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DS Question on Absolute Value

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by mawaru » Sat May 04, 2013 3:27 pm
I ran into this question on MG and I disagree with the answer...

The question is:

|a| - |b| = 6

The answer is saying that:
if a = 7 and b = -1
|7| - |-1| = 8


I think 8 is incorrect. The answer should be 6 since the absolute value of -1 (|-1|) is 1.

Am I reading this wrong? Thanks!
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by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Sat May 04, 2013 3:51 pm
You're absolutely right.
|7| - |-1| = 7 - 1
= 6

However, the equation is |a| - |b| = 6
So, it seems that a = 7 and b = -1 is a solution to the equation.
The incorrect part is stating that |7| - |-1| = 8

Cheers,
Brent
Brent Hanneson - Creator of GMATPrepNow.com
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by mawaru » Sat May 04, 2013 4:01 pm
Brent@GMATPrepNow wrote:You're absolutely right.
|7| - |-1| = 7 - 1
= 6

However, the equation is |a| - |b| = 6
So, it seems that a = 7 and b = -1 is a solution to the equation.
The incorrect part is stating that |7| - |-1| = 8

Cheers,
Brent
Thanks Brent! I thought I was crazy there. So what that means is that the MG might have an incorrect answer in their CATs.
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by iamniladri » Sun May 05, 2013 7:23 am
Hello
Could you please submit the entire question? Would be helpful for us to understand.

Thanks.
mawaru wrote:
Brent@GMATPrepNow wrote:You're absolutely right.
|7| - |-1| = 7 - 1
= 6

However, the equation is |a| - |b| = 6
So, it seems that a = 7 and b = -1 is a solution to the equation.
The incorrect part is stating that |7| - |-1| = 8

Cheers,
Brent
Thanks Brent! I thought I was crazy there. So what that means is that the MG might have an incorrect answer in their CATs.
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