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gmat pre question

by pradeepkaushal9518 » Fri May 07, 2010 12:20 pm
Tom, Jane, and Sue each purchased a new house. The average (arithmetic mean) price of the three houses was $120,000. What was the median price of the three houses?
(1) The price of Tom's house was $110,000.
(2) The price of Jane's house was $120,000.
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Source: — Data Sufficiency |
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by sk818020 » Fri May 07, 2010 12:45 pm
B

You can rephrase this question by asking, what is the order of the values involved. The median will be the middle one.

(1) is insufficient because it give us a a value that is not equal to the mean, and does not give us what one of the other two are. The other two could many different combinations of numbers.

(2) Sufficient, because if there is a value in the set that is equal to the average, then we can say that at the vary least that value will be the median. If one person bought a house for 120k then there only 2 possibilities for the other two values in the set. They either all purchased 120k houses or Sue is in the middle of the other two values, either way 120k would be the median.
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by scoobydooby » Fri May 07, 2010 12:46 pm
would go with B


1) given T=110K, T+J+S=360K=>J+S=250K
if J=120K, S=130K then median=120K
if J=50K, S=200K, then median=110K
not sufficient


2)J=120K
if J=S=T=120K, median=120K
if T=40K, S=200K, median=120K
every other combination would yield median 120K
sufficient
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