Equations, Inequalities, and Vic's, GMAT Preparation Guide, 4th Edition

This and all the other Manhattan GMAT guides were really helpful in helping me prep for the GMAT. My colleagues had recommended them over other guides and I continue to do the same after getting the score I needed on my first try.

This is a good book to review concepts on inequalities. If you did not know, you also get the 6 free CAT online tests free with this book.

How do you find f(x)=f(1/x)? Are the product of 3 consecutive integers divisible by 2? how about 3,4, and 8? What is the units digit of 3^107? If you have any doubts on how to answers these types of questions, and most people do, you need this book. The explanations on how to best solve problems are very good. Yet the book suffers from what appears to be two different authors writing the explanations and the problems. The same type of problems are not always provided the same type of solutions. This book is a vast improvement over the previous edition. The GMAT has changed over the years and the previous version did not address all the changes. This book rectifies that. You can be assured many of the concepts outlined in this book will be tested in the real thing. Although the GMAT quant section only tests high school level math, do not confuse it with the SAT. It is way tougher and far more abstract. Furthermore, your high school math is probably very rusty by now. If you are unconvinced, please spit out the quadratic formula (which you must have used zillion times in HS) right now. If you can't do it in 5 seconds, then you are rusty. I am torn whether to give this book a 4 or 5 stars. So I would give it 4.5 stars. It is very worthwhile book and you will not regret the purchase unless you are already a math geek.

Quantitative section on the GMAT can be a little tricky, even if you were pretty good at Math in your high school or in college. Why? Because the skills tested on the GMAT are different than the one you acquired in high school or college. I am an engineering major and I took multiple advanced Math courses in my college and yet, I benefited from the Manhattan Review quantitative books. Of course, like with everything else on the GMAT, you need to practice a lot so you will benefit from this book only if you have sufficient time to practice. If your GMAT is in a week's time, this book is probably not for you.

"Very good for the target audience" - I think this sums it all. If you are someone who has not done active maths for some time now, and therefore does not remember the concepts involved very well, this is the book for you. This I will say holds true for most of the books of the Manhattan Quant series. The Manhattan Quant series books cover the concepts only to the degree that gets asked in the GMAT, and do not overwhelm you. Plus, as each of the Manhattan books then turns to the Official Guide for practice, each of the books has a section where the appropriate questions for that topic are numbered from the OG. They also detail the toughest of the lot from OG. Here I think the book is useful for anyone, irrespective of the personal comfort level with maths. Therefore if you are true to yourself and practice the questions marked from OG as you go along, this would prove to an excellent resource for cracking the quant part of the GMAT.