If you are reading this in an email you received from me, do not click the link to sat.collegeboard.org below. Use the link to my website that is farther down on the email. If you are seeing this in my blog, do the SAT Question of the Day by clicking on this link:
http://sat.collegeboard.org/practice/sat-question-of-the-day?questionId=20131102&oq=1 (This link takes you to today’s question. If you use my archive, you will see the question related to my SAT explanation for that date.)
The answer is E. There’s no error; so, why are more than 60% of the students missing this question? Exactly. It’s because they are expecting a mistake and fabricate one! Check out each underlined portion of the sentence. “Indicate” is a verb and its tense is correct and it is plural just like its subject “results.” No problem there. “Both safer and…” is fine because “both….and…” is the proper pair of conjunctions for “safer…effective…” “Was” is the past tense and fits fine with an implied subject of “scientists” who “assumed” the drug was safe and effective originally. There’s no problem.
The point of all of that is you need to check out each underlined portion of the sentence. Do you know what the test writers do wrong with the different parts of speech? For example, what about prepositions and pronouns? I have developed a list of grammar errors that associates each part of speech with the errors the test writers put on the test. You will find the error list on my free website (this one), in my manual Demystifying the SAT & ACT, and Video #9 which explains them and provides a number of examples of each error. You should use those resources to guide your review of grammar and composition for both the SAT and ACT.
Let’s see what the ACT folks have for us today.
ACT Question of the Day: Use your “back” button to return to my website after reading the ACT Question of the Day.
The answer is A. Probability is expressed as a fraction that has the number of correct ways in the numerator and the number of possible ways in the denominator: correct/possible. After picking a yellow balloon, there are 8 yellow balloons left out of the 13 balloons the vendor still has. Remember you have to delete one yellow balloon as well as one balloon from the 14 that originally existed. So, the probability of picking a yellow one is 8/13.
Why do you think doing the Questions of the Day is valuable? These questions aren’t going to be on the tests. Whether you get them right or wrong isn’t even important. You need to focus on what you can learn about the test by doing practice questions. Today you should see that there are certain grammar errors that pop up on the SAT and you need to get a list of those errors for your grammar review. You also have learned that simple probability shows up as well. Learn how to express it and you also need to know what to do when “removal” or “deletion” occurs from an original population. There are several other subtopics within the larger topic of probability. Get your hands on an outline of the different types of problems that show up. (I don’t need to tell you where to look for one! You’ve found a source–my free website.) Then do practice questions that are associated with each of the subtopics.
Good luck on the test today if you are taking it. Let me know if you see anything that you weren’t expecting. I’m looking forward to your emails.
The SAT & ACT Wizard
