<p>I’m wondering if I can trust those pictures without saying Figure not drawn to scale. are they accurate enough to rely on?</p>
<p>If they are not drawn to scale you get a basic view of the situation ,but not accurate.For example if the picture is not drawn to scale,you may see that two lines are parallel but this is not true.</p>
<p>For Collegeboard released tests, real SATs, and MOST test books that bother to label some diagrams with “figure not drawn to scale”, from my experience if they do not have the message then it means the figure is draw to scale. I remember successfully exploiting primitive methods of measuring line ratios and such when I first started studying for SATs.</p>
<p>There was a geometry question on the January 2008 SAT with circles in a square; it gave a lot of grief to people (you can probably find a related thread).
That question can be answered in 20 sec. by directly measuring with the edge of an answer sheet. My estimate was .4. The right answer was sqrt(2)-1 (~.414) - the other four answers were very different.</p>
<p>You may trust them as long as they are not labeled “Figure not drawn to scale.” If that label is there, redraw the figure. The original figure won’t be THAT skewed (they wouldn’t deliberately mislead you like that), but a redrawn figure can be used to better estimate the answer, like gcf did.</p>
<p>no, you can only make a mistake if you solve the problem only measuring some angles, interceptsa and etc.</p>
<p>as someone who has past 3 years of calculus, i do not recommend you to look at the pictures unless the problem explicitly states that the picture, if which is drawn to scale, should be beneficial to your answering process.</p>
<p>I took the SAT for the first time without studying for math at all (I was trying to figure out what the quadratic formula was when I was waiting in the testing hall, didnt figure it out =) and got an 800. </p>
<p>If anybody took the Dec test and remember there was a really annoying geometry problem with a picture drawn with a bunch of intersecting perpendicular and parallel lines and asked which angles were congruent. My first instinct was to not look at the pictures at all but instead based on the info provided, I constructed my own picture and it was totally different from the given one. If I took the given one, as I tried to do when I have finished the entire test while checking my answer, the answer I would have chosen would have been the trick answer which was based on the given graph, wrong answer.</p>
<p>If you see a picture, dont even bother. Read the question first, draw your own picture on the side</p>
<p>they help. but don’t judge you whole answer off it ;)</p>
<p>If it does not say “this figure is not drawn to scale,” you can trust it</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yeah, but it wasn’t too hard to realize that you draw an isoceles right triangle and subtract the two diameters from the hypotenuse, lol</p>
<p>^or do this: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/454200-jan-2008-math-9.html#post1059707173[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/454200-jan-2008-math-9.html#post1059707173</a>.
My points is that some geometry questions present real difficulties to people (just scroll through that thread), whereas eyeballing could be a lifesaver, provided there is no “Figure not drawn to scale” note.</p>
<p>The case in study:
BB 562/14 stumps a lot of students. Mark the length of the side of the square on the edge of a sheet of paper and move it along the unknown segment. It’s 6.
See Ma, no brains! lol</p>
<p>^ there is no test in page 562</p>
<p>^true, true - was watching a game. 
It’s 462/14.</p>
<p>Unlike the ACT, SAT figures without the “not to scale” label are as accurate as the printing process allows. For example , BB pg. 548 #4 … try measuring the angles with a protractor.</p>
<p>During a test, you could do BB pg. 673 #16 e.g. by making fingernail “scale” marks on your pencil and measuring AD by length … no doubt, math is better, but the pencil ruler can be a useful last resort or sanity check.</p>
<p>why do they then give us a figure that is not drawn to scale?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Unfortunately the college board is cracking down on this strategy. See PSAT 2008, Wednesday, math question #20. THAT question was made so that it was impossible to just guesstimate.</p>
<p>By no means all SAT “drawn to scale” geometry questions can be cracked through visual estimating, especially those on areas (or volumes :)).</p>
<p>Actually, #20 is a lucky exception: if you imagine cutting that square along the lines RT and US, and then along all four arcs, you’ll get four pairs of respectfully congruent pieces (white=gray), which tells us that the shaded area is equal to the unshaded and is consequently equal to half area of the square, 6x6/2=18.</p>
<p>Incidentally. two other geometry questions from the same test can be solved by visual estimating.</p>
<h1>9:</h1>
<p>marking on the edge of a piece of paper (think answer sheet) the length of QS and moving that piece around you immediately see that QS=SP=SN=NR=6, so
PS+SN+NR+RP = 30.
The figure, interestingly enough, is constructed as a visual illusion: QS appears longer then SP.</p>
<h1>30:</h1>
<p>if you have only 3 sec. left on this question, w=3 seems like an accurate guesstimate.
Guess what? It’s the right answer!</p>
<p>Edit.
Visual estimating applies to “drawn to scale” graphs as well.</p>
<h1>33: you can see the answer right away: 1.5. Does the ETS make our life more difficult by placing tic marks on the axis? Quite au contraire.</h1>
<p>I am not advocating forgoing mathematically tight solutions in favor of crude measuring/guesstimating. As a matter of fact, I enjoy “proving” my answers. But in a time crunch anything goes, as long your drawn chances of getting the right answer are good on The Scale of Things. :D</p>