A question about the quantitive section of GRE

[Strangefox]

Hi!

In a quantitive section is all information in a problem always necessary to solve it? I mean, should I look out for tricky problems that offer extra data (speed, time, weight, whatever) that I do not actually need to get the answer?

Thanks!

[dithius_9]

When I took the GRE I seem to remember quantitative questions in which there was indeed extraneous information. This was 4 years ago, however. There are numerous practice tests floating around. I suggest you take a look at a few of those to get a feel for the types of questions you are likely to encounter. Maybe start here?

[Strangefox]

When I took the GRE I seem to remember quantitative questions in which there was indeed extraneous information. This was 4 years ago, however. There are numerous practice tests floating around. I suggest you take a look at a few of those to get a feel for the types of questions you are likely to encounter. Maybe start here?

Thanks!

I have already done these questions and others in the official GRE book on quant section and I have not seen there questions with superfluos information (except graphs and tables, of course). But in some other prep materials I came across such questions. I mean, for instance, a question about a car that goes at some speed, spends this and that time in the road blablabla and then I need to tell the distance, but there is some extra info saying that something is 25% of something and the wording is so tricky that I have to spend a lot of time trying to understand where to put this info about percents and then I realize that I don't need it at all!! This kind of questions So you saw something like that on actual GRE?

[fuzzylogician]

I also remember seeing questions that gave more information than needed to solve the problem. I can't remember if they were on the actual test on only in the prep materials, but it's been two years since I took the test.

Edited July 26, 2010 by fuzzylogician

[DrFaustus666]

Hi Strangefox,

In a word: YES.

Several of the GRE books have examples from actual GRE question, in which the boook points out the unnecessary information. The reason for placing unnecessary information is to confuse you, pure and simple.

And it goes further than that. Sometimes, one of the WRONG answers might turn out to be a multiple of an extra piece of data and one of the necessary pieces of data.

Regards, John

[TMP]

As I told my SAT kids, repeatedly, even though there's a lot of information, READ THE QUESTION! Skim through the paragraph until you get to the question and infer from there what you actually need to pay attention in that all information. Not only ETS wants to get you confuse, they also want to trick you as well by making you do a problem that you shouldn't have done in the first place if you hadn't seen exactly what they're asking for.