Pronoun Case (or, when "Alan and me" is OK)

"Ain't nobody chasin' nobody nowhere."

Hopefully if you've been reading this blog for a while you've internalized the notion that YOU SHOULD CHECK EVERY SINGLE PRONOUN YOU ENCOUNTER on the SAT. The most common pronoun errors are pronoun-antecedent agreement errors, but pronoun case questions pop up enough in SAT writing sections that you should familiarize yourself with the ways they're commonly presented, too, and know how to get through them without relying on "it just sounds weird."

Pronoun case questions test you on whether you know the difference between "I" and "me", "he" and "him," "we" and "us," etc. Here's a quick sentence structure to help you organize these:

I chased the dog around the house.

The dog chased me around the house.

He chased the dog around the house.

The dog chased him around the house.

We chased the dog around the house.

The dog chased us around the house.

...and so on.  This simple setup is a great way to remind yourself which pronouns are subjective case pronouns, and which are objective case pronouns. If your pronoun is chasing the dog, it's the subject, and is in the subjective case. If the dog is chasing it, the pronoun is the object, and is in the objective case.

Here's a complete list of the pronouns between which you'll need to differentiate on the SAT. Read through this list thinking of the dog chasing sentence in your head.

Subjective Case	Objective Case
I	me
he	him
she	her
we	us
they	them
who*	whom*

Weekend Challenge - Hurricane Irene edition

If you're on the East Coast, I hope that you and yours are able to weather the storm OK. I'm not sure whether I'll have power or not on Monday, but I'll try to get the solution posted then if possible.

This week's prize will again be access to the Math Guide Beta, which is looking radder and radder by the day. I've been doing a TON of work on it. Anyhoo, first correct (and not anonymous) answer in the comments gets access.

If (x² + 5x)² - 36 = (x + m)(x + n)(x + p)(x + q), what is the median of the set {m, n, p, q}?

Good luck, kiddos. And stay safe.

UPDATE: Nice work, Ammad. I hope you enjoy the book, which I've now shared with you in Google Docs.

Solution below the cut.

Weekend Challenge containing an image from a movie you probably haven't seen

You know the drill by now. The prize this week will, once again, be beta access to the Math Guide, which is really coming along nicely, if I do say so myself. I kinda can't believe it's going to top 300 pages, but at this rate we're definitely heading in that direction.

Anyway, to get a look at it now and come along for the ride while I finish it up, be the first to answer the following question correctly in the comments, or send me $5 using the link above. 

A stereo equipment store owner notices that all his customers spend between $110 and $298, inclusive, in his store when they come in. For no discernible reason other than that I need a difficult math problem, he decides to express the range of dollar amounts his customers spend, s, in an inequality of the form |s - j| ≤ k, where j and k are constants. What is jk?

I'll post the solution Monday. Good luck!

UPDATE: Nice work, Serplet. Solution below.

Review - The Ultimate Guide to SAT Grammar by Erica Meltzer

Erica Meltzer, whose blog at ultimatesatverbal.blogspot.com should definitely be a daily stop for you if you're prepping for the SAT (which you probably are if you're stopping by my site), has spent years holding a microscope to the SAT writing section, and has compiled all of her findings into a book that, miraculously, is under 200 pages long.

In those pages, Erica's managed to pack advice (and a dizzying number of example sentences) to cover every single grammar rule that could conceivably appear in an SAT writing section. She provides insight into how often certain error types appear. At times, she even provides insight into roughly where in the test certain error types are most likely to appear -- did you know faulty comparison errors are most likely to appear in the last 3 Error ID questions? She writes with an authority that only someone who has spent as much time analyzing the test as she has could possibly muster. In short, she knows everything you need to know to get an 800 on the SAT writing section, and she tells it to you. All of it. I don't think one could find a question, in the Blue Book or in any recent QAS, that tests a concept that she hasn't covered.

The book's greatest strength -- its completeness -- might be seen by some as a weakness, though. Erica leaves no stone unturned, and there are many, many stones. An example: Even though the subjunctive appears, by her own admission, very infrequently on the SAT, it does appear once in a great while, so there's a page devoted to it in this book. Such minutiae is interesting to me because I spend a lot of time looking at the SAT with a critical eye, and is important to the student who seeks a perfect score, but might not be very important to the student who simply seeks a very good score. Erica does a good job of pointing out which concepts are commonly tested and which ones aren't; it would behoove a student who's not seeking perfection to gloss over the uncommon bits and spend extra time reviewing the common ones.

My verdict

The Ultimate Guide to SAT Grammar is a very impressive book. It's accurate, insightful, and exhaustive. It's of a manageable length. It will serve students well both as a training workbook, and as a desktop reference when arcane grammar questions arise. I dare say its usefulness might even outlast the SAT -- grammar will continue to be important long after college admissions testing is a distant memory. As a weapon in your test prep arsenal, it will serve you well. 

Weekend Challenge - Pictograph edition

Something you don't often see in SAT prep materials is a pictograph, but when you actually look at a real SAT, pictographs are all over the place!

It's not a conspiracy by a cabal of prep writers and SAT writers; pictograph questions are usually just really easy, and so prep writers don't pay them much mind. This morning I decided to see if I could write a pictograph question that's worthy of being called a Weekend Challenge. I guess you guys can judge whether or not I succeeded.

The prize this week: Same as the last few weeks. First correct response in the comments gets access to the PWN the SAT Math Guide Beta Program. One note: if you comment anonymously, I have no way of contacting you, or verifying who you are if you try to claim it was you later, so you can't win. If you want to win, don't post anonymously.

Sam is the kind of guy who keeps track of meaningless things in unnecessarily complicated charts. The chart above depicts the average number of times Sam finds himself laughing out loud during 3 distinct parts of the day. Sam has been keeping this chart for 4 days, and calculates that he will have to be made to LOL 10 more times than usual on the 5^th night when his gassy uncle comes to family dinner in order to necessitate a change of one added face on his chart. On average, how many times a day has Sam been been made to LOL in school?

Put your answers in the comments! I'll post the solution Monday.

UPDATE: Nice work, Kira! I hope you enjoy the Math Guide Beta.

Everyone else: The solution is below the cut.

One kind of counting question

The SAT will throw two common kinds of "counting" problems your way. I'll handle one of them in this post. The other kind, well, I'll get to it when I get to it. :)

I like to call this kind of problem a matching problem. It'll usually involve a bunch of people who all need to shake hands, or a league in which every team needs to play every other team. Or a massage club where everyone has to give everyone else a back massage. I don't know...whatever. Everyone has to touch everyone at the touching party?

...this is going nowhere. Let's see an example.

17. Each team in a kickball league plays each other team 4 times during the season. If there are 7 teams in the league, how many games long is the season?
    
    (A) 28
    (B) 56
    (C) 84
    (D) 112
    (E) 116

Weekend Challenge - Calling a spade a spade

I've been thinking about symbol function questions today, and although it's not easy to come up with a really hard symbol function, this one is probably harder than you'd see on the SAT. Not by much, though. Make it multiple choice and this could totally appear.

The prize this week: same as last week's. Free access to the PWN the SAT Math Guide Beta Program. First correct answer in the comments doesn't have to pay a measly $5 to see what I've been working on tirelessly for weeks.

Let the ♠ symbol be defined such that b♠ equals the sum of the greatest two integer factors of b, for all integers b. If x < 100, what is the greatest possible value of x♠?

Good luck! I'll post the solution Monday.

UPDATE: Nice work, Anu! Hope you enjoy the Math Guide Beta. Solution posted below the cut.

What does a Comparison Error look like?

I got a comment on an old post about Error ID strategies (one of the first posts I ever put up) asking me to clarify the relationship between Comparison Errors and possession. I figured that, since it's been a while since I wrote about writing at all, I'd oblige, -- and go a bit further. I aim to please, you know.

The easiest and snappiest way to describe a comparison error is to say that it compares apples to oranges. If you're faced with a sentence that doesn't compare two things of the same kind, you're faced with a faulty comparison and you need to either mark it as the error (in Error ID) or fix it (in Sentence Improvement).

Some faulty comparisons examples:

• The battery in my new laptop is way better than my old computer, which had to stay plugged in all the time. 
• I like both singers, but Josh Ritter's music moves me in a way that Morrissey does not. 
• Unlike Paula, who has an A+ in the class, Eric's history textbook looks like it hasn't been opened all year. 
• Because I stubbed my toe on the way to the bathroom the other night, my left foot's big toenail is a different color than my right foot. 
• Often referred to simply as The Boss, Bruce Springsteen holds up against any other songwriter's lyrics. 

Because faulty comparisons are fairly easy to spot in simple sentences, the writers of the SAT will usually hide them in more complex sentences, and will often try to slip one by you by comparing someone's stuff to someone else. Here are the same sentences as above, with the actual things being compared in underlined and in bold.