SAT Mathematics Skills
By: Matthew Drewette Card
Communication
Students understand and apply the precise meaning of mathematical terminology across all content areas — Number and Operations, Algebra and Functions, Geometry and Measurement, and Data, Statistics, and Probability. They understand the meaning of the concepts defined by mathematical terminology, and use this understanding to organize their mathematical thinking and solve problems. Their ease with mathematical terminology is one aspect of their ability to communicate coherently and understandably about mathematics.
Connections
Students recognize and apply connections among different mathematical ideas, seeing mathematics as a coherent whole. They can apply algebraic concepts in Geometry and Measurement, Data, Probability, and Statistics, and other content areas. They can use the coordinate plane to draw conclusions regarding geometric figures and regarding functions. They can use both routine and non-routine links among mathematical ideas to solve a problem.
Problem Solving
Students can apply math knowledge to solve problems in a variety of contexts, both familiar and unfamiliar. They recognize important information, determine the relationships between different parts of a problem, and know when a solution has been reached. They can successfully attack multi-step problems and evaluate the solution process for more-complex problems.
Reasoning
Students can choose the appropriate way to reason to make different kinds of mathematical arguments. They can investigate conjectures in basic number theory and other content areas. They are able to break a problem down into different cases in order to solve a problem. They can understand and apply basic mathematical logic and set theory.
Representation
Students can create, understand, and interpret representations across many mathematical content areas — including Algebra and Functions, Geometry and Measurement, and Data, Statistics, and Probability. They can select appropriate representations for a given problem and recognize how different mathematical situations can be represented in similar ways. They can translate between different representations of the same information and use these multiple representations to gain new knowledge.