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MGMAT: PS: wording ambiguity

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MGMAT: PS: wording ambiguity

by iamseer » Sat May 08, 2010 3:45 am
Sally has a gold credit card with a certain spending limit, and a platinum card with twice the spending limit of the gold card. Currently, she has a balance on her gold card that is 1/3 of the spending limit on that card, and she has a balance on her platinum card that is 1/5 of the spending limit on that card. If Sally transfers the entire balance on her gold card to her platinum card, what portion of her limit on the platinum card will remain unspent?
11/30
29/60
17/30
19/30
11/15

OA: D

I marked A.
Isn't balance=amount remaining/unspent? Somehow in this question it means amount spent.

Oxford English meaning of "balance" - Something left after other parts have been taken away or The difference between the totals of the credit and debit sides of an account

Anyone got a word?
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by sanju09 » Sat May 08, 2010 4:05 am
iamseer wrote:Sally has a gold credit card with a certain spending limit, and a platinum card with twice the spending limit of the gold card. Currently, she has a balance on her gold card that is 1/3 of the spending limit on that card, and she has a balance on her platinum card that is 1/5 of the spending limit on that card. If Sally transfers the entire balance on her gold card to her platinum card, what portion of her limit on the platinum card will remain unspent?
11/30
29/60
17/30
19/30
11/15

OA: D

I marked A.
Isn't balance=amount remaining/unspent? Somehow in this question it means amount spent.

Oxford English meaning of "balance" - Something left after other parts have been taken away or The difference between the totals of the credit and debit sides of an account

Anyone got a word?
Portion unspent = unspent/total, no Oxford referral is required to get this small mathematical concept.
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by iamseer » Sat May 08, 2010 4:48 am
Portion unspent = unspent/total, no Oxford referral is required to get this small mathematical concept.
Thanks Sanju09 for mentioning that formula. But the question is what is unspent?

doesn't balance mean unspent?

let's say gold card has limit 300 so balance is 100
plat card has limit 600 and therefore balance 120
balance of gold tx to plat: 120+100
so balance on platinum is 220

If we go by English meaning of balance which is "amount remaining" then unspent amount is 220/600=11/30
If we take balance as "amount spent" then the amount unspent is 1-(220/600)=19/30

It's like David had 100 bucks in his pocket. The balance in his pocket is 1/5 of total. What is the amount unspent? Wouldn't it be 20 bucks?
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by sanju09 » Sat May 08, 2010 5:04 am
iamseer wrote:
Portion unspent = unspent/total, no Oxford referral is required to get this small mathematical concept.
Thanks Sanju09 for mentioning that formula. But the question is what is unspent?

doesn't balance mean unspent?

let's say gold card has limit 300 so balance is 100
plat card has limit 600 and therefore balance 120
balance of gold tx to plat: 120+100
so balance on platinum is 220

If we go by English meaning of balance which is "amount remaining" then unspent amount is 220/600=11/30
If we take balance as "amount spent" then the amount unspent is 1-(220/600)=19/30

It's like David had 100 bucks in his pocket. The balance in his pocket is 1/5 of total. What is the amount unspent? Wouldn't it be 20 bucks?
Find the net spending limit on the card after transfer, this is the total on card. Then subtract the spent amount from it to find the unspent amount.
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by shashank.ism » Sat May 08, 2010 5:07 am
iamseer wrote:Sally has a gold credit card with a certain spending limit, and a platinum card with twice the spending limit of the gold card. Currently, she has a balance on her gold card that is 1/3 of the spending limit on that card, and she has a balance on her platinum card that is 1/5 of the spending limit on that card. If Sally transfers the entire balance on her gold card to her platinum card, what portion of her limit on the platinum card will remain unspent?
11/30
29/60
17/30
19/30
11/15

OA: D

I marked A.
Isn't balance=amount remaining/unspent? Somehow in this question it means amount spent.

Oxford English meaning of "balance" - Something left after other parts have been taken away or The difference between the totals of the credit and debit sides of an account

Anyone got a word?

Let X be the spending limit of gold card and hence 2X is the spending limit of platinum card.

so amount left in gold card = X/3
amount left in platinum card = 2X/5
if amount on gold card is totally transferred to platinum card
so total amount = X/3 + 2X/5 = 11X/15
so portion of her limit o platinum card remain unspent = 11X/15/2X= 11/30

So correct ans should be Aonly.
Yeah if question is asking for spent amount then we will go for [spoiler]D i.e. 19/30
[/spoiler]
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by iamseer » Sat May 08, 2010 5:14 am
Simple answer to the question (ambiguity) above is: In case of credit cards, balance means credit used and not the credit available.

In case of credit cards when we say balance transfer, they do not transfer credit amount available, they transfer credit amount used.

So, this usage of word balance is not standard English usage but industry specific. Hence ambiguous.
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by shashank.ism » Sat May 08, 2010 5:34 am
iamseer wrote:Simple answer to the question (ambiguity) above is: In case of credit cards, balance means credit used and not the credit available.

In case of credit cards when we say balance transfer, they do not transfer credit amount available, they transfer credit amount used.

So, this usage of word balance is not standard English usage but industry specific. Hence ambiguous.
ok balance in credit card means the amount spent . that's a nice concept btw.
Even I found sth similar on this website.. https://forums.kiplinger.com/showthread.php?t=9505

If its correct then we must know that otherwise we would be losing our part of scores even if we are solving it correct.
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by iamseer » Sat May 08, 2010 5:57 am
shashank.ism wrote: If its correct then we must know that otherwise we would be losing our part of scores even if we are solving it correct.
GMAT questions designers are very well aware of this. The chances of seeing a question with ambiguous interpretation are rare. Even if it does appear, it is most probably a new experimental question. I trust GMAT to be fair and unambiguous.

As far as MGMAT goes, they design really wonderful Quant questions. Here they have inadvertently assumed that everyone knows what a balance transfer on credit card is.
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by clock60 » Sat May 08, 2010 9:55 am
iamseer wrote:Sally has a gold credit card with a certain spending limit, and a platinum card with twice the spending limit of the gold card. Currently, she has a balance on her gold card that is 1/3 of the spending limit on that card, and she has a balance on her platinum card that is 1/5 of the spending limit on that card. If Sally transfers the entire balance on her gold card to her platinum card, what portion of her limit on the platinum card will remain unspent?
11/30
29/60
17/30
19/30
11/15

OA: D

I marked A.
Isn't balance=amount remaining/unspent? Somehow in this question it means amount spent.

i also fell unhappy with this problem, and the only way to solve is to follow wording

spending limit gold=x
spending limit platinum=2x

balance gold=1/3*x
balance platinum=1/5*2x

after transferring from gold to platinum
x/3+2/5*x=11x/15-it is now balance on platinum
total balance of paltinum=2x
to fill balance completely we need 2x-11x/15=19x/15
and it will be (19x/15)/(2x)=19/30
looks like D




Oxford English meaning of "balance" - Something left after other parts have been taken away or The difference between the totals of the credit and debit sides of an account

Anyone got a word?
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