A certain customer at a health food store purchases organic bananas at a price of $0.7 each, and conventional bananas at

This topic has expert replies
Moderator
Posts: 2207
Joined: Sun Oct 15, 2017 1:50 pm
Followed by:6 members

Timer

00:00

Your Answer

A

B

C

D

E

Global Stats

Source: Veritas Prep

A certain customer at a health food store purchased organic bananas at a price of $0.7 each, and conventional bananas at a price of $0.6 each. How many total bananas did the customer purchase, if he purchased both organic and conventional bananas?

1) In total, the customer spent $5.6 on bananas
2) The customer purchased conventional and organic bananas in the ratio of 7:2 respectively

The OA is A

GMAT/MBA Expert

User avatar
GMAT Instructor
Posts: 2621
Joined: Mon Jun 02, 2008 3:17 am
Location: Montreal
Thanked: 1090 times
Followed by:355 members
GMAT Score:780

Timer

00:00

Your Answer

A

B

C

D

E

Global Stats

If the person bought x organic and y conventional bananas, he spent 70x + 60y cents. From Statement 1, we know 70x + 60y = 560, so 7x + 6y = 56. Here 7x and 56 are both divisible by 7, so 6y must be too (if it's not clear why, we can rewrite the equation 6y = 56 - 7x, and now since the right side is clearly divisible by 7, the left must be also), and y must be 7 (if y were 14 or larger, 7x + 6y would be bigger than 56). If we can find y, we can find x and answer the question, so Statement 1 is sufficient. Statement 2 is clearly insufficient alone, so the answer is A.
For online GMAT math tutoring, or to buy my higher-level Quant books and problem sets, contact me at ianstewartgmat at gmail.com

ianstewartgmat.com