The Power(s) of 2  Joe Lucero —  April 25, 2013 — 4 Comments
gmat bracketEven though the NCAA tournament finished up earlier
this month, for the next ten months I will be thinking about
college basketball whenever I see the first several powers of
two. No matter what type of GMAT question you are dealing with,
our minds are better able to work through topics that we are
already familiar with. Probability problems make me think of
gambling, weakening a GMAT argument becomes shooting down an
argument from that crazy relative you only see at Thanksgiving,
and anything dealing with the number 64 comes down to rounds in
a basketball tournament. Here’s a few tricks on the GMAT where
knowing your powers of two can save you some time and
brainpower.   1.  64 = 2^6  Know how to translate larger numbers
into their smaller factors  Since 1985, every team that has won
the NCAA tournament has had to win six games. By multiplying two
times itself, you can expand to each round of the NCAA
tournament- 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 6