<p>Sometimes when you’re stuck on that one problem, do you ever try different things with the problem such as make certain values equal to each other to see if something comes out? This can sometimes lead to the wrong answer that ETS happened to make one of the answers, but sometimes it looks like the only way.</p>
<p>gimme an example</p>
<p>It’s kind of hard to because when you might look at you, you might see it the logical way at first and you couldn’t give me the advice to manipulate the problem when you know what it is. Mainly I see this strategy work with function problems, the first time I used it was when I made the function equal to a value mentioned, but now I can get it the logical way when the equation says Y= because I know that Y=f(x). Just make the function equal different things. I tried it with this problem, though I wouldn’t say that this strategy is ideal. </p>
<p>Let the function F be defined by F(x)=2x-1. If (1/2)F(Square root of T)=4.</p>
<p>a)3/Square root of 2</p>
<p>b)7/2</p>
<p>c)9/2</p>
<p>d)49/4</p>
<p>e)81/4</p>
<p>I tried a lot of different things like making 2x-1 equal to 4. Of course soon I realized that to solve you, you had to…</p>
<p>Plug in Square root of T into the function to get 2*Square root of T -1, multiply that by .5 to get Square root of T-.5. Then I make that equal to 4 and you get 81/4.</p>
<p>I think you’re just making it much more complicated than you have to. Review your Algebra II skills.</p>
<p>ok, ummmm… let me show you how i did this problem. When i saw it, a saw an algebraic function: .5 x f(T) = 4</p>
<p>f(T) = 8</p>
<p>f(T) = 2 x square root of T -1</p>
<p>2 x sqrt(T) -1 = 8</p>
<p>2 x sqrt(T) = 9</p>
<p>sqrt(T) = 9/2</p>
<p>T = 81/4.</p>
<p>That is essentially what you did, but that procedure came immediately to me as the “logical way.” However, I did manipulate it by treating F(T) as a variable at first, then substituting.</p>
<p>note : the “x” stands for multiply, not as a variable. wow, I hate doing math problems on the computer. why can’t there be a stinkin’ square root button? grrrrrr…</p>