Every once in a while, I find these great threads about student’s personal techniques for a particular sections. Unfortunately, as the new threads are posted, these great threads are pushed back and sort of disappear without specifically searching for them on sdn. Thus, with permission, I decided to post those technique here so you guys can see them without having to search for them. ORLO, one of the contributors on sdn, was generous enough to allow me to share his “Hill” technique for angle ranking. Angle ranking is by far the hardest section in PAT for most people and I hope this helps some of you guys.

“Hill” technique

“Pretend that one side of the angle is the ground.(This may require you to mentally rotate the angle slightly, or just tilt your head, depending on how the angle is rotated on the screen.) Next, imagine that the other side of the angle is a hill. Finally, imagine that you are looking at this hill and trying to decide if it would be safe to ride your bike down it. For all acute angles (less than 90 degrees), the safest hill to ride down would the smallest angle. This is because the slope is not as steep. However, a steep slope (larger angle) would be scarier to ride down. Make sure you are riding down the outside part of acute angles and not on the inside, which would require you to be upside down on your bike!

For obtuse angles (greater than 90 degrees), ride down the hill on the inside of the angle. This time, the safest hill to ride down will correlate to the largest angle.This would be the closest to 180 degrees, or the closest to having no slope at all. The scariest hill to ride down would be the one with the steepest slope. For obtuse angles, the steepest hill correlates to the smallest angle. At worst (think of a 91 degree angle), this would be like riding your bike down a near-vertical slope.

Looking at the angles this way, (IMO) it becomes much easier to differentiate between them. This method absolutely worked for me on the DAT. If this still seems abstract, draw out two acute angles and follow my instructions. Repeat for two obtuse angles. You’ll get the hang of it very quickly.”

Also the “Laptop” technique

“Note: This technique works best for obtuse angles.

After practicing several hundred angle ranking problems, I noticed that it was very difficult to distinguish between two obtuse angles that had different on-screen rotations, even if their angle sizes were as much as 10 degrees apart! To conquer this type of problem, simply imagine the obtuse angles as being laptop computers. Mentally picture the laptops as having one side flat on a table and the other side extending outward. Now simply determine which laptop is opened wider. That is the larger angle.

Although this sounds too good to be true, I suggest that you try it. You might be surprised at how well it works.”