GRE Test Prep: A Peculiar Masochistic Exercise

“Mike spent 25 hours studying for the GRE, then walked out of the test feeling like a failure, and canceled his scores. If he increases his study hours by 20% preparing to take the test a second time, what is the likelihood that he will jump out of a window before the test date arrives?”

If I see another question like “How many prime numbers are there between 1 and 500?,” I will jump out of a window. Who the hell cares? That’s a Trivial Pursuit question, not a math question.

I must admit, however, there is a kind of sick fascination in studying for the GRE. It’s kind of like picking a scab. In the abstract, it’s not something you’d want to do, and you certainly wouldn’t recommend it to others, but when that damn scab is there, you can’t leave it alone. I’m actually interested in some of the math I’m (re-)learning - stuff that held no interest for me when I was first exposed to it in high school. But I’m sure I will forget it all as soon as the test is over.

I’m getting help from some of my co-workers, and it’s interesting to see how different minds work: with me, once I learn a word, I never forget it, even if I don’t use it. My writing and my vocabulary keep improving with time. But teach me a math formula, I’ll forget it in about 4 minutes unless I keep using it and reinforcing it in my mind. With many of my co-workers, it’s just the opposite: their minds have held on to all that high school math. How someone can simply remember the formula for, say, calculating the volume of a cylinder - even if they haven’t used it in 15 years - is beyond me. But with many of them, their writing probably isn’t any better now than when they left high school or college. I guess the first clue I had that I wasn’t like most programmers was that I actually like writing documentation for my code!