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Strategy Session

Topic: Working Backwards Strategy Used: Paying Attention to Parts of Speech

If a Miller Analogy confuses you, you should take a look at parts of speech in the question—that is, whether the words are nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. This strategy is appropriate for two reasons. The first is that (with very few exceptions) parts of speech are always consistent within an analogy. In other words, if the first word of one word pair is an adjective and the second word a noun, then the same is true for the other word pair. You can use this information to determine whether the analogy is 1:2—3:4 or 1:3—2:4.

For instance, if you see:

you would know that the analogy is 1:3—2:4.

Moreover, because it's not always clear whether a word is being used as a noun, verb, or adjective, referring to the parts of speech of the other words in the analogy can help you identify how the word is being used.

For instance, check out the following analogy.

By looking at the other words in this analogy, how would you predict that TABLE is being used here? A noun? A verb? An adjective?

Answer: MOTION and PAYMENT are both nouns. The answer choices—incur, defer, disburse, and grant—are all verbs. Thus TABLE here is being used as a verb.

Once you've identified the parts of speech for all the words in your analogy, you can usually determine whether the analogy is 1:2—3:4 or 1:3—2:4. For instance, now that you know you have:

Because the parts of speech are consistent within an analogy, you would predict that this analogy is 1:2—3:4.

Now that you know you have a 1:2—3:4 analogy and that TABLE here is being used as a verb, you should try to build a bridge between TABLE and MOTION, and choose the answer choice that best fits the bridge.

Answer: (b) To table a motion is to postpone it, just as to defer a payment is to postpone it.