How Would You Do on the New SAT?

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/02/07/us/new-sat-quiz.html

by sytelus • 10 years ago

36 113 10 years ago

knodi123• 10 years ago

Not as well. But then, I doubt I'd do as well on the old SAT either. It's been a while since I've isolated y or found the zeroes of a function.

But seriously, I really wouldn't do as well. I was a scantron-taking machine back in high school, and I aced the SATs because it was exactly what I was used to. This new one, in my opinion, gives much more objective results.

\*edit: nevermind, I got 5/5 in just a few minutes. Guess I'm not as rusty as I thought, and this test only has easy algebra.

thrownaway24245• 10 years ago

I'm having a hard time relating this to the difficult of the 1991 SAT math section. I don't think back then we had either slopes of lines (#3) or systems of equations (#4). Then again, back then we had antonyms and analogies on the verbal section.

jchendy3• 10 years ago

Interesting, I knew the answer to #3 immediately, but didn't realize it was a slope/intercept equation. Looking back, #2 is basically the same question.

Yhippa• 10 years ago

The thing is most people who are reading this are probably well out of practice for the SATs. I remember doing a lot of studying and taking courses outside of school to practice, practice, practice. Getting comfortable with these types of questions is very important.

showerst• 10 years ago

One of the big critiques of the SAT in the past has been its 'studyability', because it tends to mean rich people can hire SAT tutors for their kids and memorize exactly which equations/wording templates will be on the test and score higher, so this may be an effort to combat that.

The related NYT article today suggests that all the extra english may actually make it worse for ESL students, so it's interesting to see if those goals will work at cross purposes.

JadeNB3• 10 years ago

Getting comfortable with these types of questions is very important.

It is important, but I think that a question is whether it should be important. That is, what is the value of a test that only, or even just primarily, evaluates how well you've prepared for it? One (or at least I) would like a test that somehow evaluated only actual knowledge / skill, so that one's score couldn't be improved by drilling. (As showerst (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11067591) points out, the reason one wouldn't like drilling to improve the score is because it's the rich kids who are able to afford the time and resources to drill, and so you're testing the wrong thing entirely.)

dripton• 10 years ago

I'd agree with you if the SAT had harder math on it. If I had to do calculus now, after not using it for 20 years, I'd get a lot of questions wrong.

But the SAT doesn't really go beyond basic algebra, and after getting an engineering degree, that feels burned into my ROM. I retook the GRE over a decade after my last math class, without studying, and still crushed it. Certain skills (reading quickly, parsing questions correctly, working backwards from multiple choice answers) don't leave you.

remarkEon• 10 years ago

I felt the same way initially, and actually found it pretty easy to tease out the important parts...but then again I do spend a lot of time with math in my free time and I feel like a lot of people here do as well.

I understand where this critique is coming from. My sister teaches 6th grade math to a class where ~80% doesn't speak english at home. She's just now beginning to expose them to simple problems (10 = 2x, solve for x and the like). She's basically dual-hatting as an english teacher and a math teacher, and it's significantly more difficult. That limits time she has to expose her students to more advanced concepts, or some of the funny more beautiful parts of math. Not saying the SAT shouldn't change...understanding real world problems is important. But there will be demos that face disadvantages.

Perhaps change the url? This is the larger discussion. Main article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/us/sat-test-changes.html

ldd• 10 years ago

I also do not speak English at home, nor do most of my peers and I found the opposite to be true: it is easier to do math problems and find spelling mistakes for those of us who do not have English as a mother tongue.

I'm pretty sure I read a study about this, but my google-fu is not helping today.

daveguy• 10 years ago

Interesting. Longer passages and wordier math problems. Does this throw a monkey wrench into the recent efforts I have seen to apply AI to solve/ace the SAT or is this why I have seen those recent efforts. It seems like the old style would be easier, but maybe more context makes it easier?

charlieflowers3• 10 years ago

Something appears to be wrong with the phone question. I don't believe any of the answers. I still got it right by choosing the answer that was better than the others ... but I think it is a flawed question.

SamBam• 10 years ago

I think the only confusing part of it is the sentence

The number of phones that she has left to fix at the end of each day can be estimated with the equation

"Has left to fix" could be misinterpreted as meaning "she has to fix this many," instead of simply "how many remain."

If you understand that it's just saying "P is how many remain", then it's clear that the formula is simply saying that she started with 108, and she fixes 23 per day.

jsprogrammer3• 10 years ago

You can also look at the preceding sentence:

Each week, she receives a batch of phones that need repairs.

dsp1234• 10 years ago

"Where d is the number of days she has worked that week"

Substitute d = 0, meaning she has worked no days yet. Then P = 108. Thus when she has worked no days yet, she has 108 phones to repair. Alternately phrased, Kathy starts each week with 108 phones to fix.

JadeNB3• 10 years ago

I don't believe any of the answers. … I think it is a flawed question.

Genuinely curious, not confrontational: why? That is, why do you think that the answer that is marked correct is not, or might not, actually be correct?

charlieflowers3• 10 years ago

For example, what if she was given 216 phones to fix per week, and she fixes 46 per day? The formula would be the same.

So the formula doesn't give enough info.

searine• 10 years ago

I find the wordier questions make it easier to work the problems in reverse, but maybe that's just me.

jonsen• 10 years ago

I don't get why this is choice answers? In 4 and 5 you could just try out the answers one by one.

thrownaway24245• 10 years ago

I think that's by far the fastest way to solve #4. Seeing as how I didn't have a pencil, I wasn't inclined to solve the system algebraically. I just ruled out C&D for being too large, and figured it was B since C was only just barely too large, and A was clearly too small. I think this is a legitimate way to solve the problem and a useful problem as well. I'd be happy if I met more people who could estimate and guess at math solutions.

DenisM3• 10 years ago

There's some coverage of that in the "You must be joking, mr Feynman" book.

jchendy3• 10 years ago

Assuming students still take the SAT with pencil and paper, having multiple choice answers is the easiest way to implement automatic grading.

rrauenza3• 10 years ago

I find this wording sloppily ambiguous: "The food truck's revenue from selling a total of 209 salads and drinks in one day was $836.50."

On initial read, I thought it was saying 209 salads and 209 drinks. Now, obviously the question would be trivial and the total revenue impossible it that were the case, but I wish in general that math questions were written much less ambiguously.

jchendy3• 10 years ago

I noticed the same. It could easily be fixed by specifying "...revenue from selling a combined total of..."

jsprogrammer3• 10 years ago

'Total' already implies 'combined'.

chasing• 10 years ago

I mean, part of applying logic to the problem is saying, "Well, clearly they don't mean 209 salads and 209 drinks, since that's $1776.50 and they say right there that the take was $836.50."

I'm okay with that sort of logical reading comprehension being part of the test. It certainly feels like an important real-world skill...

rrauenza3• 10 years ago

I think it's just sloppy and unintentional, especially for a timed test. I find things like this common in my kids' Math homework. (I don't blame common core, I blame bad text book writers.)

I also had to run the interpretation of 209 "salads and an unknown number of drinks" through my head as I parsed it.

I do see the value in learning how to remove ambiguity when trying to solve a problem, but I'm not convinced that is what they are intentionally testing.

On the other hand, I really liked how it says you may not use a calculator on the ones that did not need a calculator -- especially when running off to a calculator would have only made things worse!

fragsworth• 10 years ago

While it might be frustrating, this kind of question is entirely appropriate. Even though there is an ambiguity in small component of the question, when you take it in the context of the rest of the question, the ambiguity is removed. As a result, it tests your ability to reason about the intent of the author.

untog• 10 years ago

I wish in general that math questions were written much less ambiguously.

There's an argument to be made that real life is never that way, so we should be preparing students to evaluate ambiguities in questions.

delinka• 10 years ago

And preparing them for the inevitability that ambiguities will be misinterpreted by others including themselves. To that end, this question should have no correct answer.

socalnate1• 10 years ago

I totally agree, I assumed the question had an error in it and spent my time trying to figure out what the error was.

pc86• 10 years ago

I don't know that I've ever read a statement where something like "209 salads and drinks" meant 209 of each and not 209 total.

bas• 10 years ago

For instance, "100 boys and girls in the class". I read that as 100 students total, not 100 of each.

lettercarrier• 10 years ago

If "209 drinks and salads" were on the evenings sheet for a wedding, it would mean 209 of each.

Furthermore, if a worker would come up to me an question, "Does this mean 209 of each" I would think he kid is not bright and needs direction for everything????!!!!

anon42• 10 years ago

I'm more perplexed by how to solve it, since any odd number of salads is a solution. I.e. for every k, 836.5 - 6.5 * (2 * k + 1) is an even number

dastbe• 10 years ago

I'm not quite sure where you're going with k vs k+1.

  we know that s + d = 209 (1)
  and we know that 6.5s + 2d = 836.5 (2)
  we can rewrite (1) as d = 209 - s (3)
  substituting (3) into (2) we  get 6.5s + 2(209 - s) = 836.5 (4)
  solving (4) for s yields s = 93 (5)

alternatively, you can solve the system of linear equations

  [   1 1 ] [ s ] = [   209 ]
  [ 6.5 2 ] [ d ] = [ 836.5 ] (1)
  
  [ s ] = [ -4/9  2/9 ] [   209 ]
  [ d ] = [ 13/9 -2/9 ] [ 836.5 ] (2)
  
  [ s ] = [ 93  ]
  [ d ] = [ 116 ] (3)

rtkwe4• 10 years ago

It's a really standard form of 2 formula substitution, you're missing the fact that there was 209 drinks and salads sold combined which constrains the solution to a single answer. From the setup you get 2 equations where x is the number of salads and y is the number of drinks:

[1] 6.5x + 2 y = 836.5

and

[2] x + y = 209

Solve [2] for y and substitute into [1]:

6.5*x + 2(209 - x) = 836.5

You can also do this with linear algebra but this is the way I would have known as a normal high schooler taking the SAT.

delazeur2• 10 years ago

I'm struggling with whether this is a "good" thing or not. On the one hand, I can see how it might increase the scores of privileged children relative to the scores of underprivileged children. On the other hand, should we really divorce math from the "real world" just to make it easier to cram for the test? In college and in life, you need to use math for applications, not arbitrary one-line computations.

nernst• 10 years ago

What's interesting is the number of people posting here who found the questions ambiguous. One assumes that your average HN poster may be a little overly detail oriented (and privileged), but even so... what this seems to be testing as much as algebra skill is correctly parsing the question (assuming there is a single 'correct' way to do that). Shouldn't that skill be part of the reading comprehension testing? Ask any customer facing developer and they will tell you there is no single interpretation for most customer requirements.

My other concern was the answer to #1, namely, "4m + 5b" vs "5m + 4b". I feel like if you know it is in that form (sum rather than product) the two answer choices are just intended to trip people up who are moving through the test at speed.

delazeur2• 10 years ago

That's very true. I wonder if the goal of the test writers was simply to make the problems wordier, or if they deliberately created ambiguity to test parsing skills? I don't think the article was clear on that distinction.

Problems that are intentionally difficult to parse fail as tests of "real world" problem solving skills because in the real world it is almost always possible to seek clarification.

Aeolos• 10 years ago

At what age do kids take this test? I find it bizarrely simple compared to the college entry exams at my country...

VeilEm• 10 years ago

SAT testing takes place while in high school, so test taking starts at age 15, but it's probably mostly 16 and 17 year olds who take the test I'd think.

dragonwriter4• 10 years ago

SAT testing takes place while in high school

Or significantly earlier (e.g., the John Hopkins University Center for Academically Talented Youth uses it as one of the options for qualifying exams for their programs students starting in Grade 7.)

miguelrochefort• 10 years ago

I would assume around 15.

tokenadult2• 10 years ago

At what age do kids take this test?

There are two age bands for SAT test-takers. The great majority of test-takers are of senior high school age, mostly eleventh graders or twelfth graders in their last two years of secondary school (so typically sixteen or seventeen years old as they take the test). They take the test at that age for one part of an application to college or university, as the article points out.

A younger age band for SAT test-takers are younger children taking the SAT for Talent Search[1] testing. All four of my children have participated in Talent Search testing (inherently, all with the previous version of the SAT, or even the version before that), all testing for the first time in sixth grade (just before their twelfth birthdays). Taking the SAT, or the competing brand of college entrance test the ACT, at such a young age is to identify young people who are ready for more challenging levels of study than usually served up by United States middle schools (lower secondary schools). My children have taken various online courses or supplementary locally arranged group courses at late elementary or middle school age, and have taken quite advanced courses at senior high age. My oldest son, now a hacker for a startup, got into the world of supplementary mathematics courses, discussed in another article submitted to Hacker News recently,[2] and found that experience very helpful for his career development.

I agree with the statement that the SAT is

bizarrely simple compared to the college entry exams at my country

and that would be true compared to the university entrance examinations used in a lot of countries that Hacker News readers come from. On the other hand, the SAT or ACT are only one element, and not the most important element, of college admission in the United States, and it's easy in general in the United States to enter higher education after secondary education--the majority of high school graduates do.

My children all score well on the SAT (and the ACT) when they take it at young ages for Talent Search. The key to the standardized tests used for college entrance in the United States is reading ability. Kids don't read for fun in their youth like they did in my generation. I am amazed (and my children are amazed) at how little reading contemporary children do. My stock advice on getting ready for standardized tests is "read, read, read, and read." My two older sons call the ACT, particularly, the "American Reading Test." Anyone who can read well can ace that test.

A few years ago, I reread the section "Suggestions for Study" in the front matter of John DeFrancis's book Beginning Chinese Reader, Part I, which I first used to learn Chinese back in 1975. In that section of that book, I found this passage, "Fluency in reading can only be achieved by extensive practice on all the interrelated aspects of the reading process. To accomplish this we must READ, READ, READ" (capitalization as in original). In other words, vocabulary can only be well acquired in context (an argument he develops in detail with regard to Chinese in the writing I have just cited) and the context must be a genuine context produced by native speakers of the language. So what I tell my children about test prep, and this advice has served them very well, is read whatever you find fun to read, and keep on trying out new kinds of reading matter. Read widely. Read the cereal box while eating breakfast. Read a newspaper or magazine. Read books on any subject imaginable. Put down the video game and read. Get away from the computer (in our family, this sounds like "Do as I say and not as I do") and read. Read, read, read, and read. Then there is nothing to worry about in any United States college entrance test.

[1] http://cty.jhu.edu/talent/testing/about/sat.html

https://tip.duke.edu/node/44

http://www.ctd.northwestern.edu/program/numats

[2] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/03/the-math...

burkaman• 10 years ago

I wouldn't really call it an "entry exam". A perfect score doesn't guarantee you acceptance to top schools, and a mediocre score doesn't totally rule you out. And most people also take SAT subject exams and AP exams, which are harder and more specialized.

sgeisenh• 10 years ago

The SAT subject tests and AP exams are usually easier than the general SAT because they require a narrower area of preparation and are typically associated with courses that students have already taken. At least that was my experience taking them 6-8 years ago. I had to prep for the critical reading section of the general SAT to get a good score, but did almost no prep otherwise.

silverdrake11• 10 years ago

What makes it hard is that you have just over a minute to answer each multiple choice math question

tzs• 10 years ago

my country...

Which country is that?

DenisM3• 10 years ago

[...] A food truck sells salads for $6.50 each and drinks for $2.00 each. The food truck's revenue from selling a total of 209 salads and drinks in one day was $836.50. How many salads were sold that day? [...]

I feel really dumb.

So they sold 209 salads, and then it is asked how many salads were sold. Well, 209, no?

Assuming they meant to ask how many drinks were sold, 209 salads * $6.50 per salad, comes out to over $1300. So about -250 drinks were sold, that is 250 were bough from customers.

Assuming instead they meant that it was 209 drinks that were sold, the number of salads then comes out to (836.50 - 2*209) / 6.50 which is 64.38

What am I missing???

tc7• 10 years ago

# salads sold + # drinks sold = 209, perhaps?

DenisM3• 10 years ago

I see. Yeah. I would have totally failed this test.

monknomo• 10 years ago

That's definitely it. They want you to solve a system of equations after understanding a word problem

Given

s + d = 209

6.5 * s + 2 * d = 836.5

solve for s

euph0ria• 10 years ago

I believe it should be interpreted as this: 209 items were sold of which some were salads and some were drinks.

cranium• 10 years ago

209 is the total sold, drinks AND salads.

3pt14159• 10 years ago

The food truck's revenue from selling a total of 209 salads and drinks in one day was $836.50.

The key word is total which means it is 209 things, of which some are drinks and some are salads.

FlyingLawnmower• 10 years ago

I think they mean that there were 209 items sold, made up of some number of salads (x) and some number of drinks (y) such that X + Y = 209, and that $6.50X + $2.00Y = $836.50

The question is horribly worded, but I hope that helps clear some ambiguity. It's a system of equations -- 2 equations, 2 unknowns, which makes it a slightly harder problem.

LastZactionHero• 10 years ago

It's an 'isolate a variable and solve' thing.

- s + d = 209

- 2d + 6.5s = 836.50

- Solve for 's'

Man, I miss math.

MarcScott• 10 years ago

836.50 = 6.5 * x + 2 * (209 - x)

Find x

dementis3• 10 years ago

That looks like it could have come right out of a math book; and having it structured in such a manner makes the difficulty of the problem much lower for any one with some English reading comprehension problems. In fact its so simply stated that Wolfram Alpha has no problem with solving for x.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=836.50+%3D+6.5+*+x+%2B...

Wolfram Alpha is awesome as long as you know how to properly define the question, and when it comes to "word" problems that is 90% of the work. So this new version of the SAT just makes me think they want to make it more challenging for people who have reading comprehension problems. And the test being in English doesn't do one bit to help with that; case in point all of the discussion here about how the questions could be interpreted.

matt_morgan• 10 years ago

I like the new test (I work in this field). But isn't #2 lacking necessary info? Nowhere are we told that she always finishes her workload every week, or that she works at a constant rate.

whitegrape• 10 years ago

Keyword in the problem is "estimated". A student trained to estimate would probably transform the equation to another fine estimation of 100 - 20d and the relation between the total and a work-week is clear.

ikeboy• 10 years ago

Set d=0, answer falls out right away.

tokenadult2• 10 years ago

About the many comments here about rich kids having an advantage on the SAT, I have to remind everyone that the free online service Khan Academy is the official test preparation service for the new SAT,[1] endorsed by the College Board, the publisher of the test. Moreover, my children, who all score well on the SAT even when they take it at young ages for Talent Search (see my other comment on this thread for more details) are not disadvantaged by NOT taking pricy test-prep courses. They have been homeschooled or have attended the local public schools, apart from some supplementary courses we have looked for for each child based on each child's interests, and they have never needed test-prep-as-such from any external teacher. No one else needs that anymore either, now that Khan Academy has full practice materials for the newly revised SAT test.

[1] https://www.khanacademy.org/sat

MrApathy• 10 years ago

Your comment is based on the presupposition that lower income kids have:

(1) An internet ready device.

(2) Reliable internet service.

(3) A quiet environment where they're able to study undisturbed.

(4) Have the time available to study, no younger siblings to watch over, and don't have a strenuous paid job.

For many lower income kids studying for the SAT isn't practical, even if the material is available at no cost. Khan Academy certainly helps a lot of students that can't afford expensive tutors or private classes, but it's by no means a complete solution. We need to do more as a society to help disadvantaged students prepare for college.

e40• 10 years ago

(5) Have parents that push them to study.

(6) Are in a culture where being studious is not considered a bad thing.

There are probably more, too.

mercer2• 10 years ago

Despite the fact that it's a comedy, I find that the show Shameless does a pretty good job showing how difficult it is for a bright kid to have a fitting education in that kind of environment.

chipgap98• 10 years ago

But not all households have internet access and not all kids are being told they can use this resource. I think we're moving in the right direction, but rich students are still going to have an advantage on these types of tests

tjr• 10 years ago

What would you recommend? What do you think an ideal solution would look like?

xythian• 10 years ago

Unfortunately, the 'rich kid' advantage starts ~18 years before they take a free online SAT prep class. Reasons are vast and entangled with race, geolocation, socio-economic status, health, and even fundamental differences in brain development during adolescence. But, the problem is most certainly not as simple as having access to the Internet and a free online course (this is also fraught with its own perils that are easily overlooked).*

[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2014/08/07/335285098/rich-kid...

[2] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/poverty-disturbs-c...

*Edit: Other comments have pointed out the difficulties in just having Internet access, skills to use the Internet, awareness of free online training, cognizance that training can improve your SAT outcomes, understanding that SAT outcomes are tied to many other positive life outcomes, etc.

unabst• 10 years ago

Not all children have YOU as their parent :)

Seriously, parents matter. That's why it bugs me when parents are used as an excuse for underperforming students. As difficult as it may be, schools must take full responsibility for their students, and not share it with their parents. That is the ONLY way those students will get what they need.

miranda_rights• 10 years ago

I agree. I've always thought that "preparation" for the vocabulary and critical reading for the SATs starts in early high school or in middle school. Sitting down and memorizing ~200 new words that you hope will be on the exam isn't as helpful or effective as simply growing up in a home where college educated parents use "SAT" words in daily conversation. I say "simply" because the children who do have that advantage gain it merely by absorbing what's around them, in comparison to other children who don't have that advantage.

dragonwriter4• 10 years ago

That's why it bugs me when parents are used as an excuse for underperforming students. As difficult as it may be, schools must take full responsibility for their students, and not share it with their parents.

Responsibility must come with authority. As schools cannot legally take full authority over students, and must share it with parents, it is impossible for them to take full responsibility.

I think there is a good argument that society ought to consider means to mitigate disadvantages due to parenting, and consider the extent and circumstances in which greater intervention is appropriate, that's a discussion which goes far beyond the schools to broader policy questions, and which I can't see ever being resolved in favor of general and total community responsibility -- and thus authority -- unshared with parents, whether via the schools or any other mechanism. As such, I think talk of schools taking unshared responsibility for outcomes is overly simplistic and ill-considered.

foobarqux• 10 years ago

Intuitively you should expect rich kids to have an advantage in every endeavor because they have more resources. Rich kids can afford private tutors (which provides a 2 standard deviation improvement compared to 1 for Khan style learning), have more time and are less distracted by problems that can be solved with money. That's to say nothing of the behavioral differences that result from a privileged upbringing and which are arguably more important than extrinsic factors.

dementis3• 10 years ago

Being rich or poor has no bearing on someones ability to score highly on any standardized test. Its entirely about motivation which can be somewhat externally supplied by many factors such as parents, teachers or their peers; or it can be supplied by the person who is going to be taking the test.

In the US many public libraries having computers that are available for use by anyone and are often open till 8 or 9 at night(and many schools also allow students access to computers during their "free/study" period(s)). And with the Labor laws restricting the hours a minor can work on a school day; only situations at home that require their presence would prevent a self-motivated "poor" student from studying for this test.

Now how a "poor" student would be able to afford to take this test much less the crazy expensive colleges/universities in the US is an entirely different matter.

viraptor• 10 years ago

Being rich or poor has no bearing on someones ability to score highly on any standardized test.

It's technically true. It rarely affect the ability. But it does affect the result anyway. Wealth is a known good predictor in results: https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/08/29/the-correla...

dragonwriter4• 10 years ago

Being rich or poor has no bearing on someones ability to score highly on any standardized test.

Being rich or poor has a strong, fairly direct, causal relationship to being relatively free from or subject to various environmental and other conditions -- both proximate to the time of the test and at earlier developmental stages -- that have adverse impacts on ability to score highly on any standardized test.

(For a dramatic demonstration that is in the news right now see Flint, Michigan.)

MisterBastahrd• 10 years ago

If you think that simply having access to an online resource is as good as having personal tutors and a lifetime of educated parental involvement, then you are pathetically tone deaf. Most poor kids don't have a computer. If they have internet access, it's through a cheap cell phone.

erroneousfunk• 10 years ago

I don't think you think rich kids have an advantage on the SATs for the reasons you think. I've met high school kids that didn't know the SATs were multiple choice, or when/where/how to take them. They didn't know that they needed to go to a website to sign up, or that they'd have to figure out transportation to the testing site. Parents of high school kids that were confused between the SATs and the federally-mandated high school tests, and didn't know what they needed to do, if anything, to get their children registered for the test -- much less how to help them prepare. Many schools don't provide any sort of guidance about taking them -- they're too worried about the test prep that actually reflects on their school and don't want to take class time to teach more tests.

The gap between "rich kid" and "poor kid" performance on the SATs is much, much bigger than just "this SAT studying source or that one"

drblast• 10 years ago

Well now, come on. This is basic algebra, and you can also use a calculator, although it's not even necessary for any question here.

I feel like these are good questions that test a student's ability to reason about the problem, rather than just apply a formula.

If you can't do pretty well on a test like this, you're probably not going to get much out of college, and are probably wasting your time and money by going there. Either do something else or prepare for college better.

Not everyone should go to college, and it shouldn't be a prerequisite for living a good life in our society. I work with plenty of excellent people with no degree and besides a mostly self-imposed stigma about not going to college, they're doing just fine.

howeyc• 10 years ago

I agree these questions are very basic, convert theses sentences to an algebra equation.

I'm not sure doing well on this quiz is necessary to "get much out of college." College usually has courses other than algebra.

rtl49• 10 years ago

I think the commenter is suggesting that algebra skills are a reasonable heuristic for the applicant's ability to perform well in an academic context. In other words, if after four consecutive years of mathematics training centered on algebra, you still can't do algebra, you're probably not going to be able to deal with Shakespeare or Heidegger either.

CephalopodMD• 10 years ago

I feel like making these questions more wordy leaves a lot of room for bias in the questions. For example, the phone repair one, while easy enough for me to parse, seemed to rely on the basic understanding of how a repair/maintenance company might work. Again, really simple example that I don't expect people to mess up, but I think it shows that there could be a problem.

anon42• 10 years ago

The phone one was a bit grating because the numbers didn't have any quantities attached to them. Though of course that would make the question trivial, if I wrote something like "P = 108 - 23*d", I'd get marks off and a big (WHAT?) next to the numbers. Without specifying 108 whats it is, it could be 108 peppers or 108 bicycle-riding monkeys wearing suits. It's more of a common sense question than an actual mathematics question.

elsjaako• 10 years ago

I looked at the other sample questions, this is the only one I struggled with:

https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sample-questions/m...

golergka4• 10 years ago

Is this for real?

It was my understanding that in US people take SAT after finishing high school and use these scores to enter universities. But this quiz looks like it's intended for 10 year olds.

Do I misunderstand something here?

Edit: here's my own frame of reference for a math level of a 16-17 year old just out of school. Problems are definetly harder than average, but nothing out of scope of state-approved math curriculum:

http://new.math.msu.su/admission/exams-write.html

(Russian, but understanding the language is not necessary for half of the problems). Of course, I expect a general exam to be easier, but not so drastically.

pdonis2• 10 years ago

US students typically take the SAT a year or two before finishing high school. However, they often start preparing for the SAT years before that.

golergka4• 10 years ago

But how the hell is this supposed to test a high school math level?

These are just simple linear equation systems; where are the roots, the powers, the trigonometry, the logarithms, the limits, the integrals?

logfromblammo3• 10 years ago

So essentially, the math questions are being revised to involve more reading comprehension and less actual math?

I can't help noticing that most of those questions contained at least one bit of completely irrelevant information. Each of those questions could be worded less ambiguously and more concisely--to test math skill, rather than reading skill. You can trick more students into getting a wrong answer by inserting red herrings and ambiguous sentences into the question, but in doing so, you are no longer strictly testing their math skills. There is no particular need to ask these questions as story paragraphs rather than lists of known facts.

The following are the same math problems, with dramatically simplified wording. If you find them easier to understand than the originals, that is because I have removed the part of the problem that involves translating the text into facts relevant to the question.

  1. Armand spent 5 hours texting at a rate of m texts/hour.
     Tyrone spent 4 hours texting at a rate of n texts/hour.
     What expression represents the total number of texts sent?

  2. P = 108 - 23d models the weekly workload of an employee.
     P is the number of work units remaining for this week.
     d is the number of days the employee has spent working this week.
     What does the value 108 represent?

  3. h = 3a + 28.6 models height (h) in inches at an age (a) in years.
     How much taller does the modeled subject grow per year?

  4. A vendor sells salads for $6.50 and drinks for $2.00.
     The vendor sold 209 items for a total of $836.50.
     How many of the items were salads?

  5. Cultivar A of a fruit tree produces 20% more fruit than cultivar B.
     Cultivar A produces 144 fruits.
     How many fruits does cultivar B produce?

rtkwe4• 10 years ago

By including extra information testers can't just be coached or memorize apply this formula when you see this kind of question and the test shows they're actually understanding more real world problems and how to take what they know and how to apply it to a problem where everything hasn't been stripped away for you. If students are tricked by the simple extraneous information it shows there's a gap in their ability to take information and use math to answer a question about it. That's an important thing to evaluate.

logfromblammo3• 10 years ago

Bear in mind that the SAT tests literacy skills and math skills separately. Reading comprehension is unequivocally something that should be included in the reading and writing portion of the test, rather than the math portion.

Read some of the comments elsewhere in this discussion. There are some people that noticed how "209 salads and drinks" could be interpreted as "209 salads, and an unspecified quantity of drinks" or as "209 * ( a salad or a drink )". That has nothing to do with one's ability to take a system of two equations and two variables and solve it for either variable, and everything to do with poor question design.

Professional pollsters work very hard at tuning the exact wording of poll questions, to eliminate hidden biases in the question itself and to better reveal what the participants themselves think. These samples have non-mathematical bias embedded in the questions.

How Would You Do on the New SAT?

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