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Did you evaluate statements by difficulty level, say starting with Statement
1, or by representation, starting with Statement III since it appears
in 3 answer choices?
There is no one way that's best for everyone in every situation. Apply
your judgement based on the combination of how quickly and accurately
you could evaluate the most-represented statement. For example, in this
problem if you knew immediately how to evaluate Statement III, then going
for that first would be smart because of the possibility of eliminating
2 or even 3 choices at once.
Let's say that's what we did.
Statement III: If 235 were replaced by 231, the denominator in this expression
would get larger, and therefore the expression itself would get smaller,
which is what we're looking for. So, the correct answer will include Statement
III, which means that we can eliminate Choices (A) and (B).
Now we're going to have to check both of the remaining statements so
we could do either next. We'll tackle Statement I first because it's the
easier of the two. If you'd started with Statement I, you'd probably go
on to evaluate Statement II next because it is more straightforward than
III.
Statement I: When 231 is subtracted from 1,500 we get a larger number,
not smaller, so we can eliminate Choice (D).
Statement II: Replacing 235 with 231 will produce a smaller denominator.
Since the numerator stays the same, the expression will become larger.
That means that this statement will not appear in the correct answer,
so we can eliminate Choice (E), leaving us with Choice (C), the correct
answer.
Note that in this case we had to evaluate all 3 statements to find the
correct answer. This is often not the case; it's not unusual for the statements
to be grouped so that the 4 incorrect choices are eliminated by only 2
of the statements.
So, it makes sense to develop the habit of evaluating statements based
on how often they appear in the answer choices, combined with your knowledge
of your personal strengths and weaknesses in terms of content (what you
can evaluate quickly and confidently). This strategy also helps you when
you have to guess, either because you cannot evaluate a statement or because
you're running out of time.
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