: 10 MPH</p>
<p>METHOD 2:</p>
<p>Let x=distance from A to B (one-way)</p>
<p>(X/8)+(X/12)=1 hour</p>
<p>Solve for X: (12x+8x)/96=1</p>
<p>20x=96</p>
<p>x=4.8</p>
<p>Since X is one-way, then the round-trip is 9.6</p>
<p>Answer: 9.6</p>
<p>Can somebody point out to me how I'm thinking wrong?</p>
<p>Afruff, your method that got you 10 is wrong because you are taking the straight average. You are therefore assuming that the girl spent exactly the same amount of time going each speed. But she obviously did not:</p>
<p>The best solution to this problem involves recognizing that 10 is a distractor, because it is the result of taking the straight average. Since she was going slower on the way to school, she must have spent more time getting to school. So the average would be weighted closer to 8 than to 12. Therefore, the answer is slightly less than the straight average, 10. Only one answer fits that description, B. A and E are wrong not just because they are in the problem, but because they don't make sense. Since she spent one leg of the trip going 8 and one going 10, the answer cannot be either, it must be between the two values. Sure, you can cross off "easy" answers, but using logic can allow you to cross off many of them, too.</p>
<p>Thanks, I completely understand now. 12 mph for more less than 30 minutes and 8 mph for less than 20 minutes.</p>
<p>Can somebody explain this formula better?:
[2<em>Speed1</em>Speed2] / [speed1 + Speed2] or in this case:
2* 8 * 12 / 8 + 12. </p>
<p>Where does the "2" come from?</p>
<p>2 Comes from the fact that you account for a round trip (2 ways) one way to the destination and one way back</p>
<p>Hmm...I just realized that this formula is a simplified version of the Method 2 I posted in my first post. It makes a lot more sense to em if I start from there. YMMV</p>
<p>The best way to solve this is to think logically. I have made a nice little method of how to solve these problems easily and effectively by simply rewriting the speeds in terms of TIME taken.(hopefully the capital letters will help you remember). </p>
<p>This means that if a question gives you two variables such as 300m/s and 200m/s you must rewrite each question in terms of time taken to preform the task (i.e. 300m/s takes one unit of time to complete and 200m/s takes 1.5 units of time to complete). The unit of time is simply the reciprocal of the ratio of speeds (200 is 2/3*200; the reciprocal of 2/3 is 3/2) </p>
<p>Back to the question at hand. </p>
<p>8mph is 2/3 the speed of 12mph.</p>
<p>Riding to any distance at a rate of 8mph will take 3/2=1.5 times as long as riding at 12mph. So we rewrite this as 8mph=1.5x and 12mph=1x (where x=time taken).</p>
<p>BUT we also know that 1.5x+1x=60. Therefore x=24 minutes. This means that it takes 24minutes to ride the distance at 12mph and 24*1.5=36minutes to ride the distance at 8mph. </p>
<p>Since we now know how how long each speed was used we can easily find the distance. 8<em>36/60+9</em>12/60=9.6 (note that 8<em>36/60 is equal to 9</em>12/60 because the distance each way is equivalent) .</p>
<p>This is my way of doing it and is more logical in my opinion than the other method you showed above.</p>
<p>I was wondering if someone could help me by giving some advice here. I'm taking the SAT I's first time on May 5th, and I'm freaking out because it's a few hours from being a month away!! I have the Princeton Review book and the Barron's book, and with 3 weeks to go I don't have the time, or really the money, for the Blue book. I'll try to get it to work on over the summer for sure though, if I decide to take them again.</p>
<p>Spring Break is next week too, which definitely doesn't help because I'll be away. My plan is to take a Barron's diagnostic test tomorrow afternoon and go over it reading all the correct/incorrect answers. Then in the 8 hour car ride I'll study as much as possible, and for the next three weeks at least an hour a day studying. (I also have AP's..then once SAT/AP are over I'll have one month to prepare for ACT and SAT II's...eeeeeek)</p>
<p>Does my plan sound like it'll yield at least SOME results!? 1 Diagnostic test and hopefully 2 practice tests before the actual SAT, plus at least one hour studying a day? I'm so stressed b/c I don't have the Official Book!!!</p>
<p>First, visit: <a href="http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/sat/prep_one/prep_one.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/sat/prep_one/prep_one.html</a>
Sign up for the question of the day, do the practice questions, and most importantly, take the full length actual test in one sitting.
Figure out what kinds of questions you are getting wrong, and what kinds of mistakes you are making, i.e. careless/didn't know the concept/did it a really slow way.
Then use the PR tests rather than Barron's. At least take the tests in one sitting, full-length. Use the parts of the PR book that deal with strategy, and focus on the questions you are not good at.
Don't worry as much about the essay and grammar, they are less important.
Do learn any vocabulary words you see in passages and sentence completions that you don't already know.
On the day of the test, skip troublesome questions and go back to them later. And look at the answers to each question...sometimes you can get rid of some and guess. Sometimes they will give you a hint as to how to solve the problem.</p>
<p>Also, most libraries have the Blue Book. Borrow it, and do your work on a separate piece of paper!</p>
<p>For the convience of all, I made a PDF of Xiggi's SAT method. It's very printer-friendly. :)</p>
<p>(When (or if) updates are made, I'll update the PDF, too.)</p>
<p>Thanks to everyone in this thread for your contributions on prepping for the SAT.</p>