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The value of the variable E is determined by adding the reci

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by BTGmoderatorDC » Sat May 18, 2019 8:23 am

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Answers

A

B

C

D

E

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The value of the variable E is determined by adding the reciprocals of the first 10 even natural numbers. Which of the following can be a possible value of the reciprocal of E?

A. 0.154
B. 0.1818
C. 0.667
D. 2
E. 3.03

OA C

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by Ian Stewart » Sun May 19, 2019 9:50 am
BTGmoderatorDC wrote:The value of the variable E is determined by adding the reciprocals of the first 10 even natural numbers. Which of the following can be a possible value of the reciprocal of E?

A. 0.154
B. 0.1818
C. 0.667
D. 2
E. 3.03
This question makes no sense - as defined, E represents a single numerical value, so E is not a "variable". And if E has a single numerical value, so does its reciprocal, so it makes no sense to ask what "can be a possible value of the reciprocal of E". An answer is either equal to the reciprocal of E or it isn't. And then if you actually compute the value of the reciprocal they describe exactly, you don't even find that value among the answer choices (the 'right' answer, C, is a decent estimate, but the true right answer here is 5040/7381, which, when rounded off to three decimal places, is 0.683).

So I don't think there's any reason to look at the question. It's testing something related to what is called a 'harmonic mean', but the GMAT would never expect a test taker to know anything about harmonic means (though if you did, you could answer this quickly). Instead, the best approach here seems to be to just quickly estimate everything, since the right answer (if C were changed to be the right answer) is distant from any other answer choice.
For online GMAT math tutoring, or to buy my higher-level Quant books and problem sets, contact me at ianstewartgmat at gmail.com

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