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Any number picking strategy ?

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by Neilsheth2 » Wed May 25, 2016 3:36 am
How can we solve this with the help of Plugging in ?

I took a guess on this question by seeing that combining the inequalities makes them sufficient !



Thank you in advance!
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Source: — Data Sufficiency |

by GMATGuruNY » Wed May 25, 2016 4:43 am
Is x < w?

1. x-w < x
2. x+w < w
Statement 1:
Subtracting x from both sides, we get:
-w < 0
w > 0.
No information about x.
INSUFFICIENT.

Statement 2:
Subtracting w from both sides, we get:
x < 0.
No information about w.
INSUFFICIENT.

Statements combined:
Since x is NEGATIVE and w is POSITIVE, x<w.
SUFFICIENT.

The correct answer is C.
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by Matt@VeritasPrep » Thu May 26, 2016 3:09 pm
Since you requested a number picking strategy:

S1:

Think positive and negatives. We could have x = 5 and w = 3, in which case x > w. We could also have x = -5 and w = 3, in which case w > x.

S2:

We could have w = 5 and x = -2, in which case w > x. We could also have w = -5 and x = -2, in which case x > w.

S1 + S2

x = 5 and w = 3 doesn't work, nor does w = -5 and x = -2. This strongly suggests (which is about as good as we can do with number picking) that w > x is the only possibility.
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