44) How many beads?

ern5231 wrote:Three bags contain beads inside them. The number of beads contained are 37,X,32. Inside each bag the percentage of blue beads is 10.8%,66.8% and 50%. The number of blue beads account for 38% of total beads. What is the value of X?

a) 5 b) 9 c)12 d) 24 e)43

Hope the statement is only missing a word, “respectively” somewhere in the stem.

Though, little ambiguity remains of how the number of beads could be a non-integer in first look when we talk about the first bag that contains a total of 37 beads, and 10.8 percent of 37 is the number of blue beads in the first bag, I rechecked it and found that it’s almost 4. The rest part of the question seems possible so far, so it’s okay so far…

We have, 4 + 0.668 × X + 16 = 0.38 (37 + X + 32), can be solved for X now

20 + 0.668 X = 0.38 × 69 + 0.38 X

0.288 X = 6.22

[spoiler]X = 21.59, absolutely ambiguous, I had to use calculator to make it possible in the decent time, please attempt posting the valid queries only[/spoiler]