Real-World Arithmetic Scenarios

GRE Quantitative · Axiom Academy

You're opening a small shop. One price, one cost target, one growing balance — the same arithmetic the GRE tests, now with real money on the line. You buy inventory, set a price, and watch a savings balance grow — three business decisions , each one a rearrangement of the same arithmetic. Drag your cost and your selling price. Watch the profit margin bar fill live — the higher the margin, the more of every dollar you keep. Flip the question around: your fixed costs are locked in at 100,000 — how many units do you need to sell before you've covered them? Drag the profit-per-unit and watch the pin slide. Why compounding beats "add the same amount" Your 50,000 balance grew 15% in year 1. Here's the real saver's question: does year 2's growth apply to the original 50,000 , or to the new 57,500 ? Drag year 2's rate and watch the gap between the two answers. Three moves, one idea: price it ( ), solve it ( ), weigh it (each year's growth compounds on the new balance, not the original). The same proportional reasoning scales a 3-manager-per-12-employee ratio up to a 180-person company (45 managers), and the same percent-of-a-total logic splits a 500,000 budget across departments so the pieces sum back to the whole. On the GRE, every one of these is just arithmetic wearing a business suit.

This is the written version of the interactive lesson above. See the full GRE Quantitative course.