Felipe SAT tutor at Prepped and Polished tutoring and test prep shows you a fast way to solve a system of equations problem on the SAT Math no calculator section.
Today, we’re going to be talking about some simplification strategies in the math no calculator section of the SAT. Because the math no calculator section of the SAT is a very fast-paced section, the tendency that students have at first when they confront challenging problems is to attempt to plug in numbers right away to solve for whatever variable, whatever question the problem is asking.
A problem like this at first may be challenging because the question asks for a specific value, a specific numerical value to the variable X. So the first sentence see that some people may have is to attempt to plug in numbers for x and y to see if they work. Even though that may work, it’s not the optimal approach that we want to take.
So when confronted with a problem like this, what we want to do first is simplify as much as possible before we rely on any arithmetic at all. So, what does it mean to simplify it? To simplify means to combine like terms, to set certain expressions equal to others, and then solve for the variable.
What was your biggest takeaway from this episode about a fast way to solve a system of equations problem on the SAT Math no calculator section?
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