Once you have developed a good way to read the passage, the

next step in reading comprehension is to develop a way to attack

the questions. First and foremost, test takers should be able to
translate the questions into a question that is answerable by
them. This means understanding what the question is asking you
to do and the subject of the question. The two most common
question tasks that the GMAT asks are: what did the author say
about and why did the author do this. If you can put your
question into either one of these categories you will help to set up
your thinking before you move on to the next step, predicting the
answer.
The most common question type on the GMAT asks some form of
what does the author say about When you are confronted
with a question that asks this, you are essentially looking for a
paraphrase of information within the passage. Your main goal will
be to go back into the passage and find the information
requested.
Some examples of questions that ask what the author says are:
According to the passage, young apes use their strength in which
of the following ways? The use of the words according to the
passage indicates that the question is asking what the author
said about the topic. This question can be translated into What
did the author say was a way young apes use their strength?
Similarly, the question The passage suggests which of the
following about monochromatic photos uses the key words
the passage suggests to indicate that it is asking a question
about what the author said. This question should be translated to
What did the author say about monochromatic photos

One especially tricky one is the word infer, or inference. The

question it can be inferred from the passage that a study limited
to children under 6 years of age would have which one of the
following advantages over the study presented by Dr. Coop? On
the GMAT, inference is just another way of asking the test taker to
paraphrase information from the passage. The question above
can be translated to what is the advantage of a study of children
under 6 to that of Dr. Coop?
A final common question that asks you to paraphrase is which of
the following statements about the modernization of the
telephone exchange is supported by information in the passage?
Asking what is supported by the passage is just another way to
ask for a paraphrase of information contained therein.
Once you have determined that the question is asking you for a
paraphrase of information, your next task is to go to the passage
and retrieve the information necessary. Easier questions will have
answers that closely paraphrase the information directly from one
section of the passage and harder, more complex, questions may
require you to find two pieces of information from different parts
of the passage and combine them into one paraphrase. It is
important in your initial read of the passage that your summary
give you an indication whether one topic is discussed in multiple
paragraphs so that you can be sure to check if a combination of
information is appropriate.
When you go back to the passage to look for the information, your
goal is to get a sense of what the answer should be before you
start looking at available answer choices. You dont have to have
a full answer ready but you should know have some idea of the
content that could or should be in the answer choice for it to be
correct. If you do not open yourself up to predicting the answer in

some form, you are leaving yourself open to the traps the test
writers often leave for you.
The second most popular question type is that which asks why did
the author do something. One of the most recognizable version of
this type of question is what is the primary purpose of the
passage? This question is often mistaken for a main point
question but instead should be viewed as a question directly
asking why did the author write this? Was the authors objective
simply to convey facts, or does he want to convince the reader to
take a particular action, or does he want to debunk a popular
theory. There are many reasons why an author would write a
particular passage but focusing on the why generates a very
different result than focusing on what he said. Looking for the
primary purpose will require looking at words other than the main
point words.
There are three main purposes for writing an article, to convince
someone of an argument or course of action, the refute an
argument or to simply present facts and come to a factual
conclusion.
When the author is attempting first and foremost to convince the
reader of an argument or a course of action many of the
paragraphs will come to a conclusion. If the author uses
sentences such as clearly the Bonobo Ape is the supreme
primate or therefore, investors should use caution when
purchasing California Bonds indicate that the author is
attempting to convince you of something with the facts he is
presenting. Several paragraphs of this type regarding the same
issue indicate that the purpose of the passage is to advocate this
position.
When the author is refuting a position, the author often begins by

describing that position and then using words such as however,

but or yet to introduce his point. When the passage uses these
shifts in language alone with negative descriptions of the point of
view he is rebutting, it becomes more clear that his purpose is to
rebut that point of view instead of simply promoting his own.
When the author is simply presenting facts, or discussing an
issue, the passage will generally have few, if any conclusive
language clues. These passages tend to list more facts and
contain less words of opinion; any conclusion reached in them will
be of a more factual, dispassionate nature. Many of the Science
passage fall into this category.
Looking at the way in which the author presents his information,
and paying attention to the words outside of the specific subject
matter is a good way to predict the answer on a primary purpose
question. Of course, beyond knowing the basic argumentative
purpose of the argument, you will also have to have a firm
grounding of the subject matter discussed and the authors
opinion on that subject.
The Final question type explored in this article is specific
questions that ask why an author used a specific word or
introduced a specific fact. These questions often contain the
words in order to. For example, one such question from the
Official Guide reads The author of the passage mentions the
supervision of schools primarily in order to. It is important to
differentiate these questions from the specific what questions
mentioned in the beginning of this article because they are asking
a very different question and ask a test taker to look for the same
types of clues mentioned in the primary purpose questions
directly above. Looking at indicator words can help you to
determine the authors purpose in using specific facts. For
instance, the author mentions chimpanzees in order to can be

translated to why does the author mention chimpanzees. This is

a very different question from what does the author say about
chimpanzees. Again, looking at the surrounding language is an
important factor to determine why an author mentions
something. If he uses words such as for example or consider
before the terms then, he is adding the term in as an example for
something that was most likely described above. If instead he
starts the sentence with the term, or simply introduces facts
about it without any introductory words then he is most likely
mentioning the term in order to convey a fact about it.
To see the difference between these two types of paragraphs
consider this set of sentences:
All primates have opposable thumbs. Consider the chimpanzee,
which uses its opposable thumbs not only for climbing trees but
also for peeling bananas.
Chimpanzees use their opposable thumbs not only for climbing
trees but also for peeling bananas. This anatomical adaptation
allows it much greater versatility when living in the wild.
In each of the precedeeding sets of sentences the author
mentions the same fact about chimpanzees. However, his
purpose for doing so is drastically different. In the first sentence,
the use of the word consider makes it clear that he is mentioning
chimpanzee as an example of one of many primates that have
opposable thumbs. His purpose is not to explain the thumbs but
instead to prove his assertion. In the second sentence, there is no
introductory language and in this sentence the author mentions
chimpanzees in order to tell you about the uses of their opposing
thumbs. Think about this in opposition to what the answer to a
what type question would be. For instance, if the question had

asked according to the passage what is a characteristic of the

chimpanzee? In this case the answer would be the same
regardless of whether you were looking at the first sentence or
the second sentence. The answer would be that a characteristic of
the chimpanzee is opposable thumbs.
Of course, this is a small example and there are many variations
on this theme. Regardless of the variation, it is important to know
whether you are answering a question about what the author
said, versus why he said it. Clarifying this in your mind before you
go back to the passage to predict an answer will make you more
accurate in your predictions, and if practiced regularly will make
predicting the answer an easier task.

GRE Math: Rounding

What does it mean to round a number? What do you have
to know about rounding for the GRE?
Not many GRE questions will say, Heres a number: round
it to the nearest such-and-such. By contrast, many
questions, in the course of asking something else, could
ask you to round your answer to the nearest such-andsuch. In this way, rounding is one math skill you need to
know for the GRE. There are a few tricky issues, which I
will address here.

Rounding to the nearest integer

The most common type of rounding is round decimals to
the nearest integer. The rule for rounding is simple: look
at the digits in the tenths place, the first digit to the right
of the decimal point, that digit and that digit only. If the
digit in the tenths place is {0, 1, 2, 3, 4}, then round
down, which means the units digit remains the same; if
the digit in the tenths place is {5, 6, 7, 8, 9}, then round
up, which means the unit digit increases by one. Here are
a couple things to notice:
Observation #1: under most circumstances, rounding
changes the decimal to whatever integer is closer. For
example, 4.3 is rounded to 4, and 4.9 is rounded to 5. The
exception is when the decimal is smack dab between two
integers: 4.5 is exactly equidistant to both 4 and 5, but
because of the tie-breaker rule of rounding, anything
with a 5 in the tenths digit is rounded up. This is the only
case in which the go to the closer integer interpretation
will fail.

Observation #2: Do NOT double-round. Some people look

at a number like, say, 7.49, and they erroneously think
well, that 9 would round the 4 up to 5, and then a 5 gets
round up, to this number would round to 8. WRONG! Never
round a number in stages. Rounding is a one-shot deal,
a one-step process. When the number we need to round is
7.49, we only need notice that the tenths digit is a 4,
which means the number is rounded down to 7. One step,

case closed. In fact, all of the following numbers get

rounded to 7:
7.499
7.499999
7.4999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
9999999999
Heres the truly mind-boggling part: how many numbers
would there be larger than this last number, but still lower
than 7.5? INFINITY! No matter how many additional 9s we
slap on to the end of that number, theres still a
continuous infinity of decimals larger than that number
and below 7.5 No matter how finely we chop up the real
number line, each tiny fragment of the line, no matter how
small, still contains a continuous infinite of numbers.
Observation #3: the tie-breaker rule can be tricky with
negative values. For example, +2.5 gets rounded up to 3,
but 2.5 gets rounded down to 3. As with positive
numbers, the negative number ending in .5 is rounded to
the higher absolute value integer, but with negatives,
thats rounding down. (This is not the only way to
formulate this rule, but this is the convention that ETS
follows.)

Rounding to any other decimal place

Rounding to the nearest integer is really rounding to the

nearest units place. Sometimes, you will be asked to
round to the nearest hundreds, or to the nearest
hundredths to some decimal place other than the units
place. The rule is just a more generalized version of the
previous rounding rule.
Suppose we are asked to round to some specific decimal
place call this the target place. You always look at
only one digit, the digit immediately to the right of the
target place. If this digit immediately to the right is {0, 1,
2, 3, 4}, then you round down, and the digit in the
target place remains unchanged. If this digit immediately
to the right is {5, 6, 7, 8, 9}, then you round up, and
the digit in the target place increases by 1.

Other cases of rounding

Very occasionally, a GRE question may ask you not to
round to a particular decimal place, but rather to the
nearest multiple of something. For example, suppose you
are asked to round, say, to the nearest 0.05 how do you
do that?
Well, lets think about the results first. The result of
rounding to the nearest 0.05 would be something divisible
by 0.05 that is to say, a decimal with either a 0 or a 5 in
the hundredth place, no digits to the right of that, and any
digits to the left of that. The following are examples of
numbers which could be the result of rounding to the
nearest 0.05:

0.35
1.40
3.15
5.2
8
Notice: the second, (b) is the square root of 2 (sqrt{2} =
1.414213562.) rounded to the nearest 0.05, and the
third, (c), is pi rounded to the nearest 0.05.
Lets demonstrate the rounding by means of an example.
What numbers, when rounded to the nearest 0.05, would
be rounded to 2.35? Well, for starters, 2.35 and other
tenths around it would be rounded to 2.35
2.32 rounded down to 2.30
2.33 rounded up to 2.35
2.34 rounded up to 2.35
2.35 stays at value
2.36 rounded down to 2.35
2.37 rounded down to 2.35
2.38 rounded up to 2.40
Now, the tricky regions are those between the values that
are rounded in different directions. For example, 2.32 is
rounded down and 2.33 is rounded up, so something fishy
is happening between those two. Lets think about the

hundredths between 2.32 and 2.33 exactly between

them is 2.325, the midpoint between 2.30 and 2.35, and
like all midpoints, according to the tiebreaker rule, it
gets rounded up. Thus:
2.320 - rounded down to 2.30
2.321 - rounded down to 2.30
2.322 - rounded down to 2.30
2.323 - rounded down to 2.30
2.324 - rounded down to 2.30
2.325 - rounded up to 2.35 (the tie-breaker rule)
2.326 - rounded up to 2.35
2.327 - rounded up to 2.35
2.328 - rounded up to 2.35
2.329 - rounded up to 2.35
2.330 - rounded up to 2.35
This is all probably far more detail than you will need to
know for the GRE, but this does demonstrate the steps
you would take to round any decimal to the nearest 0.05.
By analogy, you could round any decimal to any specified
multiple.