How is Bill related to Betty?

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How is Bill related to Betty?

by sanju09 » Wed Feb 25, 2009 3:34 am
How is Bill related to Betty?

(1) Cindy, the wife of Bill's only brother Chris does not have any siblings.

(2) Betty is Cindy's brother in law's wife.
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by bluementor » Wed Feb 25, 2009 5:14 am
This is a weird question... here's my take

Statement 1: No info on Betty. Insufficient.
Statement 2: No info on Cindy's relationship to Bill? Insufficient.

Both statements together: We know Bill's relation to Cindy (from Stmt 1) and we know Cindy's relationship to Betty(statement 2). Hence the question stem can be answered. Sufficient.

Choose C.

This is a weird question, really.. :D

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by gabriel » Thu Feb 26, 2009 9:59 am
bluementor wrote:This is a weird question... here's my take

Statement 1: No info on Betty. Insufficient.
Statement 2: No info on Cindy's relationship to Bill? Insufficient.

Both statements together: We know Bill's relation to Cindy (from Stmt 1) and we know Cindy's relationship to Betty(statement 2). Hence the question stem can be answered. Sufficient.

Choose C.

This is a weird question, really.. :D

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For me the answer is E. Betty could also be Cindys sister in which case there is no relation between Bill and Betty. :D

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by schumi_gmat » Thu Feb 26, 2009 12:27 pm
Cindy does not have any siblings and hence betty cannot be her sister

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by x2suresh » Thu Feb 26, 2009 12:42 pm
Agree with C..

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by Uri » Thu Feb 26, 2009 1:48 pm
Easy one, if a diagram is drawn.

Obviously, neither of (1) and (2) alone can help solve this problem.

Let, a dash (-----) indicate the relationship between siblings and a "=" denote the relation between a husband and a wife.

So, combining (1) and (2), we get,

Bill--------------Chris=Cindy

Betty is the wife of Cindy's brother-in-law. If Cindy had any sister, then she could have a brother-in-law. But that is ruled out, as per (1).

The only other possibility is having a brother-in-law from her husband's side. And we already know that Bill is the one. Therefore, this information combined with (2) establishes the exact relationship between Betty and Bill.

Hope this helps.

But, is it really a data sufficiency problem? I have never seen anything like this while preparing for the GMAT. It's weird that this one is not a quantitative problem.

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by gabriel » Fri Feb 27, 2009 10:44 am
schumi_gmat wrote:Cindy does not have any siblings and hence betty cannot be her sister

:P

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by welcome » Fri Feb 27, 2009 5:34 pm
I'll with C.

Have not seen any such question, what is the source? I think this question need you to know the definition of relations :).
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by cramya » Fri Feb 27, 2009 6:25 pm
Feels like a Jerry Springer show question :-)

I love this forum...

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by sanju09 » Sat Feb 28, 2009 4:30 am
From statement 1, we know that Cindy has no siblings and she is the wife of Bill’s only brother Chris. However, this statement does not provide any information about Betty and is hence not sufficient to answer the question.

So, choice A and D are eliminated.

From statement 2, we know that Betty is Cindy’s brother in law’s wife. This statement establishes a relation between Cindy and Betty. This does not answer the question of how Bill is related to either Cindy or Betty. Hence, statement 2 alone is not sufficient to answer the question. Hence, we can eliminate choice (B).

Now, if we combine the two statements, we know that Bill and Cindy are related to each other through Chris, who is the only brother of Bill and that Cindy is Betty’s brother in law’s wife.

Cindy does not have any siblings and hence her brother in law has to necessarily be her husband’s sibling. As Chris is the only brother of Bill, Cindy’s brother in law has to be Bill and Betty is his wife.

As we could answer the question by combining the information in the two statements, choice (C) is the correct answer.
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