PAT question - angle ranking

[gremak]

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I am planning on taking the DAT shortly, and have been scoring pretty well on the PAT section, except for the angle ranking section, where half of my wrong answers are on almost every practice test I take.

What can I do to improve on this section? It seems like the other ones can be improved with practice, but I am stuck on this one.

Any advice?

 

[DesiDentist]

The angle ranking section was the hardest on the real PAT, I found it easier on Kaplans material. However, I think you should keep practicing. I don't think anyone who took the DAT this year felt comfortable with the angles on the computer. You have to understand on paper it is different than on a screen since the screen is not a static image, it moves around our eyes just can't see it moving and causes much distress during the PAT.

DesiDentist

 

[juan7677]

i pretty much guessed on the angles

 

[AcidETCH]

How I approached the angle section was to look at the answers and compared them in pairs by standardinzing the base of the angles (did this by rotating the page). I compared (a) to (b) to see which is smaller, then take the smaller one and compared to (c), whichever is the smaller of that compared to (d). It takes practice, but after awhile it's pretty fast and accurate. I hope that helps a bit.

AE

 

[pumpkins90]

I have to agree with Desi, the resolution is terrible on those computer screens which make it that much harder to determine the rankings. What i did was compare each angle to 90 degrees and 45 degrees and this helped in the process of elimination of most of my choices. I usually would get all of them right on the practice exams.

 

[gremak]

Thanks for the good advice, I guess I'm not alone in my frustration.

 

[RSXer]

The fact that the resolution isbad may be able to help you in this case. The following is an idea I read in the Barron's book I think:

Look at the picture below:

Which line is closer to the black line?

This is an easy question, but as we all know, the PAT angles are a lot harder to tell. So when it comes to the real thing, it's tough to just eyeball it. Instead, take a close look at the red and blue lines. Do you see any differences?

The Red line (line B) is the one that is closest to the black line. The blue line is farther. Compare the "jaggedness" of each of these lines. You can see the jagged edges of the red line alot better than what you can see on the blue line. Also notice that thre jagged edges of the red line are a lot farther apart than the jagged edges of the blue line.

Looking at the jagged edges of the lines and comparing the distances at which the jagged edges start on each line is a way to determine which angle is smaller.

I hope this makes sense. Its hard to describe this, so I tired to use a pic. I'm such a dork 😉

 

[ItsGavinC]

I used the "jaggedness" of the lines approach when I took the PAT, and it seemed to work well for the angles.

You can complain about the crappy resolution of the screens, or the crappy drawings (both of which are TRUE!), but what we fail to realize is that the crappy resolution and crappy drawings can actually HELP you if you use the "jaggedness" approach.

You can basically count the number of pixels it takes for each side to make the next jagged point.