Mathematics
What the questions test
Numbers and operations (place value, fractions, decimals, percents, integers, order of operations), proportional reasoning, expressions and equations, functions and patterns, geometry (angles, polygons, circles, transformations, the Pythagorean theorem), measurement and unit conversion, and statistics and probability (central tendency, spread, simple probability). Expect word problems that require choosing an operation rather than just computing.
Traps
Order of operations errors; area versus perimeter; percent of a number versus percent increase or decrease; mean versus median when outliers are present; dividing by a fraction; mixing units before computing; permutations versus combinations. A common distractor is an answer that is numerically reasonable but solves a different question.
Worked example
Compute 3/4 ÷ 1/2. Keep-change-flip: 3/4 × 2/1 = 6/4 = 1 1/2. Check by meaning: how many halves are in three-quarters? One and a half, which confirms the result. Rule of thumb: dividing by a fraction less than one gives a quotient larger than the dividend, so an answer smaller than 3/4 signals an error.