ACT Question of the Day Explained – January 22, 2014 – Math, Right Triangles, Pythagorean Theorem

No wonder Pythagoras tried to hide in a cave – too much neon in this theorem

Today’s ACT question of the day is asking: do you know the Pythagorean theorem, and can you simplify a radical expression?

If you do and can, this is a 20-second question.  If you don’t, you should the Pythagorean theorem now: a^2 + b^2 = c^2.  That is, the square of the length of each side (or “leg”) of a right triangle is equal to the square of the length of the hypotenuse.  This theorem makes an appearance dozens of times in various ways throughout your test, so keep it with you.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s apply it! Continue reading →

ACT Question of the Day Explained – January 21, 2014 – English

Bessie Coleman

Today’s ACT question of the day is an English question from a passage about Bessie Coleman. We have to determine which of the given options would best fix the underlined portion of the sentence.

In context, the underlined part of the sentence is related to a journey; it also contains a reference to the American Southwest.  So, we know we are dealing with a place.  What word do we use when referring to a place?

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SAT Question of the Day Explained – January 21, 2014 – Identifying Sentence Errors

Grand old flagsToday’s SAT question of the day about flags comes from the writing section.  For this Identifying Sentence Errors question, we have to find the error (if any) that exists in the sentence.

It won’t take you long to hear what sounds wrong. Continue reading →

ACT Question of the Day Explained – January 20, 2014 – Science

Today’s ACT question of the day is a science question about reading charts.  We have a pretty cool chart this time, though it’s a bit unconventional:

ACT Tree diagram

Image copyright ACT

The question wants to know what we would find at year 80.  We can see that this chart is a sort of timeline, so we need to find where year 80 would fall and then see what trees would be growing. Continue reading →

SAT Question of the Day Explained – January 20, 2014 – Sentence Completion

Now THAT is a lab rat!Today’s official SAT question of the day is a sentence completion about regulations on laboratory animals. We’ve got two blanks, so we have to make sure that our answer works for both blanks – but we also get twice as many chances if we need to eliminate some implausible answer choices.

For the first blank, we know that the policies used to be … something … but they are now mandatory.  For the second blank, we know that it’s something in relation to the policy that would cause labs to lose their grants. Continue reading →

ACT Question of the Day Explained – January 19, 2014 – Reading, Social Sciences

This cat will show you how it's done here on the reading section.Today’s ACT question of the day comes from the same social sciences passage about the medieval court system that we read a few days ago.  (Sorry that the ACT doesn’t publish a permanent link to its questions of the day like the SAT does!  I’m looking for an online link to their questions, but the general principles still apply to the questions that you will see on test day – and those principles are more important than solving specific questions, since you won’t see these exact questions on your test, anyhow!)

We have a detail question that asks about a specific term from the passage: when was this specific kind of trial used?  Let’s start by finding that term in the passage.

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SAT Question of the Day Explained – January 19, 2014 – Algebra

i <3 MathToday’s official SAT question of the day is a math question that involves two expressions that have been set equal to each other.  This medium-difficulty question looks tougher than it is, as long as we are careful with our signs and do not jump to conclusions. Let’s jump in.

√(x – a) = √(x + b)

First thing: square both sides to get rid of the silly radicals.  Now we are left with:

x – a = x + b

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ACT Question of the Day Explained – January 18, 2014 – Geometry, Triangles

isosceles-rainbowToday’s ACT question of the day is almost too easy to explain.  We are given an isosceles triangle, drawn to scale, and the measure of the third angle (the one without a corresponding angle): 22 degrees.

Isosceles triangles have two congruent angles and two congruent sides.  There are 180 degrees inside a triangle.  If you keep those two ideas in mind, you will have this problem solved before I can even finish explaining.

Continue reading →