Data Sufficiency

Data Sufficiency Basketball Joke and a Serious Question

If you follow basketball you will think this is funny - unless you are a fan of the Miami Heat.

Yes or No Data Sufficiency:



Are the following sufficient for the 2011 NBA title?

1) LeBron "King" James

2) Dwayne Wade


Answer: E. Not Sufficient.


So here is the serious question: The way that I answered the question above shows a common misunderstanding of data sufficiency. What is that misunderstanding?

hi David, i think the issue with your answer E is miscomprehension of the basic principle of the question: "Are the following sufficient for the 2011 NBA title?"

i would ask what title(s) are we exactly looking for? Season player, play-off participant, semi-finalist, finalist or winner?

so my answer would be D instead, as for title in general either player is sufficient

Wow! That is a great answer -- clearly I have built in more than one problem and this can be a lesson as to Data Sufficiency theory in general!

You are absolutely right I was not specific enough in saying "NBA title" the way I wrote it D would be a great answer.

What if I had been more specific and said "Are the following sufficient to win the 2011 NBA championship?

What is the major flaw now? There is still a big misunderstanding of data sufficiency in saying that E is the answer.

again my answer is D. Mistake is caused due to the fact that we begin our solution by using the given data and forget the main target of the question. To answer the revised question: "Are the following sufficient to win the 2011 NBA championship?" we need to understand that championship is a competition of basketball teams in their entirety and not the contest among single players. So we may answer No and select both statements here, as each one includes a single player only (not a team).

I was thinking exactly that as I was writing this. Obviously I meant it as a joke. One use of the words "not sufficient" applies very well. Since Miami lost even with James and Wade on the team the two of them, even together are NOT SUFFICIENT to win the title.

But of course as you point out this is not what this means on Data Sufficiency. Many people originally think that Data Sufficiency requires you to get the answer of YES in order to say that something is sufficient.

Certainly if Miami had won the 2011 NBA title people would say that the answer is not "E" because they won and so that is sufficient. But remember, the answer of "NO" is sufficient as well.

So actually, while it is true that James and Wade and Bosh and the other Miami Heat players were themselves not sufficient to win a title, the information that we are given IS SUFFICIENT for us to say that they are not sufficient.

So the answer is either D as pemdas tells us because no player can win alone or the answer could be "C" because even with these players together we get a firm "NO" they did not win this year.

So "E" would never be the answer to a question that we can answer. Even if our answer is "NO."

Thanks IAN, that is very true!!

I merely came up with this as a joke when the NBA Finals began. As background everyone thought that these two players James and Wade were pretty much invincible - especially two players themselves. So it was great to see them lose.

I did not really think this through as I would a question for a practice test or something and I just found lots of humor in saying that they "were not sufficient." LeBron James is quite arrogant as a person who has never tried anything he was not good at. I would love to see him try the GMAT or musical theater or "Dancing With The Stars" anything else where height is not the number one ingredient of success.

Anyway, This is more like a Roman Numeral Problem Solving and your correction is a better question. But I have aired my feelings on the subject in quasi-mathematical form and I feel better now.