Data Sufficiency

Hello BTG

Would appreciate an approach to solve this problem:
Also what level of difficulty would a question like this be regarded?



Thanks in advance

For each month of next year, Company R's monthly revenue target is x dollars greater than its monthly revenue for the preceding month. What is company R's revenue for March of next year?
1. Company R's revenue target for Dec is 310,000
2. Company R's revenue target for september of next year is $30,000 greater than its revenue target for June of next year.

Each month, the target increases by x dollars.

Statement 1:
From March to December = 9 months.
Thus:
December = March + 9x.
March = December - 9x.
Since December = 310,000, we get:
March = 310,000 - 9x.
No way to determine the value in March.
INSUFFICIENT.

Statement 2:
From June to September = 3 months.
Thus, the increase from June to September = 3x.
Since 3x = 30,000, x=10,000.
No way to determine the value in March.
INSUFFICIENT.

Statements combined:
Since x=10,000 and March = 310,000 - 9x, we get:
March = 310,000 - (9*10,000) = 220,000.
SUFFICIENT.

The correct answer is C.

I'd rank this a 550-650 level problem.

lucas211 wrote:For each month of next year, Company R's monthly revenue target is x dollars greater than its monthly revenue target for the preceding month. What is Company R's revenue target for March of next year?

(1) Company R's revenue target for December of next year is $310,000

(2) Company R's revenue target for September of next year is $30,000 greater than its revenue target for June of next year.

To get the answer, you need some kind of starting point, the target for one month, and you need the difference between targets, x, which you could use to work from the target you have to March's target.

Alternatively, if you somehow actually had the target for March, you could get the answer, but somehow I doubt that that number will be provided.

Statement 1:

This provides a starting point, but since we don't know the difference between monthly targets, there is no way to go from the starting point to the March figure.

Insufficient.

Statement 2:

We can use this to calculate the difference between months.

September is 3 months after June. So if the difference between June's target and September's target is $30,000, then the difference from one month to the next is 30,000/3 = 10,000

However, we don't know the actual target for any month. So we have no way to use the month to month change to calculate the actual figure for March.

Insufficient.

Statements Combined:

From Statement 1 we have the actual figure for December, and from Statement 2 we have the month to month change. So we could work back from December to March, $10,000 per month, to calculate the March figure.

Sufficient.

The correct answer is C.

This seems to be a 600 level question.

lucas211 wrote:For each month of next year, Company R's monthly revenue target is x dollars greater than its monthly revenue for the preceding month. What is company R's revenue for March of next year?
1. Company R's revenue target for Dec is 310,000
2. Company R's revenue target for september of next year is $30,000 greater than its revenue target for June of next year.

Thanks in advance

Given: Monthly revenue target is x dollars greater than the target for the previous month
Required: Revenue for March of next year

Statement 1: Target for Dec = 310,000
Target for January = 310,000 + x
Target for February = 310,000 + 2x
Target for March = 310,000 = 3x

But we have no clue about x
INSUFFICIENT

Statement 2: Revenue for September - Revenue for June = 30,000
Hence 3x = 30,000
But we have no idea about the actual revenues.
INSUFFICIENT

Combining both statements:
We know the value of x and we know the value in one of the months,
Hence we can calculate the revenue in March
SUFFICIENT

Correct Option: C

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I'd guess this is rated 420-460, not because it's easy to SOLVE per se, but because it's relatively easy to solve and much easier to guess: even if you have no idea what to do, C seems right, and C is probably the most popular guess in DS, which would skew the correct response rate high.