For some time now, we have been sharing with you some of the techniques of writing a good introduction for your GAMSAT essay [http://www.blog.prepgenie.com/tag/gamsat-essay-the-art-of-writing-a-good-introduction/]
. Today we will tell you how facts/statistics can be a great way to begin your GAMSAT essay. As you must be aware already, GAMSAT Section II has 2 writing tasks, each of which is a set of five quotations. One of these sets is often centered on some broad socio-economic theme. One of the best ways to begin such an essay is to use relevant facts or statistics as a "hook". If the hook is a startling fact, it is bound to catch the reader's attention. But then there is a flip side to it: you cannot possibly make up/invent facts and statistics, and so if you intend to make use of these, you must, must, must be well read and also remember to quote the source from which you are using the fact/statistics. Being up to date with newspapers and journals will be of great help in this regard.

Following the pattern of GAMSAT Written Communication writing tasks, let's suppose that you are asked to frame an essay in response to one or more of the following set of quotations:

* Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants. (Epictetus)
* He who knows how to be poor knows everything. (Jules Michelet)
* Poverty is the worst form of violence. (Mahatma Gandhi)
* It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake. (Margaret Thatcher)
* It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish. (Mother Teresa)

Let's assume that you want to frame your essay around the quotations of Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa. Now, both these quotes bring out the brutality of poverty as it affects real people. These quotes do not idealise/romanticise poverty, they expose its harshness. If you are to focus your essay on these, you need to have a rather forceful beginning for your essay.

Thus, instead of beginning your essay with some vague generalisations, why not get real with some hard-hitting facts? Nothing can beat the straightforwardness of bare facts, stated in a no-nonsense manner. Given below is a sample introductory paragraph that begins with a fact as the hook sentence, and then moves on through the transition to the thesis-statement.

UNICEF records state that 25,000 children die every day due to poverty. Irrespective of whether they inhabit a remote village or some busy city, invisibly tucked away from the glitz and glamour of the rich, and so also from their conscience, these dying multitudes remain as uncared for and as anonymous in their death as in their life. Mahatma Gandhi was indeed right in saying that no form of violence can be worse than poverty. But the alarming concern about poverty in today's world has more to do with the disquieting reality that one man's poverty comes at the cost of another man's greed. Mother Teresa's brilliant expression, "It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish," turns the concept of poverty on its head, insisting that poverty is a state of mind, not the lack of material things or possessions. Yet, it also highlights the brutal reality that the poverty of one man is often the consequence of the avarice of another.