Data Sufficiency Mentality

What is the shortcoming in me or what mindset to adopt when I attend Data sufficiency question?

I am taking the questions too light. At least too light for GMAT standards. I should start the question with a very serious mentality. Because there are many traps in the question to make you fall. Casual attitude in approaching questions is very dangerous and that attitude is trap-friendly.

DS is all about thinking POSSIBILITIES. If you can't think about all the possibilities, before you attend a DS question, you are out of the business. You will land up with some score like 530 - 550 for sure. If there is no mention about the variable, that variable can be anything like 0, -1, 0.5, -0.5, 10000, 2/3 or -5/7 etc.. The possibilities are infinite. If you can not make out that point before you start reading statement 1, you are sure to fail or take a longer time to attend that question.

Unless the variable is explicitly mentioned as an integer, it can have all the possible values available in the number line. Please be careful with this point. The answer choices are really close. If you miss one possibility, you are bowled. For example, what are the possible ways that a # a =1, where as # represents any one of the following mathematical operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Actually except subtraction all other operations can suit this equation. The moment you say variable "a" is an integer addition gets ruled out. The moment you say "a" is greater than zero, then the possibility "a" being -1 is ruled out. If you can't list down possibilities, you can't smell success.

First write down the question, whether it is asking some value of YES or NO type question. If it asks for value, then relation type statements won't work. You should try to get some unique values. Very general relationship equations given in the statements would usually fail.

If it asking for YES or NO types, then open the Pandora box of possibilities. Attack your own initial assumptions. Ask frequently, questions like why it should be negative or why only "a" should be given a lower number or why not "Y" can be a real number. Such questions will open more avenues and automatically your answer choices will be mistake-proof.

I am hasty in selecting the answer choices. If something is not coming correct, I should read the question again and recheck my assumptions and calculations. To be honest, I am not doing that. This mentality can fetch a great score of 500-550 easily. Remember, the questions are highly engineered to deceive you. The questions are not created by ordinary people and been sent across to you to solve. More than one twisted mathematical knowledge is applied to frame the question. If you are not alert, you are sure to stumble on the question. Fluke or guessing does not work here.

Problem solving is not that easy and it is not that difficult to solve. You need to have the right mentality. That's all. All the concepts are known and all the tools are known. Still if I am not striking the question right, it is really the question of mentality. Improve your mind set and improve your score.