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Please help me with this problem

by commdiver » Wed Oct 03, 2012 11:35 am
Bradley own b video game cartridges. If Bradley's total is one-third the total owned by Andrew and four times the total owned by Charlie, how many video game cartridges do the three of them own altogether, in terms of b?

A. (16/3)b
B. (17/4)b
C. (13/4)b
D. (19/12)b
E. (7/12)b

[spoiler]I keep getting B, but the answer is C. I assumed Bradley owns 100, which would mean Andrew owns 300 and Charlie owns 25. That gives you a total of 425, which is equal to (17/4)b or (17/4)(100). What am I doing incorrectly?[/spoiler]
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by das.ashmita » Wed Oct 03, 2012 11:42 am
Hi commdiver

b = (1/3)a => a = 3b
b = 4c => c = (1/4)b

b+3b+(1/4)b
=(17/4)b

Hence ans should be B

Whats the source??
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by commdiver » Thu Oct 04, 2012 4:58 pm
The problem is from Fractions, Decimals, and Percents (5th edition) by Manhattan GMAT. It is on page 99, as a problem after the fractions, decimals, and percents strategies chapter. Their solution even shows (17/4)b, but they said "C". I am guessing it is just a typo, but I wanted to double check to make sure I also did it correctly.
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by Anurag@Gurome » Thu Oct 04, 2012 9:32 pm
commdiver wrote:Bradley own b video game cartridges. If Bradley's total is one-third the total owned by Andrew and four times the total owned by Charlie, how many video game cartridges do the three of them own altogether, in terms of b?

A. (16/3)b
B. (17/4)b
C. (13/4)b
D. (19/12)b
E. (7/12)b

[spoiler]I keep getting B, but the answer is C. I assumed Bradley owns 100, which would mean Andrew owns 300 and Charlie owns 25. That gives you a total of 425, which is equal to (17/4)b or (17/4)(100). What am I doing incorrectly?[/spoiler]
Number of video game cartridges owned by Bradley = b
Number of video game cartridges owned by Andrew = 3b
Number of video game cartridges owned by Charlie = b/4

Hence, total = (b + 3b + b/4) = [spoiler]17b/4 [/spoiler]

The correct answer is B.
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by Valentin » Sun May 26, 2013 10:41 pm
I had the same problem and I kept getting B as my final answer. So I checked online and I found this:

https://www.manhattangmat.com/errata-fdp-5ed.cfm

As it turns out, the answer is B, it's just that they made a typo.



Hope this helps.

PS: To see other typos in the Manhattan series of books, see the following link:

https://www.manhattangmat.com/errata.cfm

[/b]
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by deepsea13 » Mon May 27, 2013 10:25 pm
I remember doing this problem only a couple of days back.

Here's my explanation:

Bradley Owns 'b' video games.

Andrew owns 3 times as many, so Andrew has '3b' video games.

Bradley owns 4 times as many video games as Charlie. Therefore, Charlie owns 'b/4' video games.

Now the total will be the sum of the number of video games the three own. This works out to an equation which looks like this:

b + 3b + (b/4)

Take 4 as your common denominator, which means mutliplying b x 4 = 4b and 3bx4 = 12b

So now,
(4b + 12b + b)/4 = (17/4)b
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