For each of 6 articles published between 2002 and 2008 on a certain news website, the table lists the article's...

Owning the Dataset

Let's start by understanding what we're working with. We have a table showing 6 published articles with information about:

• Author name
• Publication year
• Number of views

Key insight: Some authors have multiple articles in the table (Tran and Nguyen appear more than once), which suggests we might need to consider combined views or author comparisons.

Rather than memorizing all the data, let's focus on understanding the structure and relationships. The view counts range from hundreds of thousands to nearly a million, suggesting significant variation. We should be prepared to make comparisons between these values.

Note: The table interface allows us to sort by any column instantly - this will be our primary tool for efficiently analyzing the data.

Analyzing Statement 1

Statement 1 Translation:
Original: "The most recently published article is the one with the greatest number of views."
What we're looking for:

• Identify the most recent article (highest year)
• Identify the article with the most views
• Check if they are the same article

In other words: Does the newest article also have the highest view count?

Let's solve this efficiently using sorting:

First, let's sort by Publication Year (descending) to find the most recent article:

• After sorting, we can immediately see the most recent article was published by Nguyen in 2007 with 998,113 views

Next, let's sort by Number of Views (descending) to find the article with the most views:

• The article with the most views is by Nguyen with 998,113 views, published in 2007

We can see that the same article appears at the top of both sorts - it's both the most recent and has the most views.

Statement 1 is YES.

Teaching point: Notice how sorting instantly revealed the answer without requiring us to scan through every row or memorize any values. The GMAT interface makes sorting a powerful time-saving tool.

Analyzing Statement 2

Statement 2 Translation:
Original: "The article with the greatest number of views and the article with the least number of views have the same author."
What we're looking for:

• Identify the article with the most views
• Identify the article with the least views
• Check if both articles have the same author

In other words: Did the same person write both the most-viewed and least-viewed articles?

We already sorted by Number of Views (descending) for Statement 1, so we can use this sorting to efficiently analyze Statement 2:

• Looking at the top row: The article with the most views (998,113) is by Nguyen
• Looking at the bottom row: The article with the least views (215,274) is also by Nguyen

Since both the most-viewed and least-viewed articles were written by the same author (Nguyen), Statement 2 is YES.

Teaching point: When looking for extremes (highest/lowest values), sorting makes the answer visually obvious without having to check every single row. The top and bottom rows immediately show what we need.

Analyzing Statement 3

Statement 3 Translation:
Original: "The author with the greatest combined number of views was the author of the article with the greatest number of views."
What we're looking for:

• Identify the author with the greatest combined views across all articles
• Check if this author wrote the article with the most individual views

In other words: Did the author whose articles got the most total views also write the single most popular article?

From our previous analysis, we know:

• Nguyen wrote the article with the greatest number of views (998,113)
• Now we need to find which author has the highest combined views

Let's sort by Author to group articles by the same author:

After sorting, we can quickly calculate:

• Nguyen's combined views: 215,274 + 998,113 ≈ 1.2 million
• Tran's combined views: 938,632 + 943,052 ≈ 1.9 million

We can see that Tran has the highest combined views (approximately 1.9 million), while Nguyen (who wrote the article with the most views) has combined views of approximately 1.2 million.

Since the author with the greatest combined views (Tran) is not the same as the author of the article with the greatest individual views (Nguyen), Statement 3 is NO.

Teaching point: We didn't need to calculate the exact combined views or check all authors. Once we found that Tran's combined views exceeded Nguyen's, we could stop our calculation. Also, note how sorting by author grouped related articles together, making our calculations much easier.

Final Answer Compilation

Statement 1: YES (The most recent article has the greatest number of views)
Statement 2: YES (The articles with the most and least views have the same author)
Statement 3: NO (The author with the greatest combined views is not the author of the article with the most views)

Therefore, the answer is: YES, YES, NO

Learning Summary

Skills We Used

1. Strategic Sorting: We used sorting as our primary tool to instantly reveal patterns and extremes in the data
2. Targeted Calculation: We only calculated combined views when needed for Statement 3, not upfront
3. Visual Confirmation: After sorting, we used visual scanning to quickly identify matches and patterns

Strategic Insights

1. Sort Before You Calculate: Make the computer do the work of finding extremes by sorting first
2. Group Related Data: Sorting by author brought related items together for easier comparison
3. Approximate When Sufficient: For Statement 3, rough calculations (~1.2M vs ~1.9M) were enough to compare values
4. Use Cross-Statement Insights: Information gathered from earlier statements helped us analyze later ones

Common Mistakes We Avoided

1. Unnecessary Calculations: We didn't calculate combined views for all authors, only those needed
2. Manual Scanning: We didn't tediously search through unsorted data
3. Over-Memorization: We didn't try to memorize all values at the beginning
4. Exact Calculations: We used approximations when comparing large numbers since we only needed to know which was larger

Remember that the GMAT Table Analysis is testing your ability to interpret data efficiently, not your calculation speed. By strategically using sorting and focusing only on the information needed for each statement, you can solve these problems quickly while maintaining perfect accuracy.