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IR question - School expenditure

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IR question - School expenditure

by gmattesttaker2 » Sat Feb 01, 2014 12:54 pm
Hello,

Can you please assist with this IR question:

If, theoretically in 2007, the population of Missouri (MO) was 5.9 million and the total Public Elementary and Secondary School expenditures for Missouri (MO) and Kansas (KS) were equal, then the population of Kansas (KS) could have been:

3.0 million
3.8 million
5.2 million
5.9 million

OA: 3.8 million

I tried to solve this as follows:

5.9 Million x 1161 = Population of Kansas x 1843

=> 6 Million (approx.) x 1200 = Pop. of Kansas x 1800
=> Pop. of Kansas = 4 million


I was wondering if this is the correct approach since the OA has solved it a bit differntly? Thanks a lot.


Best Regards,
Sri
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by [email protected] » Sat Feb 01, 2014 2:50 pm
Hi Sri,

This should probably have been posted in the IR Forum, but I'll still answer it. Your approach is fine. When I went about answering this question, I opted to choose the approximate "midpoint" of the dollar range for the two states ($1300 and $1900 respectively) and ended up with the same approximate answer that you got. Be careful about using the "lower end" of a range when approximating for 2 values. The answers to this question were sufficiently "spread out", but if they were closer together, you could have ended up having to choose between 2 answers.

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