Gmatprep Data Sufficiency question

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Gmatprep Data Sufficiency question

by gmattester » Wed Jul 30, 2008 12:21 pm
Of the 60 animals on a certain farm, 2/3 are either pigs or cows. how many of the animals are cows?
a) The farm has more than twice as many cows as it has pigs.
b) The farm has more than 12 pigs

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by akg_gmat » Wed Jul 30, 2008 1:57 pm
is the Ans = A

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by gmattester » Wed Jul 30, 2008 4:06 pm
Even I calculated answer 'A' but OA is 'C'.
Can someone plz. explain this question.

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by parallel_chase » Wed Jul 30, 2008 4:21 pm
Well the answer is C. This is very tricky question.

If you look at the Statement I it says:

The cows are more than twice the number of pigs. But we dont know the value of more.
Pigs could be 10 then cows would be 10 more than twice the number of pigs.
Similarly pigs could be any value between 1-13. I say 13 because if there are more than 13 pigs then this statement will have no meaning.Therefore insufficient.

Statement II pigs are more than 12. It does not tell us anything about the cows. Therefore Insufficient.

If you combine both the statements, first statement says pigs 1-13, seond statement says more than 12. Hence C is the answer.

Let me know if you still have any doubts.

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by gmattester » Wed Jul 30, 2008 9:08 pm
Thanks parallel_chase....

The way you approach a problem is best........

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by lunarpower » Wed Jul 30, 2008 11:43 pm
if you picked (a), unfortunately, you're misinterpreting the problem statement.

the statement "2/3 are either cows or pigs" doesn't mean that there are either 40 cows or 40 pigs. it means that, if you take the cows and the pigs together, they constitute 2/3 of the animals on the farm.
in other words, cows + pigs = 40.
(i can understand your alternate reading of the problem statement; it's reasonable enough. just remember that the gmat is their playground, not yours, and so you have to play by their rules - so remember the way certain statements are written. as a postscript, i hope that future problems like this one will be purged and/or rewritten for clarity before they make it into the official question pool; it would be a shame if students miss the problem just because of its ambiguity.)

thus:

(1)
this means that there are at least 27 cows (because 27 cows, 13 pigs is the least # of cows satisfying this criterion).
that's all we know, though; there could be anywhere between 27 cows (and therefore 13 pigs) and 40 cows (and therefore 0 pigs).
insufficient

(2)
this means that there are at least 13 pigs, which means that there are at most 27 cows.
that's all we know.
insufficient

(together)
(1) says there are at least 27 cows; (2) says there are at most 27 cows.
so, there are 27 cows and 13 pigs.
sufficient

answer = c
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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