Data Sufficiency - Standard Deviation problem

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Any help on how to attack the following problem would be appreciated.

The new recruits of a military organization who score in the bottom 16 percent on their physical conditioning tests are required to retest. If the scores are normally distributed and have an arithmetic mean of 72, what is the score at or below which the recruits are required to retest?

1.) There are 500 new recruits.

2.) 10 new recruits scored at least 82 on the physical conditioning test.
Source: — Data Sufficiency |

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by theCEO » Wed Jun 03, 2015 3:08 am
infiniti007 wrote:Any help on how to attack the following problem would be appreciated.

The new recruits of a military organization who score in the bottom 16 percent on their physical conditioning tests are required to retest. If the scores are normally distributed and have an arithmetic mean of 72, what is the score at or below which the recruits are required to retest?

1.) There are 500 new recruits.

2.) 10 new recruits scored at least 82 on the physical conditioning test.
What's the source of this question- it does not like the GMAT-type.

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by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Wed Jun 03, 2015 5:51 am
The new recruits of a military organization who score in the bottom 16 percent on their physical conditioning tests are required to retest. If the scores are normally distributed and have an arithmetic mean of 72, what is the score at or below which the recruits are required to retest?

1.) There are 500 new recruits.

2.) 10 new recruits scored at least 82 on the physical conditioning test.

The GMAT does not test normal distributions.

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by nikhilgmat31 » Thu Jun 04, 2015 3:41 am
well how to solve this question. ?

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by Ian Stewart » Thu Jun 04, 2015 5:51 am
Not only does this question test content that can never appear on the GMAT, the question is also just mathematically wrong, as I explained in a post here about five years ago. Ignore this question, and all other questions from the same source about normal distributions. Studying them will be a waste of your time.
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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