Last month a certain music club offerred a discount to preferred customers. After the first compact disc purchased, preferred customers paid $3.99 for each additional compact disc purchased. If a preferred customer purchased a total of 6 compact disc, then the dollar amount that the customer paid for the 6 compact discs is equivalent to which of the following?
A. 5(4.00) + 15.90
B. 5(4.00) + 15.95
C. 5(4.00) + 16.00
D. 5(4.00-0.01) + 15.90
E. 5(4.00-0.05) + 15.95
Answer: A
Please explain the easiest way to think about this. I initially chose D.
This type of problem seems to come up from time to time, please include any extra examples or videos on how to approach this type of problem.
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Hi oquiella,
The prompt that you listed was missing some information. The full prompt is here:
Last month a certain music club offered a discount to preferred customers. After the first compact disc purchased, preferred customers paid $3.99 for each additional compact disc purchased. If a preferred customer purchased a total of 6 compact discs and paid $15.95 for the first compact disc, then the dollar amount that the customer paid for the 6 compact discs is equivalent to which of the following?
(A) 5(4.00) + 15.90
(B) 5(4.00) + 15.95
(C) 5(4.00) + 16.00
(D) 5(4.00 - 0.01) + 15.90
(E) 5(4.00 - 0.05) + 15.95
Like many GMAT questions, this prompt isn't really about doing lots of math - it's about organizing the information that you're given so that you can avoid doing lots of calculations.
Notice how the first disc is $15.95? That's $0.05 LESS than $16.
Notice how the additional discs are all $3.99? That's $0.01 LESS than $4.
It's interesting that the question tells us that after the first disc is purchased, 5 additional discs are purchases. So that would be $0.05 less than $20. Thinking in these terms ($0.05 'pieces'), the numbers in this prompt are actually pretty easy to combine and simplify.
GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
The prompt that you listed was missing some information. The full prompt is here:
Last month a certain music club offered a discount to preferred customers. After the first compact disc purchased, preferred customers paid $3.99 for each additional compact disc purchased. If a preferred customer purchased a total of 6 compact discs and paid $15.95 for the first compact disc, then the dollar amount that the customer paid for the 6 compact discs is equivalent to which of the following?
(A) 5(4.00) + 15.90
(B) 5(4.00) + 15.95
(C) 5(4.00) + 16.00
(D) 5(4.00 - 0.01) + 15.90
(E) 5(4.00 - 0.05) + 15.95
Like many GMAT questions, this prompt isn't really about doing lots of math - it's about organizing the information that you're given so that you can avoid doing lots of calculations.
Notice how the first disc is $15.95? That's $0.05 LESS than $16.
Notice how the additional discs are all $3.99? That's $0.01 LESS than $4.
It's interesting that the question tells us that after the first disc is purchased, 5 additional discs are purchases. So that would be $0.05 less than $20. Thinking in these terms ($0.05 'pieces'), the numbers in this prompt are actually pretty easy to combine and simplify.
GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
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The preferred customer paid 15.95 + 5(3.99) dollars for the 6 CDs. However, we don't see this expression in the answer choices. We can see that had the 15.90 in choice D been 15.95, then D would be the correct answer. Or had the 0.05 in choice E been 0.01, then E would be the correct answer. However, since they aren't, neither one is the correct answer.oquiella wrote:Last month a certain music club offerred a discount to preferred customers. After the first compact disc purchased, preferred customers paid $3.99 for each additional compact disc purchased. If a preferred customer purchased a total of 6 compact disc, then the dollar amount that the customer paid for the 6 compact discs is equivalent to which of the following?
A. 5(4.00) + 15.90
B. 5(4.00) + 15.95
C. 5(4.00) + 16.00
D. 5(4.00-0.01) + 15.90
E. 5(4.00-0.05) + 15.95
Now let's analyze the remaining three answer choices. A, B and C. Notice that each one has 4.00, which is 0.01 more than 3.99 and the difference between 5(4.00) and 5(3.99) is 5(0.01) = 0.05. Thus we see that, since 5(4.00) overvalued the cost by 0.05, we must undervalue 15.95 by 0.05 to 15.90 to have an equivalent cost. Thus, equivalently, the customer paid 5(4.00) + 15.90 dollars.
Answer: A
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