I also arrived at C but followed a different approach.

Let us start with the assumption that there is only 1 tree and it has 1 leaf.

The question says "There are more oak trees in Oregon than there are leaves on any one Oregon oak tree", which invalidates our first assumption and implies there are atleast two trees.

The question allows trees to have equal number of leaves. If these were the only two trees, with one leaf each, it would still satisfy the condition.

Option C says just that.

Your approach happens to work in this case, but it only shows what COULD be true; it hasn't proven that it MUST be true.

This should be a PS-word question in QUANT....

Simply Brutal -- took me 2 mins to understand this. Finally got it correct though

IMO -C
Reason -- suppose there are 3 trees. As per the stem, & number of leaves cannot be greater than the number of trees and every tree has atleast 1 leaf. let denote leaf/tree by X.
This gives us condition that X<3
So, lets say - 1st tree has 1 leaf
2nd tree has 2 leaf
3rd tree can only have 1 or 2.

This condition is fulfilled in C.

Nightmare!

@ Dana: Thanks for the much simplified explanation

A. the average number of oak leaves per Oregon oak tree must be less than half the number of Oregon oak trees
B. there are fewer leaves on at least one Oregon oak tree than half the number of those trees
C. there must be at least two oak trees in Oregon with the same number of leaves
D. there must be at least as many Oregon oak trees with half as many leaves as the Oregon tree with the most leaves, as there are Oregon oak trees with twice as many leaves as the Oregon oak tree with the fewest leaves
E. there must be more oak trees than any other type of tree in Oregon



C for sure.
Lets assume there is a tree with 5 leaves. then minimum number of trees should be 6.
And any tree should have atleast 1 leaf.
Now you have 6 trees and each of those cah have 1 - 5 number of leaves.
it could be 1 1 1 1 1 5
or 1 2 3 4 5 5
or .......
in any way the option C is valid

My take C,easy one.
take 5 trees with 4,4,4,4,4 leaves ..
problem is finished!

ANSWER: E

Please correct if my answer's incorrect

E is incorrect. WE know nothing about any other type of tree. Review the answers above. There are several clear explanations for why the answer is C.

really challenging!!!

Wow nice question.. i really wonder how I would respond to such a question in timed gmat conditions... I first marked D. But understand why C is the answer. Great explanation by Dana.

The bet strategy to solve a question like this on D-Day

GUESS AND MOVE ON

studying for the LSAT made this question very identifiable and thankfully i was able to come away with C quite quickly. i could eliminate A and E easily because they have nothing to do with the logic being discussed, and the fact that D was worded the way it was made it an easy elimination as well. substituting numbers made the answer plain as day once you realize the finite amount of leaves.

i enjoyed it

...new to the forum. looking into taking the GMAT early next year. i am happy to be on the site and look forward to discussing problems as time goes on!

NICE TO MEET EVERYONE!

You've discovered the secret of the GMAT. Once you begin to "enjoy" the puzzles the test gives you, you are well on your way to conquering it.

I am going with C because I used numbers to test. Number of trees 10, number of leaves per tree 9. If each tree had different number of leaves, 9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 you'll have one left over that needs to have same number of leaves as the other 9 in order for leaves per tree to be less than trees.