Comments on: Math GRE problem http://www.tangentspace.net/cz/archives/2005/02/math-gre-problem/ somewhere near the beginning. Sun, 07 Sep 2008 10:31:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 By: Carl Brannen http://www.tangentspace.net/cz/archives/2005/02/math-gre-problem/#comment-346798 Carl Brannen Mon, 19 May 2008 02:16:55 +0000 http://www.tangentspace.net/cz/archives/2005/02/math-gre-problem#comment-346798 My approach is to compute 7 and 11. One discovers that the only possible answers are powers of 2 and 1 power of 5. Then I write the prime p as (10n+k), k=1,3,7,9 and compute its 4th power, keeping track of what powers of 2 have to be in the terms. I think your technique is better, but I used to be quite quick at computation. Wayyy back [1978] I got a 990 in the Math GRE which was as high a score as they'd give you back then. There are enough easy problems that you have time to work out the hard ones. But in general, I think that timed tests are very bad ideas. You end up with grad students biased towards very fast thinkers. That's really not something that matters much in academia, except for taking tests. I'd rather see the math test have the same number of problems, but last all day long. My approach is to compute 7 and 11. One discovers that the only possible answers are powers of 2 and 1 power of 5. Then I write the prime p as (10n+k), k=1,3,7,9 and compute its 4th power, keeping track of what powers of 2 have to be in the terms. I think your technique is better, but I used to be quite quick at computation.

Wayyy back [1978] I got a 990 in the Math GRE which was as high a score as they’d give you back then. There are enough easy problems that you have time to work out the hard ones.

But in general, I think that timed tests are very bad ideas. You end up with grad students biased towards very fast thinkers. That’s really not something that matters much in academia, except for taking tests. I’d rather see the math test have the same number of problems, but last all day long.

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