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by Whitney Garner » Tue Jul 19, 2011 10:25 pm
ruplun wrote:Image[/img]
From the question stem, all we know is that there are 2 types of pencils, and we want to know how many of the expensive ones Marta bought. Let's call L the "# of low cost 21-cent pencils she buys" and H the "# of high cost 23-cent pencils she buys". Therefore, the question becomes, what is H?

Statement (1)
H + L = 6.
- we could have {H=2,L=4} or {H=5,L=1} and so on - Insufficient

Statement (2)
21*L + 23*H = 130
- This is harder to list the possible combinations BUT we should actually assume that with a fixed set of prices, there might only be 1 combination of integer L and H that make this equation work. So we start with the higher value (the more strict constraint) and see the possibilities:

1 H = 23, so 107 left to spend on L...this is not divisible by 21 so NOT POSSIBLE
2 H = 46, so 84 left to spend on L...this IS DIVISIBLE by 21
3 H = 69, so 61 left to spend on L...this is not divisible by 21 so NOT POSSIBLE
4 H = 92, so 38 left to spend on L...this is not divisible by 21 so NOT POSSIBLE
5 H = 115, so 15 left to spend on L...this is not divisible by 21 so NOT POSSIBLE
6 H = 138, overspent so NOT POSSIBLE

The only combination of integer H and L that makes the equation true is {H=2, and L=4}. SUFFICIENT

The correct answer is B (statement 2 alone).

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by amit2k9 » Wed Jul 20, 2011 3:03 am
a m - 23 c and n - 21 c

m+n = 6 gives no clue for m and n individually. not sufficient.

b 23m + 21n = 130

max value for m = 5 and for n = 6

for m= 2 and n=4 we have 46+84 = 130.

thus B is sufficient.
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