Taffy Candy

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mohit11: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 293; Joined: Thu Jan 14, 2010 9:08 am; Location: India; Thanked: 36 times; Followed by:5 members; GMAT Score:730

Taffy Candy

by mohit11 » Sat Jun 26, 2010 9:10 am

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A candy factory manufactures various types of candy: 30% are dark chocolate, 25% are milk chocolate, 20% taffy, 5% caramel, and the rest are cream. Due to a hardware failure, all of the candy are mixed and dispatched into boxes holding 20 individually wrapped pieces of candy each. If 80 boxes are packed before the failure is caught, what is the maximum number of candy pieces a quality control inspector can open before coming across a taffy candy

12
15
25
30
32

[spoiler]OA: D[/spoiler]

Quote

Source: Beat The GMAT — Problem Solving | Sat Jun 26, 2010 9:10 am

albatross86: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 392; Joined: Sun May 16, 2010 2:42 am; Location: Bangalore, India; Thanked: 116 times; Followed by:10 members; GMAT Score:770

by albatross86 » Sat Jun 26, 2010 10:53 am

80 boxes with 20 random pieces of candy each.

Total 1600 pieces of which 320 are taffy.

The question says the candy was mixed, but not how it was mixed. The worst case scenario could be that these 320 taffy pieces were all packed into 16 boxes, and the rest packed into 64 other boxes, and the inspector opened these boxes first. Well imo he could start with those 64 boxes and would have to open all 1280 of them before encountering the first candy in the 65th box which would be taffy. This is the maximum number since this is the worst case.

So my answer is choice F. 1280

I am unclear as to how to determine the distribution of candy in each box, or whether we have to consider that the quality inspector is going to open the candy in some structured optimized way.

Source of question and OE please?