You guys. Crazy story. I was in a coffee shop messing around with Geometer’s Sketchpad, just slapping together some perpendicular line segments because that’s how I roll, and this guy who could see my screen thought I was an artist or something. It was kinda weird, but he wanted to buy my “art.” Naturally, I (more…)
I didn’t do a Weekend Challenge last weekend. It’s not like I didn’t want to, y’all. Things just got totally cray-cray. My use of “cray-cray” in the previous sentence should be enough of an indication to you that things remain squarely thus. I actually wrote two questions for this weekend, but I’m only going to (more…)
I’m having a lot of fun playing around with some geometry drawing software this week (nyeeerd!), so I figured I’d use it again to make another “fun” 3-D problem for the weekend challenge. This is a bit tougher than you’d find on the SAT, but the underlying concepts, as always, are important for the SAT. (more…)
It’s not uncommon for a question or two involving three-dimensional shapes to appear on the SAT. Luckily, most of the time these questions either deal directly with the simple properties of three-dimensional shapes (like surface area and volume), or are just 2-D questions in disguise. It’s pretty rare to come across a truly difficult 3-D (more…)
I’ve spruced it up a tad, but an extremely similar question was #17 (not even #20!) on an SAT in 2006. The prize this week (pardon my proselytizing): Someday you will be as good at something as Mike Miller is at songwriting. Put your answers in the comments; I’ll post the solution here Monday. Good luck! UPDATE: (more…)
Krispy Pizza, one of my local joints. Source. This is a bit off-topic, but I saw Arcadia last night on Broadway, and it blew me away. I can’t stop thinking about it. If theater is your thing and tickets are within your means, then you should run and not walk. I still have chills. Even (more…)
I actually wasn’t going to do a weekend challenge this week because it was a super busy week, culminating in today’s flight to Minnesota with my whole family for a wedding we’re attending tomorrow, but this question came to me on the plane and I think it’s good enough to post from the hotel. Prize (more…)
As anyone who’s ever chewed on a pencil knows, it doesn’t take much force to put a dent in a regular old #2 pencil. You might have an opportunity to use this to your advantage on the SAT. Occasionally, a geometry question will appear that asks you to figure out the length of a segment (more…)
Hey all. Here’s your weekend challenge question. The prize this weekend: any $5 album from the Amazon mp3 store. I can only give you the prize if I can get in touch with you (using your email or Disqus/Google/Yahoo/Twitter/Facebook account), so please don’t be completely anonymous if you want the prize. (m + n + p (more…)
Here’s an important thing to remember: all figures on the SAT are drawn to scale unless indicated otherwise. In other words, if it doesn’t say “Note: figure not drawn to scale,” underneath it, it is drawn to scale. Most figures on the SAT are drawn to scale, which means it’s a good idea to guesstimate whenever (more…)
If you’ve ever sat down and taken a practice (or real) SAT, you’ve come across shaded region questions. They’re among the most iconic question types on the test, so much so that you may find that the memory of them remains with you long after your SAT taking days have passed. True story: I had (more…)
So, I trust by now you know what’s going on with regular triangles, and with angles in general. Right triangles get a post all to themselves because they’re special, and have some rules of their very own. Let’s dig in, shall we? Ancient Greece was awesome. First, let’s briefly review the Pythagorean theorem. You know (more…)
Before we get into triangles, we need to take a very quick look at the ingredients of a triangle: line segments and angles. Please tell me you already know this stuff: We good? Cool. Prove it: In the figure above, AE, BS, CG, DS, and FS intersect at point S. Which of the following (more…)
This is a little harder than a typical SAT question, and obviously formatted with a bit more flair and color than the College Board would use, but it deals with the same concepts you’ll need to master to kick the SAT where it hurts most, so have a go at it: I looked out my (more…)
NOTE: This post is about the OLD SAT (pre-2016). The current SAT DOES require you to know things like circle equations and trigonometry. Because the current SAT will also still ask questions like the ones discussed in this post, though, you may still find the information below useful. Circles can be difficult to deal (more…)
