Princeton Review Test question

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Princeton Review Test question

by gmatblrind » Mon Dec 07, 2009 4:50 am
Company Y employs c women and d men. Do the women at Company Y earn an average (arithmetic mean) annual salary greater than $25,000?

(1) Company Y pays its employees a total of $30,000(c + d) in salaries annually.
(2) The men at Company Y earn an average (arithmetic mean) annual salary of $34,000.



Explanation:

Stmt 1: Since the annual salary is 30,000(c+d); the avg sal. per employee would be 30,000(c+d)/(c+d) = 30,000
Therefore avg. sal of women is greater than 25000; Sufficient

Stmt 2: Avg. salary of men is 34,000; since nuthng is given about total salaries of all the employess and no.of women & men employees cannot deduce avg sal of women. InSufficient

Therefore IMO ABut official answer is given as E.

Is something wron with the way I have interpreted the problem

[spoiler][/spoiler]
Source: — Data Sufficiency |

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by Giorgio » Mon Dec 07, 2009 7:40 am
1. Well you know that average salary is 30,000 per employee, but since you don't know what percentage is distributed to to males or females you can not conclude anything about an average salary of women.


2. Here we have additional information , that may help to solve , but , again we know nothing about the % of women in the company.

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by papgust » Mon Dec 07, 2009 7:54 am
gmatblrind wrote: Stmt 1: Since the annual salary is 30,000(c+d); the avg sal. per employee would be 30,000(c+d)/(c+d) = 30,000
Therefore avg. sal of women is greater than 25000; Sufficient

Stmt 2: Avg. salary of men is 34,000; since nuthng is given about total salaries of all the employess and no.of women & men employees cannot deduce avg sal of women. InSufficient

Therefore IMO ABut official answer is given as E.

Is something wron with the way I have interpreted the problem

[spoiler][/spoiler]
Your reasoning for 1st stmt is wrong because the 30,000 that you derived is the avg salary for an employee in general. It is not specific to women/men.

So, this statement simply states the avg salary of an employee but you can derive how much women would have an average salary.

For stmt 2, You only know the average salary of men. You don't know the value of "d". Even if d is provided, it is still not sufficient since there is no info about the women.

Combined together, still insufficient because neither "c" nor "d" is given. Further, we only have average salaries of women and all in general. From this info, women's average salary cannot be deduced.

Hence it is E.