Average (arithmetic mean) number of people registered?

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S18-16 During a 6-day local trade show, the least number of people registered in a single day was 80. Was the average (arithmetic mean) number of people registered per day for the 6 days greater than 90?

(1) For the 4 days with the greatest number of people registered, the average (arithmetic mean) number registered per day was 100.

(2) For the 3 days with the smallest number of people registered, the average (arithmetic mean) number registered per day was 85.

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by *arch* » Tue Aug 05, 2008 10:31 pm
I think the Answer is (A) - Statement 1 is sufficient to answer the question.

What's the given answer?

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by amitdgr » Tue Aug 05, 2008 11:11 pm
Is the OA D ??
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by bisto41510 » Wed Aug 06, 2008 12:09 am
I like D too.

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by mehravikas » Wed Aug 06, 2008 1:43 am
bisto41510 wrote:I like D too.
Even I liked 'D', but the official answer is A. Can anyone explain please?

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by jsl » Wed Aug 06, 2008 1:56 am
I got A... Basically, you're given one of the numbers (the smallest) and therefore, you should immediately work out what you can. If you need a minimum mean of 90, you can multiply 5 with 90 and subtract 80 to obtain the sum of the other 5 numbers. Since you want to get a mean of over 90, you need to to get over 370 (which is the total of the above).

Statement 1 tells you that the sum is at least 400 so you're in the clear. In fact, it's bigger than that because you have 5 numbers.

Statement 2 tells you overlapping information in the question stem and doesn't tell you relevant information about the other 5 elements. Therefore, you can ignore completely.

Thus the answer is A.

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by mehravikas » Thu Aug 07, 2008 1:28 am
jsl wrote:I got A... Basically, you're given one of the numbers (the smallest) and therefore, you should immediately work out what you can. If you need a minimum mean of 90, you can multiply 5 with 90 and subtract 80 to obtain the sum of the other 5 numbers. Since you want to get a mean of over 90, you need to to get over 370 (which is the total of the above).

Statement 1 tells you that the sum is at least 400 so you're in the clear. In fact, it's bigger than that because you have 5 numbers.

Statement 2 tells you overlapping information in the question stem and doesn't tell you relevant information about the other 5 elements. Therefore, you can ignore completely.

Thus the answer is A.
But statement 2 clearly states that for a 3 day period the average was 85 per day, which is less than 90.

Isnt that sufficient

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mehravikas wrote:S18-16 During a 6-day local trade show, the least number of people registered in a single day was 80. Was the average (arithmetic mean) number of people registered per day for the 6 days greater than 90?

(1) For the 4 days with the greatest number of people registered, the average (arithmetic mean) number registered per day was 100.

(2) For the 3 days with the smallest number of people registered, the average (arithmetic mean) number registered per day was 85.
We need to know whether the average over six days was greater than 90. This is equivalent to: did more than 540 people attend the show?

From 1), we know that on four days we had 400 people, and on the other two days, from the stem, we had at least 160 people, so we surely had at least 560 people. Sufficient. (jsl- I think you assumed it was a 5-day show in your calculations above)

From 2), we only know that, on the three days with the lowest attendance, the average was 85- that is, on those three days, we had 255 people in total. On one day there were 80 people; we must have had 175 people on the other two. We might have had:

{80, 87, 88, 89, 89, 89}

and not only might the average be less than 90; there might not have been a single day where 90 people registered for the show. Or, of course, we could have an average as high as we like:

{80, 85, 90, 1000000, 1000000, 1000000}

So 2) is not sufficient.

________

If the number in Statement 2) were larger, the statement might become sufficient. If you change '85' to '88', you can be sure that the average per day is at least 90 (but not necessarily greater), and if you change it to '89', you can be certain the average per day is greater than 90. It's not a statement that should be dismissed too quickly, since it does give you information about all elements in the set.
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Great thanks !!
Ian Stewart wrote:
mehravikas wrote:S18-16 During a 6-day local trade show, the least number of people registered in a single day was 80. Was the average (arithmetic mean) number of people registered per day for the 6 days greater than 90?

(1) For the 4 days with the greatest number of people registered, the average (arithmetic mean) number registered per day was 100.

(2) For the 3 days with the smallest number of people registered, the average (arithmetic mean) number registered per day was 85.
We need to know whether the average over six days was greater than 90. This is equivalent to: did more than 540 people attend the show?

From 1), we know that on four days we had 400 people, and on the other two days, from the stem, we had at least 160 people, so we surely had at least 560 people. Sufficient. (jsl- I think you assumed it was a 5-day show in your calculations above)

From 2), we only know that, on the three days with the lowest attendance, the average was 85- that is, on those three days, we had 255 people in total. On one day there were 80 people; we must have had 175 people on the other two. We might have had:

{80, 87, 88, 89, 89, 89}

and not only might the average be less than 90; there might not have been a single day where 90 people registered for the show. Or, of course, we could have an average as high as we like:

{80, 85, 90, 1000000, 1000000, 1000000}

So 2) is not sufficient.

________

If the number in Statement 2) were larger, the statement might become sufficient. If you change '85' to '88', you can be sure that the average per day is at least 90 (but not necessarily greater), and if you change it to '89', you can be certain the average per day is greater than 90. It's not a statement that should be dismissed too quickly, since it does give you information about all elements in the set.

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mehravikas wrote:Great thanks !!
Ian Stewart wrote:
mehravikas wrote:S18-16 During a 6-day local trade show, the least number of people registered in a single day was 80. Was the average (arithmetic mean) number of people registered per day for the 6 days greater than 90?

(1) For the 4 days with the greatest number of people registered, the average (arithmetic mean) number registered per day was 100.

(2) For the 3 days with the smallest number of people registered, the average (arithmetic mean) number registered per day was 85.
We need to know whether the average over six days was greater than 90. This is equivalent to: did more than 540 people attend the show?

From 1), we know that on four days we had 400 people, and on the other two days, from the stem, we had at least 160 people, so we surely had at least 560 people. Sufficient. (jsl- I think you assumed it was a 5-day show in your calculations above)

From 2), we only know that, on the three days with the lowest attendance, the average was 85- that is, on those three days, we had 255 people in total. On one day there were 80 people; we must have had 175 people on the other two. We might have had:

{80, 87, 88, 89, 89, 89}

and not only might the average be less than 90; there might not have been a single day where 90 people registered for the show. Or, of course, we could have an average as high as we like:

{80, 85, 90, 1000000, 1000000, 1000000}

So 2) is not sufficient.

________

If the number in Statement 2) were larger, the statement might become sufficient. If you change '85' to '88', you can be sure that the average per day is at least 90 (but not necessarily greater), and if you change it to '89', you can be certain the average per day is greater than 90. It's not a statement that should be dismissed too quickly, since it does give you information about all elements in the set.

Can you please discuss why 88 will a least be 90 and 89 will be greater than 90?

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keeyu2 wrote: Can you please discuss why 88 will a least be 90 and 89 will be greater than 90?
Yes - so we're trying to answer this question now:

During a 6-day local trade show, the least number of people registered in a single day was 80. For the 3 days with the smallest number of people registered, the average (arithmetic mean) number registered per day was 88. What is the smallest possible average (arithmetic mean) number of people registered per day for the 6 days?

First, let's focus on the three days with the lowest attendance. We know that on one of those days, exactly 80 people attended the show. The average of the lowest three days is 88. There are several possibilities now for these three days; we could have:

80, 92, 92

or

80, 81, 103

for example. How do we make the six-day average as low as possible? We want to make the largest values as small as possible, which we can do if the lowest three days are 80, 92 and 92. Then, even if we had 92 people on each of the three remaining days, we would have an average of 90 people per day for the entire six day show.

The wording of the question is a bit ambiguous, however - we could interpret "For the 3 days with the smallest number of people..." to mean that there were three days of the show with strictly fewer people than the remaining three days. In that case, there would be at least 93 people per day for the three days with the greatest attendance, and an average over 90 for the six days. If it were a real GMAT question, the wording would make clear what interpretation was intended.
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by keeyu2 » Wed Apr 01, 2009 5:31 am
Thanks. :D

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by sgnikc45 » Mon Mar 17, 2014 12:20 am
@Ian
On one day there were 80 people
Can you explain how this conclusion can be made? Or are you trying to say that let's assume that there were 80 people on one day?