x value

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Source: — Data Sufficiency |

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by scoobydooby » Thu Feb 26, 2009 11:47 am
B

y>0, what is the value of x?

stmnt 1: |x-3|>y
or |x-3|>0 (y>0), also absolute value is always positive or 0.
x can be 3 or any other number. it gives no unique value. not sufficient

stment 2: |x-3|<-y
or |x-3|<0, absolute value can never be negative. the least it can be is 0, or x=3 suffient, hence B

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by hk » Thu Feb 26, 2009 12:00 pm
(i) Insufficient, x and y can take up many different values
(ii) Since the absolute value of a number is 0 or positve, it can never be negative.

So |x-3|> -y and can never be less than y.
So the only possibility is the |x-3|=-y (or 0), which is possible when x=3

Ans = B

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by maihuna » Wed Apr 15, 2009 10:28 am
Hi Ian,
Can you please explain the 2 here?
Regards,
nagendra

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by vittalgmat » Wed Apr 15, 2009 11:09 am
it is obvious stmt 1 is insufficient.
I used Ian's distance method.. it is so cool!!! I seem to have removed an "absolute" mindblock!! ;-)

Stmt 2 is tricky and at the outset looks like a wrong stmt.
but |x - 3| is less than or equal to negative value of a VARIABLE, not a constant. So it is ok.

As ppl have explained above, y can only take 0.
we can as well equation to 0

ie | x -3 | = 0. Ie the distance between x and 3 is 0 on the numberline.
This can happen only if x = 3.
B


Million thanks to Ian for pushing the distance idea for absolutes, in multiple posts.

HT helps