Quant section of GRE

[gatorgrad]

I've taken the basic liberal arts maths, college algebra, and pre-calculus. I still need to take statistics for my degree, so I'll have that knowledge base. I notice that trig is a big part of the quant section, as well as geometry. 

 

I've never been exposed to trig. Should I take the class, or will studying from the books be sufficient enough?

Edited January 29, 2013 by gatorgrad

[iowaguy]

No trig on GRE.  Definitely don't take a trig class to prepare for the GRE!

[saphixation]

Yep, as iowaguy says, there isn't any trig. Definitely learn geometry as it relates to triangles (using the Pythagorean Theorem, finding the area, knowing the sum of the angles), but don't bother learning trig topics like sine/cosine/etc.

[Faraday]

Any basic study book will teach you all you need to know about triangles/geometry for those questions, there is no need to take an entire course just to learn that. The rest of the questions will test your problem solving skills using basic algebra. On occasion a few questions can be solved more easily with an advanced math technique/concept, but college algebra will suit you just fine and all of the problems can be solved with that skill set.

Edited January 29, 2013 by Faraday

[33andathirdRPM]

The statistics class should help. I had an unexpectedly high amount of probability and statistics questions.

[Instigate]

The statistics class should help. I had an unexpectedly high amount of probability and statistics questions.

 

We all did, the prep books dont stress enough on it and it is surprising how much stats there is when you actually take the test

Edited January 30, 2013 by Instigate

[midnight]

Yeah, stats is big part of the test now (I had at least five stats questions, maybe even six or seven!), so that class will definitely help you. And the GRE only poses basic stats-related questions: mode/median/mean/range, standard deviation, simple probability, simple combinations and permutations.

 

There is no trig on the GRE. Quant is mostly a mix of arithmetic, algebra/algebra II, geometry, and the aforementioned stats/prob.

 

The quant material on the GRE is not complex, but it can be tricky when you're dealing with comparisons or funny wording.

[33andathirdRPM]

I had at least 7 probability and statistics questions. If I didn't tutor students on campus I probably wouldn't have been able to get through them so quickly (and, in fact, I got a ridiculously easy one wrong because I over thought it). Just understand the concept of expectation and variance and be able to compute simple examples and you should be fine.

[33andathirdRPM]

Yeah, stats is big part of the test now (I had at least five stats questions, maybe even six or seven!), so that class will definitely help you. And the GRE only poses basic stats-related questions: mode/median/mean/range, standard deviation, simple probability, simple combinations and permutations.

 

There is no trig on the GRE. Quant is mostly a mix of arithmetic, algebra/algebra II, geometry, and the aforementioned stats/prob.

 

The quant material on the GRE is not complex, but it can be tricky when you're dealing with comparisons or funny wording.

 

I had a sequence problem, which pretty much signaled that that section was my experimental part. lol It was refreshing to compute a limit instead of worry about figuring out which standard deviation of fish populations was higher.

[Brent@GreenlightGRE]

I just want readers to be sure what we mean when we say that  Trig is not tested on the GRE.

This means that you don't need to know anything about sine, cosine and tangent. 

However, you still need to know a lot about triangles, such as: 

- Angles add to 180 degrees

- The Pythagorean Theorem

- Area of triangle (including the ever-useful special formula for the area of an equilateral triangle)

- Special right triangles (30-60-90 and 45-45-90)

- (difference between other 2 sides) < 3rd side < (sum of other 2 sides) 

- and probably more 

 

Cheers,

Brent