Author Archives: Elizabeth

SAT Question of the Day Explained – January 31, 2014 – Algebra, Radicals

light-bulbToday’s SAT question of the day is a math question that’s rated easy.  Follow along with me to see if that’s true – and to avoid falling into a common trap.

For all test questions everywhere, we have to remember to answer what the question is asking.  Today’s question asks us the following:

If √x = 16, √4x = ?? Continue reading

ACT Question of the Day Explained – January 30, 2014 – Math, Absolute Value

Stay positive!Today’s ACT question of the day is a math question about absolute value and number properties.  Remember the basic fact about absolute value: everything that comes out of the bars is either positive or 0.  Kind of like coming out of prison?

Anyhow.  If we have that fact with us, we can answer this question. Continue reading

ACT Question of the Day Explained – January 29, 2014 – English, Wordiness

Bessie Coleman

Today’s ACT question of the day is an English question from the passage we saw just over a week ago about Bessie Coleman.  Today we are looking at underlined portion 5 to see how best to revise it.

Portion 5 comes between a sentence about when she was born and where she would end up and a sentence about life in Oklahoma.  The underlined sentence gives us information about how long ago 1893 was, and there’s nothing grammatically wrong with the sentence as it’s written.  Continue reading

ACT Question of the Day Explained – January 28, 2014 – Science

Today’s ACT science question of the day brings us back to the stick we met four days ago.  This time, instead of looking for data in the charts, we are asked about something relating to the scientific method.

They would like to know what remains constant in all of the experiments – in other words, we are looking for something that is part of the setup, definitely not one of the variables that is being measured. Continue reading

SAT Question of the Day Explained – January 28, 2014 – Math, Algebra

<3 <3Today’s SAT question of the day is a medium-difficulty math question that involves some basic algebra…and multiplying by 4.  (I’ll wait while you get your calculator for that last part … ….)

We are told that there are two machines: X and Y.

Machine X works at a rate of X bolts per hour.

Machine Y works at a rate of X + 6 bolts per hour.

They want to know how many bolts are produced, total, in four hours.  So, first, we have to figure out how many bolts are produced in one hour. Continue reading

ACT Question of the Day Explained – January 27, 2014 – Reading, Fiction

Today’s ACT question of the day comes from a fiction passage – the same passage we saw last week, in fact, in the question about the hat.  Our question asks us to consider evidence given throughout the passage as support for why the children are saying “no” at the end of the text.

Continue reading