ildude02 wrote:Great explanation, tzink.
In the same context, I have one doubt with regards to these kind of problems. If a question says, a group consists of A or B and a total number of the group is given. Should we ever still consider there can be "neither of them" or we can assume there can only be A, B and may be an intersection of B that will add up to the total ?
Eg : A study group consists of Business or Spanish class students. If the total of them is 200, how many are spanish speaking.
a. Business people are 100;
b. 1/4 of businees people also go to spanish class.
If we don't need to conider neither, then I assume C would be SUFF, but I'm not sure? Also, if the question instead said, "A study group consists of Business AND Spanish class students", does AND vs OR make a difference? Appreciate your response.
Is this an actual problem or did you just come up with it for an example? Because in my understanding, the way your problem is set up it is contradictory.
Specifically, because you use "or," that means that any one student cannot both be a spanish student and a business student. Statement (2), however, says the opposite..
I think I see what you're asking though, and if we change the stem to "and," then we can explore it..
A study group consists of Business and Spanish class students. If the total of them is 200, how many are spanish speaking.
1. Business people are 100;
2. 1/4 of businees people also go to spanish class.
from (1), we only have half the data. NOT SUFFICIENT
from (2), that tells us that there is some overlap, but again, NOT SUFFICIENT
(1) and (2) together: 75 are business-only, and 25 are business/spanish. That means 100 are spanish-only. 125 total spanish speakers. SUFFICIENT
To answer your question (I think), we needn't consider the possibility that there is a student who is neither a businessperson nor a spanish speaker because of the way the stem is phrased.
If the stem was phrased differently, then it might be possible... That would be pretty dastardly of the test writers though..
Anyone with more experience know if this is done?