I mean lengthy questions that consist of multiple lines with many things to remember... I have to read the question quite a few times to actually understand what's going on and I just get confused.
will I get better with practice or is this just something I have to deal with? I much prefer questions which are simply an equation and you have to solve for x
I don't enjoy wordiness in problems either, so, when possible, I employ some of these tricks:Originally Posted by uperkurk
I mean lengthy questions that consist of multiple lines with many things to remember... I have to read the question quite a few times to actually understand what's going on and I just get confused.
will I get better with practice or is this just something I have to deal with? I much prefer questions which are simply an equation and you have to solve for x
1) Cross out what doesn't matter. As an example, I'll restate a word problem (percentage problem) to which I responded earlier this evening.
Let's get rid of what we don't need.A company did a study to determine the percent of books that were returned on time. Of the 2000 previously checked books, the number that was returned on time were 300 greater than the number that were not returned on time. What percent of the books in the study were returned on time?
One caution is to not cross out words so you cannot see them; you may need the crossed-out words to answer the question (very specifically) in context, which was required in most of my graduate-level statistics courses.
2) Keep a running list of information explicitly given in the problem. Use that list, if you can, to determine (i.e., jot down) implicit information from the problem.
3) Abbreviate names in problems that are absurdly long or complicated. Sometimes, I use shapes, or simply boy and girl, in lieu of names that are too long, confusing or make me laugh too much.
-Andy
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