General | Geometry | Achievable AMC 10/12

General Geometry

There are a couple of “basic” principles that help you way more than they seem like they ought to.

They are:

On a geometry problem, the first thing you should do is to draw a picture, big, and (if possible) accurately.
On a geometry problem, the next thing you should do after drawing it once is to redraw it for accuracy (if needed), then label everything.
On a geometry problem, the thing you should do after you have a big, accurate, labelled drawing is ask yourself: would coordinates help here?

Take a moment to review right now:

On a geometry problem, what should you do first?

(spoiler)

Draw it big
Draw it accurately (if you can)

On a geometry problem, what should you do after drawing it once?

(spoiler)

Redraw it accurately (if you need to)
Label everything

On a geometry problem, what should you do after you have a big, accurate, labeled drawing?

(spoiler)

Ask whether coordinates would help

What to do

Take a minute right now to try to memorize the above steps, in the order given. We are trying very hard to put this into your memory because it will help you enormously if you just start doing these steps, in order, for every Geometry problem on the AMC.