Data Sufficiency Chapter 2: Trick Questions

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It is important that you have the discipline to stick to our approach. The Data Sufficiency questions tend to be trick questions, particularly the difficult ones, and straying from this basic strategy will increase the chances of you being fooled.

Remember that standardized tests are based on the premise that you can separate students into groups of ability. In order to do this, the less "capable" students must get questions wrong and the more capable students must get questions right or the test has failed in its purpose. To make sure less capable students get low scores, the tests are deliberately designed with trick questions specifically made to fool students of "lesser" ability (however the GMAT defines ability).

There are two types of Data Sufficiency question types:

	VALUE QUESTIONS. Can you generate a value? these questions comprise 2/3rds of data sufficiency questions How much was a certain card worth in January 1991? What is a + b YES/NO QUESTIONS. Can "prove" or "disprove" the statement? "Sometimes yes and sometimes no" constitutes insufficient information "Always Yes" or "Always No" is sufficient. Is a + b a multiple of 5? Is x < 0? Note: if you can prove a + b is NOT a multiple of 5 or x > 0, then it is still sufficient. Or, if you can prove in "Is x <0" that x is greater than zero, it is sufficient..

Selected Trick Question Types

How many adults ride bicycles in city A if all adults in City A either ride bicycles or drive cars?

(1) 85% of the 10,000 adults in city A drive cars.

Contents of Data Sufficiency Chapter: Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction   Chapter 2: Data Sufficiency Trick Questions   Chapter 3: More Practice Questions   Continue to Chapter 3: More Practice Questions