This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.

In this episode you will learn:

- To distinguish whether a question is asking for perimeter (boundary), area (surface coverage), or volume (contained capacity).

- The importance of memorizing key formulas for prisms, cylinders, and spheres as they are not provided on the exam.

- How to spot common exam traps, such as questions that modify standard shapes by excluding a surface like the top or bottom.

- The strategy of deconstructing complex composite shapes into their basic, manageable geometric components.

- A simple mnemonic, 'Area is for squares, volume is for cubes,' to ensure you're using the correct units in your answers.

For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.

In this episode you will learn:

- How to distinguish between circle area and circumference formulas and avoid the common diameter-radius trap.

- The critical difference between a central angle and an inscribed angle and how it impacts arc measurement.

- The formula for the sum of interior angles in a polygon and how to find a single angle in a regular polygon.

- A mental shortcut to differentiate the complex distance formula from the simpler midpoint formula on the coordinate plane.

- The step-by-step process for determining the equation of a line (y=mx+b) when given only two points.

For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.

In this episode you will learn:

- All interior angles in a triangle sum to 180 degrees, a foundational rule for solving for missing angles.

- The Pythagorean theorem (a² + b² = c²) applies only to right triangles, where 'c' is always the hypotenuse opposite the right angle.

- Memorizing special right triangle ratios like 3-4-5 and 5-12-13 can save significant time over manual calculations.

- In problems with parallel lines cut by a transversal, all acute angles are equal, all obtuse angles are equal, and any acute plus any obtuse angle equals 180.

- Always draw and label a diagram for geometry word problems to visualize relationships before attempting to solve.

For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.

In this episode you will learn:

- How to evaluate function notation, especially with negative inputs, a common OAR trap.

- A step-by-step method to find the slope and y-intercept for a linear equation from two points.

- The definitions of domain and range and how they are tested with graphs and equations.

- How to solve word problems involving direct variation (y=kx) and inverse variation (y=k/x).

- The mnemonic "Directly Divide, Inversely Multiply" to quickly find the constant of variation 'k'.

For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.

In this episode you will learn:

- To quickly identify quadratic equation types: difference of squares, simple trinomials, or complex trinomials.

- How the zero-product property is the key to finding solutions from factored equations.

- The fastest way to solve difference of squares problems like x² - 49 = 0.

- When to abandon factoring and pivot to the quadratic formula to save time.

- To avoid common traps like sign errors with the quadratic formula and in factoring.

For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.

In this episode you will learn:

- How to apply the product and quotient rules to simplify complex exponential expressions quickly.

- That a negative exponent means taking the reciprocal, and a fractional exponent like 1/2 means finding the square root.

- The method for simplifying radicals by finding the largest perfect square factor within the radicand.

- How to correctly convert numbers to scientific notation, focusing on the direction the decimal moves to determine the exponent's sign.

- To use magnitude estimation as a sanity check to verify the reasonableness of your final answer, preventing common decimal and exponent errors.

For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.

In this episode you will learn:

- The most critical rule: when to flip the inequality sign to avoid common exam traps.

- How to correctly solve compound inequalities by applying operations to all parts.

- Why an inequality's solution is a set of numbers and how it's represented on the OAR.

- The method for breaking a single absolute value equation into two separate linear equations.

- A mnemonic ('less thAND' vs. 'greatOR') for solving tricky absolute value inequalities.

For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.

In this episode you will learn:

- How to quickly decide whether to use the substitution or elimination method on the timed OAR Math Skills Test.

- A step-by-step process for solving a system using the substitution method, including how to avoid common distribution errors.

- A clear example of using the elimination method by multiplying an entire equation to cancel out a variable.

- The technique for translating OAR-style word problems into a solvable system of two linear equations.

- How to interpret results that indicate no solution (parallel lines) or infinite solutions (the same line).

For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.

In this episode you will learn:

- How to isolate variables in one-step and multi-step linear equations using inverse operations.

- The method for rearranging literal equations, or formulas with multiple variables, to solve for a specific quantity.

- How to correctly set up and solve proportion problems by cross-multiplying.

- To identify common exam traps, such as mishandling negative signs and reversing the order of operations.

- A mental shortcut, 'Keep the scale balanced,' to ensure you always maintain equality in an equation.

For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.

In this episode you will learn:

- How to translate verbal phrases, especially tricky ones like "less than," into correct algebraic expressions.

- The most common exam trap involving the distributive property: forgetting to distribute the negative sign to all terms inside a parenthesis.

- A simple mnemonic, the "fruit salad" rule, for accurately combining like terms (e.g., x-terms with x-terms, constants with constants).

- The correct procedure for simplifying rational expressions by factoring both the numerator and denominator before canceling.

- The critical rule to 'Factor first, then slash the match' to avoid the trap of illegally canceling terms instead of factors.

For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep