Questions about QR

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caremkn

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I'm having hard time doing QR section, timing-wise. I took 1 year Calculus and last time I took the DAT, I scored 16 in this section. I felt so disappointed about my Math knowledge. Now I'm studying it again for the test on next June. I'm just wondering how do you guys study for it in order to do it fast (60 question in 45 mins is fast, in my opinion). I especially have problem with fraction comparison like this question:
Which of the following is the largest? 23/25, 27/30, 15/16, 14/15, and 7/8

?????????? :confused:

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the best way to do these questions is to compare questions with the same numerator or denominator. they way its written, none of these have the same denominators, but u can eliminate the ones that look obvious. so for example, work with 7/8 and 15/16: 7/8 is the same as 14/16 which u know is smaller than 15/16 so u can automatically eliminate 7/8. then look at 14/15 and 27/30: 14/15 is the same as 28/30 which is bigger than 27/30, so now you can eliminate 27/30.
Now you are just left with 23/25, 15/16, and 14/15. here you should just realize that 15/16 > 14/15 simply because you need to add a smaller remainder to 15/16 (1/16) to get a quotient of 1 as compared to 14/15 where you have to add a larger remainder (1/15) to get a quotient of 1. since 1/15 > 1/16 that means 15/16 is a bigger fraction than 14/15.
Now you are just left with 23/25 and 15/16...its time u use your best judgment. you can use the same concept as the previous step: u need to add 2/25 or 1/12.5 more to get to a quotient of 1 whereas you only need 1/16 for the other one. since 1/12.5 > 1/16, 15>16 is a bigger fraction than 23>25.
And all this should take you no more than 30-40 seconds to do! I understand some people might consider this insane, but as far as I understand, the focus of the QR section is to see how quickly the examinee is able to process and analyze a given problem, rather than if they know the math behind every particular problem. This is also why if you can "guesstimate" answers well, you will be fine! Hope this helped...PM me if you want any more tips.
 
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