swerve wrote:Last year, a certain public transportation system sold an average (arithmetic mean) of 41,000 tickets per day on weekdays (Monday through Friday) and an average of 18,000 tickets per day on Saturday and Sunday. Which of the following is closest to the total number of tickets sold last year?
A. 1 million
B. 1.25 million
C. 10 million
D. 12.5 million
E. 125 million
The OA is D
Source: Official Guide
The word "
closest" suggests that we can use some
estimation here.
Let's first estimate the number of tickets sold
PER WEEK
41,000 tickets per day on weekdays
(5)(41,000) = 205,000
18,000 tickets per day on weekends
(2)(18,000) = 36,000
So, total tickets sold
PER WEEK = 205,000 + 36,000 = 241,000
To make our calculations easier, let's round it off to
240,000 tickets
per week
There are 52 weeks in the years, so the TOTAL (annual) ticket sales is (52)(
240,000)
HOWEVER, since the GMAT is not testing whether or not you are a human calculator, we can probably just say there are
50 weeks in a year.
(
50)(
240,000) = 12,000,000
Of course, there are actually 52 weeks in the year, so the correct answer is a BIT MORE than 12,000,000
Choose D
Cheers,
Brent
Brent Hanneson - Creator of GMATPrepNow.com
