Today’s GMAT tip comes from test prep firm ManhattanGMAT. In this article, Chris Ryan, ManhattanGMAT’s Director of Instructor and Product Development, covers the concept of causation in Critical Reading questions:

The concept of causation appears regularly on the GMAT and most people taking the exam can expect to see at least one Critical Reasoning question dealing with the issue. If you understand the concept and anticipate it, you will be much better prepared to answer the question correctly when it arises.

First, in general, “causation” means that one thing causes another thing to occur. (It’s also possible, of course, for several things to combine to cause one thing to occur, for one thing to cause several things to occur, and so on.)

Two problems generally crop up when the GMAT tests the concept of causation. The first is a false assumption that the causal connection is possible in one direction only. What does that mean? Causation is, as the term implies, a direct causal link: x causes y.

So, what’s the problem? Well, there’s also another concept we need to know, something called “correlation.” Correlation is essentially coincidence: x and y occur together so often that a causal relationship is assumed. For example, I’ve noticed that every time people are walking around outside with umbrellas, the ground is wet. Which one causes the other?* When two things occur together, how do we know whether x causes y or y causes x – or whether neither causes the other? (* Neither – there’s a third thing that causes both of those events to occur.)

Let’s look at another example: Imagine that every time a bee lands on a certain closed flower, the flower opens and the bee enters to gather pollen. It would be easy to assume that the bee’s landing somehow spurs the flower to open. It is equally plausible, though, that the flower’s opening causes the bee to come land on it. That is, the bee might know when the flower is about to open through some special bee intuition and then arrive just in time. The causal connection (between the bee’s landing and the flower’s opening) cannot be proven in either direction from this simple observation. All we know for sure is that the two events are correlated.

How does this play out on the GMAT? Imagine the following Critical Reasoning argument:

Researchers have noticed that people whose blood shows abnormally low levels of calcium usually develop laryngeal polyps, which can permanently damage vocal cords and result in partial or even total loss of voice. In order to prevent the polyps, the researchers recommend a diet high in calcium-rich foods such as dairy and green, leafy vegetables.

Does the argument provide a clear causal connection between low levels of calcium in the blood and laryngeal polyps?

Reading the above argument, we are tempted to take for granted that there is a causal connection: lack of calcium → laryngeal polyps. But it is equally plausible . . . → Continue Reading

Today’s GMAT tip comes from our friends at test prep firm Knewton. Today, they offer their advice on questions that include complex negations:

Alex Sarlin, is the Lead Verbal Developer for Graduate Programs at Knewton, where he specializes in helping students with their GMAT preparation.

The GMAT has a limited bag of tricks up its sleeve to disguise incorrect answer choices. Think of the test-makers as politicians caught in a fib; they can exaggerate (extreme answer choices), skirt the subject (irrelevant answer choices), twist the truth further (distortions), or draw dubious inferences to throw you off the scent. In the end, though, any politician will tell you that the most efficient way to get away with a lie is to simply confuse your accuser into submission. The GMAT usually does this by using negation and reversals in unexpected and mystifying ways.

Simply put, negations are words that reverse the meaning of a sentence. They include adverbs and adjectives, such as not, cannot, unlike, or without, and verbs that negate their subjects, such as neglect, deny, reverse, refuse, or counteract. Negations can make parsing sentences into a nightmare, especially during the GMAT, when reading quickly is a key skill. Dealing with negations and reversals effectively is doubly important for non-native English speakers, for whom unraveling complicated sentences is sometimes even more difficult.

Consider the following statement:

Employees with children are just as responsible as those without children.

That makes sense. Now, let’s throw in a reversal such as you would see on the GMAT:

An employee with children at home is no more likely to neglect his or her work duties than is an employee without children at home.

It’s already getting a bit ugly and difficult to parse, but after a moment, we can recognize that “no more likely to neglect his or her work duties” means the same thing as “just as responsible” does. Let’s add a few more twists:

Unlike the inconclusive results of research conducted on employees with and without disabled older relatives, the results of one recent study found that employees with children at home are no more likely to neglect their work duties than are employees without children at home; however, the same cannot be said for such employees’ attentiveness to housekeeping duties.

Jeez, that’s a mouthful! There are many, many negations and reversals in this sentence, all of which are there to make the core meaning of the sentence difficult to spot.

Never fear! There are methods to handle negation and reversals on the GMAT that are sure to make it less stressful.

1. Train yourself not only to notice, but to physically feel any negation words that pop up in an argument, passage, or answer choice.

Did you notice the “not only” at the beginning of the last sentence? We hope so. By “feel,” we mean that you should train your brain to be on high alert as soon as you spot a negation; when you . . . → Continue Reading