Solving Analogy from the GRE: Tips & Tricks

[ehrenfest]

This is an analogy from the GRE (is this the best forum for this?). I knew what all the words meant but I still couldn't get it. :(

 

[cristo]

I would say the penultimate one: palatable is to savoury as discernible is to manifest.

I'm moving this to GD, since it is not (meant to be) a brain teaser.

 

[ehrenfest]

I would say the penultimate one: palatable is to savoury as discernible is to manifest.

I'm moving this to GD, since it is not (meant to be) a brain teaser.

That is correct, but why?

 

[berkeman]

palatable is to savoury as discernible is to manifest.

I agree. ( a little : a lot )

 

[Moonbear]

I'd go with satiable:hungry. Savory is a more extreme adjective than palatable, but both are similar. So you're looking for similar terms that are degrees of difference in meaning. Satiable is a more mild version of hungry.

 

[WarPhalange]

Yeah, I'd go with discernible:manifest or the first one.

 

[Moonbear]

That is correct, but why?

Beats me, I'd have gotten it wrong too but had the reasoning right apparently (see my attempt above).

 

[WarPhalange]

That is correct, but why?

Palatable means "do-able" as far as I can tell, and savory means it's good.

Discernible means "you can tell" and "manifest" is like discernible+. You can really tell.

I don't know. English is vague and these people need to be shot, whoever makes these exams.

 

[Moonbear]

Is this really a GRE question, or some site claiming to do a test prep that might not be very good at writing these? There really seems to be more than one answer to me with these choices. I don't remember GRE choices being that ambiguous. More of it was figuring out what the darn words meant when they were ones you never used in every day speech...I don't think savory or hungry would have ever shown up as choices when I took it. I remember them being more about distinguishing the antonyms from synonyms and then different parts of speech, such as nouns from adjectives.

 

[ehrenfest]

Is this really a GRE question, or some site claiming to do a test prep that might not be very good at writing these? There really seems to be more than one answer to me with these choices. I don't remember GRE choices being that ambiguous. More of it was figuring out what the darn words meant when they were ones you never used in every day speech...I don't think savory or hungry would have ever shown up as choices when I took it. I remember them being more about distinguishing the antonyms from synonyms and then different parts of speech, such as nouns from adjectives.

This is from a practice test a downloaded from the GREs official website. I got a 630 on the practice verbal section. :(

 

[cristo]

Satiable is a more mild version of hungry.

Are you sure? I would say that satiable meant "capable of being satiated", which in turn means "capable of being given as much as one wants" (or some variant of that). Thus, whilst this would apply to hunger, it has a wider meaning.

Anyway, my reasoning for choosing the penultimate option was the same as berkeman's and MB's.

Do you guys get to do these things in exams? That's pretty cool, if so: I've not had to do things like this for over 10 years (and then the vocabulary they expected you to know was somewhat smaller!)

 

[Kurdt]

We all need to learn German people. That is the lesson learned from this. Let's go back to the old language

 

[berkeman]

Beats me, I'd have gotten it wrong too but had the reasoning right apparently (see my attempt above).

Pretty sure it's because of this:

( a little : a lot )

The order and magnitude matter.

 

[ehrenfest]

Here is another one that threw me off.

 

[Cyrus]

ARG I HATE HATE HATE these STUPID kinds of questions. They don't test you on a damn thing important.

The education system needs to catch on and throw this stupid test in the trash.

 

[ehrenfest]

ARG I HATE HATE HATE these STUPID kinds of questions. They don't test you on a damn thing important.

The education system needs to catch on and throw this stupid test in the trash.

Yeah, I think the SAT has done that already. They threw out all the analogies (and antonyms I think) so that a large portion of the verbal section is reading comprehension and analysis. I wonder why the GRE didn't follow suit? I thought the SAT verbal was a really well-written test but judging from this practice test, I am not fond at all of the GRE verbal. They are both administered by ETS...

But anyway, I think some of these analogies are fun and that discussing them here is insightful e.g. the first one I posted.

 

[Cyrus]

Yeah, I think the SAT has done that already. They threw out all the analogies (and antonyms I think) so that a large portion of the verbal section is reading comprehension and analysis. I wonder why the GRE didn't follow suit? I thought the SAT verbal was a really well-written test but judging from this practice test, I am not fond at all of the GRE verbal. They are both administered by ETS...

But anyway, I think some of these analogies are fun and that discussing them here is insightful e.g. the first one I posted.

You know what's really insightful, using your time to study things that are useful. Not word analogies. College isn't about doing the NY times crossword puzzle.

Boy am I glad I never took the GRE. I think ETS has the college system by the balls, because I can't think of any other reason why schools use this...

 

[Moonbear]

ARG I HATE HATE HATE these STUPID kinds of questions. They don't test you on a damn thing important.

The education system needs to catch on and throw this stupid test in the trash.

This example is an especially good one of the problem with these standardized tests. When there's more than one answer that could be right, and your task is not whether you know vocabulary or parts of speech or can identify relationships between things, but rather how well you can get into the head of the test writer to figure out which is the BETTER of the two or more good answers. It was never a test of knowledge so much as a test of how well you can identify the tricks the test writers throw at you. This is why I didn't study for the GRE. Studying doesn't help.

 

[ehrenfest]

This is why I didn't study for the GRE. Studying doesn't help.

Yeah, I think that is probably the rational thing to do. Unfortunately me and so many other test-takers are so scared of doing poorly that we can't help but pour our money and our time into practicing for the ETS tests. I told myself I wasn't going to waste any time or money studying for it when I first decided to take it a couple weeks ago. But as my test date approaches I get worried and yesterday I threw away that plan and decided to prepare for an hour a day and I even bought the Princeton Review book. I am so insecure. :(

 

[Kurdt]

I'd have gone for vulgar : offensive for the last one. My language skills are poor however.

 

[Moonbear]

Here is another one that threw me off.

I'd go with adroit:ungainly on that one. I don't see any other antonym pairs. These are definitely easier vocabulary than when I took it. We would have had a starting analagy more like loquacious:taciturn::

Succinct would have been far too common a word to appear unless you had to know some obscure archaic definition for it to get it right.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Don't look at me, I'm still trying to figure out that hand:glove one.

 

[Kurdt]

So what's the point of these? What advantage does knowing some of the least frequently used words in the English language give you?

 

[WarPhalange]

Temporary satisfaction that your BA in English or Literature isn't completely wasted. This satisfaction crumbles when you are denied a job in McDonald's after you get your degree.

 

[ehrenfest]

So what's the point of these? What advantage does knowing some of the least frequently used words in the English language give you?

I think having a large vocabulary is important. Whether you are a scientist or a stock-broker or a high-school teacher or whatever, you need to be able to express yourself effectively and reasonably eloquently. OK maybe you don't "need" to be eloquent but I think it still a major benefit in any career that involves interpersonal interaction. As a student listening to my professor's lectures, it makes a huge difference. When a professor has an extensive vocabulary and uses interesting connections between words and uses words in creative ways and can always find that key word to go in that "crucial" spot in the sentence, learning can just be a wonderful experience. On the other hand, when a professor just throws in words to his sentences to get the bare minimum semantic value across and misuses words and misuses grammar, it just looks bad and you wonder how this professor ever go so far. Thus, I think testing vocabulary and analogies and antoyms is very appropriate on a graduate entrance exam.

As Moonbear said, these words aren't even that rare. It is just the relationships between them that are kind of subtle.

 

[Kurdt]

I personally think the English language is too redundant. The reason I believe Germany produces so many good thinkers is because the language is concise and precise and having that drilled into you from birth is a good thing. These are the definitions of things, this is how you structure a sentence. What more do you need?

 

[Moonbear]

So what's the point of these? What advantage does knowing some of the least frequently used words in the English language give you?

A good enough score to show you can memorize tons of useless information. The stupid thing is the GRE is practically the same test as the SAT (or it was when I took it back when we had to chisel our answers into stone tablets). Hopefully one should score better on the GRE than the SAT or else it would indicate you've regressed during university study. Or at least that's my interpretation of it. Not that anybody looks back to your SAT scores when they request your GRE scores. I can see some value of SATs, because they help normalize all the range of high school backgrounds people come from and provide some indicator of whether they've earned their grades or are beneficiaries of massive grade inflation. But, I don't see what value they have going from undergrad to grad school. I might only question someone who scored horrendously low on it. On the other hand, qualifying for things like training grant funding requires a certain minimum GRE score, so even when admissions committees would prefer to ignore them entirely, they have their arms twisted to give them consideration.

It is a bizarre exam where the verbal sections require knowledge of such obscure words, which makes them the challenging sections, but then the math sections don't require anything more advanced than simple algebra, making it a horrible joke (again, other than catching the tricks they throw at you that have nothing to do with your knowledge of math, but whether you can spot the trick under the pressure of a timed test). The only section that I used to think was valuable, but I'm not even sure it still exists, was one on logic. It was basically brainteaser type questions, but it didn't require a priori knowledge, rather tested if you could reason your way through a problem.

 

[Moonbear]

I think having a large vocabulary is important. Whether you are a scientist or a stock-broker or a high-school teacher or whatever, you need to be able to express yourself effectively and reasonably eloquently. OK maybe you don't "need" to be eloquent but I think it still a major benefit in any career that involves interpersonal interaction. As a student listening to my professor's lectures, it makes a huge difference. When a professor has an extensive vocabulary and uses interesting connections between words and uses words in creative ways and can always find that key word to go in that "crucial" spot in the sentence, learning can just be a wonderful experience. On the other hand, when a professor just throws in words to his sentences to get the bare minimum semantic value across and misuses words and misuses grammar, it just looks bad and you wonder how this professor ever go so far. Thus, I think testing vocabulary and analogies and antoyms is very appropriate on a graduate entrance exam.

As Moonbear said, these words aren't even that rare. It is just the relationships between them that are kind of subtle.

Actually, that's not what I said and I don't agree with this point. Using words like "loquacious" when "talkative" would suffice doesn't help with communication, it hinders it. Using 50 cent words just makes you sound pompous, and is more likely to turn off your audience than engage it. Precise wording is important in science, but that is more often accomplished by careful choice of simple words than by liberal sprinkling of obscure words people need to look up to understand.

 

[ehrenfest]

Actually, that's not what I said and I don't agree with this point. Using words like "loquacious" when "talkative" would suffice doesn't help with communication, it hinders it. Using 50 cent words just makes you sound pompous, and is more likely to turn off your audience than engage it. Precise wording is important in science, but that is more often accomplished by careful choice of simple words than by liberal sprinkling of obscure words people need to look up to understand.

Well I disagree with that. I think decorating your speech with colorful words brings a lecture, or a conversation, or a scientific discussion alive. Moonbear, I think your writing is filled with clever words and clever sentence structures and it makes your posts really fun to read and makes me more motivated to engage you in the topic. Take for example the phrase "liberal sprinkling" or the word "pompous" in your quote above. I also remember you used the word "sleuthing" in a way I really liked in some post. For a scientific example, take David Griffith's three books "Introduction to QM", "Intro to E and M", and "Intro to Elementary Particles". If you have read any of these, you will notice that Griffith is quite an adroit linguistic acrobat. This only makes reading them more memorable and increases how much of them I remember. His use of exotic words serves as kind of a mnemonic device that helps me remember the physics.

Sure scientific progress does not require[/] about 80% of the words in our language but I think using more words can accelerate scientific progress not hinder it. Words are concepts and knowing more concepts certainly helps people do science.

But with that said, there is a time and place for words like "loquacious". I think what Moonbear described above is a good standard for publication in a scientific journal or for a reference book like an encyclopedia but it is not a good standard for normal scientific discussion. Its important to remember that scientists are human beings not machines built to perform experiments and analyze and process data. Using language that is NOT simple takes advantage of this fact by tapping into the full range of human knowledge and human experience and human emotion to communicate.

 

[~christina~]

I'd go with satiable:hungry. Savory is a more extreme adjective than palatable, but both are similar. So you're looking for similar terms that are degrees of difference in meaning. Satiable is a more mild version of hungry.

I thought that too and it was based on the exact same reasoning!

 

[Moonbear]

Well I disagree with that. I think decorating your speech with colorful words brings a lecture, or a conversation, or a scientific discussion alive. Moonbear, I think your writing is filled with clever words and clever sentence structures and it makes your posts really fun to read and makes me more motivated to engage you in the topic. Take for example the phrase "liberal sprinkling" or the word "pompous" in your quote above. I also remember you used the word "sleuthing" in a way I really liked in some post.

I don't think any of those are uncommon words, though. Yes, I try to vary my sentence structure, and I do think that's important to keeping both writing and speech interesting rather than dry and boring. A test that focused more on grammar rather than vocabulary would be far more useful, in my opinion. It's rare that I would use a word that someone with an eighth grade education wouldn't understand (unless I'm specifically using scientific terminology, of course). But, I do use more complex and varied sentence structures, as do many others here.

Has the GRE begun to include a writing sample yet? I'd personally weigh that more heavily than analogies. The other traditional part of the verbal section that IS useful is the reading comprehension section. That's a more essential skill to succeed with one's education.

 

[ehrenfest]

Has the GRE begun to include a writing sample yet? I'd personally weigh that more heavily than analogies. The other traditional part of the verbal section that IS useful is the reading comprehension section. That's a more essential skill to succeed with one's education.

Yes they do have a writing sample and I concur that the reading comprehension and the writing sample are more important than the analogies, vocab, antonyms section. The problem with the writing sample is that grading is of course highly subjective. Most eight graders I know don't know the definition of "pompous". Furthermore, why would you WANT to restrict your vocabulary to an eighth level? High school is an intricate part of becoming an intelligent adult and it introduces people to new ideas and new words that accompany these ideas and are intricately related to them. When you talk to a professor with the language of an eighth grader, you lose the ability to say certain things in nicely-packaged words or phrases that he should know. Instead you would have to explain a complicated idea in elementary terms which is just a waste of time.

I hope this won't get off-topic if I give an example but anyway suppose you want to have a discussion about people taking justice into their own hands. Using the word "vigilantism" makes the conversation much more efficient. Suppose you want to talk about giving jobs to your relatives. "nepotism" would make that discussion much better.

I think you were exaggerating when you said you try to only use eighth grad vocab.

 

[cristo]

When you talk to a professor with the language of an eighth grader, you lose the ability to say certain things in nicely-packaged words or phrases that he should know. Instead you would have to explain a complicated idea in elementary terms which is just a waste of time.

But as Moonbear says, technical discussions require the use of technical language. This is very different to an everyday conversation.

Using the word "vigilantism" makes the conversation much more efficient.

Is that even a word? I personally would never use it, since it sounds clumsy. Still, I would use the word vigilante, but I would presume that most 8th graders knew the meaning of the word (students in 8th grade are about 14 aren't they?)

 

[Moonbear]

Most eight graders I know don't know the definition of "pompous".

I think most do. It doesn't take much education to know how to call someone a "pompous a**."

Furthermore, why would you WANT to restrict your vocabulary to an eighth level?

So people understand what I'm saying. I prefer to communicate clearly than sound like an intellectual snob.

Instead you would have to explain a complicated idea in elementary terms which is just a waste of time.

Not at all. If you can't explain it in elementary terms, you don't understand it very well yourself.

I hope this won't get off-topic if I give an example but anyway suppose you want to have a discussion about people taking justice into their own hands. Using the word "vigilantism" makes the conversation much more efficient. Suppose you want to talk about giving jobs to your relatives. "nepotism" would make that discussion much better.

And those are words eighth graders would know (and yes to cristo, that would be about 14 years old). Or, at least, they would know vigilante. That's a word often tossed around in the news. Back when I was in 8th grade, or thereabout, there was quite a bit of news about "vigilante justice" in NYC as people were getting fed up with crime on the subways and taking matters into their own hands. Actually, we were being taught words like "loquacious" in 8th grade, but not too many actually learned those words then.

I think you were exaggerating when you said you try to only use eighth grad vocab.

Not at all. Unless we're playing word games here, look at my posts and see if you find terms beyond the 8th grade level other than when specifically using scientific terminology.

 

[LowlyPion]

A larger vocabulary is not exactly a huge requirement to clear thinking or communication. I suppose that we could all get by with some kind of reduced vocabulary set (using the analogy to reduced instruction set computers), but it certainly does polish up and compact communication, if you can employ nuanced phrasing, rather than grunting 15 times instead of using the word "fifteen".

I think successful communication is not just to transfer meaning, it's also to transfer understanding. Anything one can do to streamline that process and deliver understanding, seems like a good thing.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I personally think the English language is too redundant.

The redundancy is in part due to the successful invasion of England by the Normans in 1066. It's a headache for people trying to learn the language. However, redundancy is a separate matter from a large vocabulary. A craftsman has a lot of tools and knows when to use each one of them.

 

[Kurdt]

But then again each tool has a specific job. One definition for one thing is all it takes.

 

[LowlyPion]

But that of course is the beauty of the language.

A woodworker may have differently beveled gougers, differently shaped chip knives, different width chisels and differently contoured shavers, - and surely not all of them are required to fashion a block of wood. A subset of tools may do the job.

But then again, using the right tool, not only may do the job more easily, but may achieve a better result in finish.

 

[dst]

I always have to bring up this superb article by my main man Orwell on the subject of pretentious and useless vocabulary -

http://www.protrainco.com/essays/politicsandenglishlang.htm

 

[lisab]

I don't know who said it first..."There are no synonyms in the English language."

Each word has finely nuanced shades of meaning.

With respect to analogies in standardized tests - it's not just the meaning of the words (which are somewhat obscure), but the words' perceived relationship that are being measured by the test.

 

[D H]

I personally think the English language is too redundant. The reason I believe Germany produces so many good thinkers is because the language is concise and precise and having that drilled into you from birth is a good thing. These are the definitions of things, this is how you structure a sentence. What more do you need?

So, the correct answer is

LOQUACIOUS:SUCCINCT::ENGLISH:GERMAN

 

[ehrenfest]

Okay I am starting to see people's point about pretentious diction being useless. The one place I would say they are not useful is if you are an avid reader and especially one of historical literature. I like reading Dickens each of whose books which contains a MASSIVE amalgam of words like those you see on the GRE. To get the full force of his books, you really need to know some of those words. Of course, you could just look up the words as you go along but that really interrupts the flow of the book.

So, I think I am still going to study up on vocab for the General GRE basically because I just don't know who will read my grad school app and how they will assess my scores. I am guessing that a lot of the people who read grad school apps have little idea what is actually on a current GRE verbal test or how to interpret the verbal score fairly.

But when I walk out of the test, I think I will just be satisfied with the vocabulary I have for the rest of my life. My brain holds only a finite amount of information and I can only add a finite amount of information to it per day and it is just not worth it wasted that on vocab.

 

[siddharth]

I am sooo happy that I'm done with the GRE. A completely useless test, IMHO.

It was never a test of knowledge so much as a test of how well you can identify the tricks the test writers throw at you. This is why I didn't study for the GRE. Studying doesn't help.

I have to disagree. Like most standardized tests, the trick is in doing lots of example questions, previous tests, etc. That helps you spot the tricks that are generally used.

 

[Moonbear]

I have to disagree. Like most standardized tests, the trick is in doing lots of example questions, previous tests, etc. That helps you spot the tricks that are generally used.

They're all the same tricks. If you've studied for one standardized test, you've studied for them all. More practicing than studying I suppose. Oh, y'know, your right, it's been so long ago I forgot that I took the GRE after taking MCATs (last minute decision to switch from plans to go to med school to attend grad school), so I'd already taken and prepped for standardized tests. There was no need to study specifically for the GRE, but I suppose I did already have all the standardized test trickery down pat by then.

That's what those review books are good for. You don't need the whole course, but just read the books, and learn the tricks in them.

Keep in mind, your taking this test with people with things like philosophy majors and history majors who can't even do the basic algebra on the math section, and may not have learned that vocabulary any more than you have (science majors often have an advantage on vocabulary anyway...you've learned so many technical terms that the word roots will start being familiar). When I took it, there were people sitting in the hallway while waiting for the exam room to open up, still furiously studying, talking about how it was their third time they were taking it, and all panicked about how hard it was. I was just sitting there with my pencils and ID, waiting, mostly bored. I had scanned through a prep book at some point and decided it was the same ol' same ol' so didn't do any more studying. It was quite easy. I don't recall my scores anymore, and they probably aren't comparable to current versions anyway, but did well enough that my GRE scores would not have held me back from getting into any grad school of my choice (my grades were the limiting factor then), and qualified me for some fellowships.

So, yeah, I do agree with you that taking enough time to learn the most common tricks is worthwhile. I just wouldn't put an extraordinary amount of time into memorizing vocabulary words. I mean, if you have nothing better to do, there's no harm in learning more vocabulary, but there's still no guarantee you're learning the right set of words, and most of them are ones you've already learned to take the SATs, so should come back to memory if you see them again.