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Ratios

by tanyasethi » Wed Jul 27, 2011 1:08 pm
The table above shows the amount of waste material, in tons, recycled by each of five counties in a single year and the amount of waste material, also in tons, that was disposed of in landfills by the five counties in that year. Which county had the lowest ratio of waste material disposed of to waste material recycled in the year reported in the table?

a) A
b) B
c) C
d) D
e) E

I want to know if there is a faster and more efficient way of doing this problem. I tried to manually reduce the ratios - this took too much time and I got the answer also wrong.

The OA is C
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by GMATGuruNY » Wed Jul 27, 2011 1:35 pm
tanyasethi wrote:
The table above shows the amount of waste material, in tons, recycled by each of five counties in a single year and the amount of waste material, also in tons, that was disposed of in landfills by the five counties in that year. Which county had the lowest ratio of waste material disposed of to waste material recycled in the year reported in the table?

a) A
b) B
c) C
d) D
e) E

I want to know if there is a faster and more efficient way of doing this problem. I tried to manually reduce the ratios - this took too much time and I got the answer also wrong.

The OA is C
Don't calculate. Estimate:

A: 142/16 ≈ 144/16 ≈ 9.
B: 480/88 ≈ 480/90 ≈ more than 5.
C: 514/130 ≈ 52/13 ≈ 4.
D: 203/39 ≈ 200/40 ≈ 5.
E: 162/33 ≈ 160/30 ≈ more than 5.

The correct answer is C.
Last edited by GMATGuruNY on Thu Jul 28, 2011 3:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
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by sumasajja » Thu Jul 28, 2011 1:13 am
the trick here is : since they have asked to find out the county that had the lowest ratio of waste material disposed of to waste material recycled in the year reported in the table
see to that the numerator is a bigger no than the denominator- as such u can strike off a, b and d choices .Now u r left with choices c and e . U can see that c is the bigger fraction of the both.thus the answer.
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