Data Insights
Data Insights
Data Insights is the GMAT Focus Edition's third section: 20 questions in 45 minutes, and the only section where an on-screen calculator is available. It absorbs the classic Integrated Reasoning question types plus Data Sufficiency, and it tests data literacy - reading a table or chart without misreading a column, deciding whether information is sufficient, and reconciling several sources at once.
The five question types
- Data Sufficiency: a question plus two statements; decide whether the data are sufficient, not what the value is.
- Multi-Source Reasoning: two or three tabs of text, tables, or charts; questions ask you to judge statements as true/false or to select an option.
- Table Analysis: a sortable table; each statement is judged true or false against it.
- Graphics Interpretation: a graph with drop-down, fill-in-the-blank statements.
- Two-Part Analysis: a table where you pick one value in each of two columns; both must be correct.
Data Sufficiency answer choices
A: (1) alone sufficient, (2) alone not. B: (2) alone sufficient, (1) alone not. C: together sufficient, neither alone. D: each alone sufficient. E: together still not sufficient.
Worked example
Is x > 0? (1) x² > 0. This only establishes x ≠ 0; x could be 3 or −3. Not sufficient. (2) x³ > 0. Cubing preserves sign, so x must be positive. Sufficient.
Answer: B.
The discipline is to test awkward values - negatives, zero, proper fractions, non-integers - before declaring sufficiency. Statement (1) looks sufficient only if you try positive numbers exclusively.
Traps that cost marks
- Calling a statement sufficient after finding a single satisfying value.
- Forgetting that a variable may be negative or fractional when the question imposes no restriction.
- In Two-Part Analysis, choosing two values that satisfy one constraint but violate the other.
- In Table Analysis, misreading a column or failing to re-sort before judging a statement.
- Skipping a tab in Multi-Source Reasoning and missing the data that decides the question.
- Reaching for the calculator before deciding what actually needs computing; it verifies arithmetic, not reasoning.