TheWikiMan

Does anyone have any good tips for how to not make careless errors in math. Today i took a practice test and got 5 questions wrong, of those 3 were just plain stupid mistakes that i should not have made. The other two i just didn't do right.

I know in general that i should just concentrate and stuff but is there anything you guys do that keeps those mistakes out. I figure that maybe since there is added pressure on test day i will concentrate even more and that that should help me out, but then again that could ruin me.

cjgone

I know what you mean -- I make stupid mistakes on everything I do, but i'm really disorganized anyway. Still haven't found away to avoid them yet.

TheWikiMan

It is just plain frustrating is all, to do a whole section and then get two wrong because of silly mistakes. And the thing with math is that 2 mistakes can cost you 50 points on the SAT.

KingChaos

Stop Making Stupid Mistakes

swans004

Just try to give yourself enough time to double check your work - easier said than done, though, right? I've generally found with my students that they're most vulnerable to careless mistakes on the medium difficulty questions. They're not so easy that you really can't make a stupid mistake, but easy enough that you may come to a quick, but wrong answer. You're devoting lots more time to the hard ones, so you're less likely to be careless there. So if you're in the middle/late part of the section and find an answer very quickly, just be sure to double check those! Hope that helps a little, and good luck!

TheWikiMan

thanks swan, you nailed it about the medium questions. Those are the ones that i usually make the careless mistakes on. When it comes to hard questions either I know how to do it or i can think my way through it. I will make sure to watch out for those middle questions from now on.

For me especially it takes a bit more time on the hard questions, so i have to kind of chug through the E and M questions quickly so that i have enough time to do the hard problems, but hey it will only be my first time Saturday so i have a good deal of time to work on that.