Importance of the Order of Difficulty level of SAT II Mathematics

Imagine that you are taking a test that consists of two questions. After your teacher hands out the test, and before you set to work, a helpful little gnome whispers to you, “The first problem is very simple, the second is much harder.” Would the gnome’s statement affect the way you approach the two problems? Yes.

For a “very simple” question, it seems likely that you should be able to answer it quickly and with little or no agonized second-guessing. You will probably have to spend much more time on a “much harder” question, both to come up with an answer and to check your work to make sure you didn’t make an error somewhere along the way.

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What about all the other students who didn’t hear the gnome? They might labor over the first, easy question, exhaustively checking their work and wasting time that they’ll need for the tricky second problem. Then, when those other students do get to the second problem, they might not check their work or be wary of traps, since they have no idea that the problem is so difficult.

The moral here is you should spend less time on the simpler questions that appear early in the test, and devote more time to the harder questions appearing later. Because Math IC questions are ordered by difficulty, it’s as if you have that helpful little gnome sitting next to you for the entire test.

Most students answer the easy Math IC questions correctly. Only some students get moderate questions right. Very few students get difficult questions right. What does this mean to you? It means that when you are going through the test, you can often trust your first instincts on an easy question. With difficult questions, however, you should be more cautious. There is a reason most people get these questions wrong: not only are they more difficult, containing more sophisticated vocabulary or mathematical concepts, they are also often tricky, full of enticing wrong answers that seem as if they must be correct. But because the SAT orders its questions by difficulty, the test tips you off about when to take a few extra seconds to make sure you haven’t been fooled by an answer that only seems right.

The tricky answers seem right because they are actually the answers you would get if you were to make a mathematical or logical mistake while working on the problem. For example, let’s say you’re flying through the test and have to multiply 6 × 8 × 3 . So you quickly multiply 6 and 8 to get 42 and then multiply 42 by 3 to get 126. You look down at the answers, and there’s 126! You mark it down as your answer and you get the question wrong. 6 × 8 equals 48, not 42, making the correct answer 144.

From this example, you should learn that just because the answer you arrived at is among the answers does not mean you definitely have it right. The SAT is designed to punish those who make careless errors. Don’t be one of them. After you get an answer, quickly check your work again.