Mar 31 ACT & SAT Question of the Day

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?src=R&questionId=20130331 (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 D.  Sometimes you just need to read the sentence and trust your judgment.  Only D, “As part of the …,” sounded right.  Then I figured out the problem with the sentence so I could explain it.  You need a preposition to begin the clause that explains the “part” each nation took in their “steps.”

Let’s see what the ACT folks are hiding on us this Easter morning!

http://www.act.org/qotd/ (The ACT staff does not put a date on their questions so if you click on an archived blog, you’ll get today’s question and the old explanation. Sorry. The SAT staff has dated their questions; so, the archive is helpful. The ACT folks simply don’t do that.)

The answer is B.  They are “hiding” a question that we’ve seen before and it is an easy one at that.  There are a couple of quick ways to do this question.  First, you know that all those parentheses mean to multiply the x‘s times one another and that the shorthand way to express that math is to use an exponent.  We have 4 x’s; so, we use the exponent 4.

Second, if you aren’t sure about the math, you could “change the abstract to the concrete” or “convert the algebra to arithmetic.”  Substitute an easy actual number for the x.  “1” is pretty easy!  1 times 1 four times is 1.  Now plug 1 into the answers and see which one of them is equal to 1.  The only one that works is B.  We are all done.

Hope you have a great day whether you are celebrating Easter or not.  Keep your sugar consumption under control!

The Wizard

About Bob Alexander

Bob has been a professional educator starting with teaching biology, becoming a school administrator, and then working as an education lobbyist in Washington, DC. He got his start in national testing by becoming a consulting test writer, later joining Kaplan as a director, and finally starting his own business in 1995. He has written numerous books, consulted for school districts and colleges, developed his website and been featured on a DVD set. He offers SAT and ACT prep classes and tutors individuals and small groups of students in central Florida.
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