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Minimum possible range

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by rohan.tarun » Tue Apr 25, 2017 7:56 am
Three people each took 5 tests. If the ranges of their scores in the 5 practice tests were 17, 28 and 35, what is the minimum possible range in scores of the three test-takers?

A. 17
B. 28
C. 35
D. 45
E. 80

Min possible range. That means the lowest possible difference in total 15 values.

0 0 0 0 17
0 0 0 0 28
0 0 0 0 35

Hey guys, here range means the difference between highest and lowest value. So why is the minimum range not 17-0=17 and 35? Isn't 35 the maximum possible range here?

Thank you.
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by GMATGuruNY » Tue Apr 25, 2017 8:05 am
rohan.tarun wrote:Three people each took 5 tests. If the ranges of their scores in the 5 practice tests were 17, 28 and 35, what is the minimum possible range in scores of the three test-takers?

A. 17
B. 28
C. 35
D. 45
E. 80

Min possible range. That means the lowest possible difference in total 15 values.

0 0 0 0 17
0 0 0 0 28
0 0 0 0 35

Hey guys, here range means the difference between highest and lowest value. So why is the minimum range not 17-0=17 and 35? Isn't 35 the maximum possible range here?

Thank you.
The question stem is asking for the range of ALL 15 SCORES.
In your list, the lowest score is 0, while the highest score is 35.
Thus, the range of the 15 scores = highest - lowest = 35-0 = 35.
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by rohan.tarun » Tue Apr 25, 2017 8:10 am
I realized the silly mistake after seeing the reply. Is this a 700+ range question? Thank you so much Brent.
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by [email protected] » Tue Apr 25, 2017 9:26 am
Hi rohan.tarun,

The prompt doesn't tell us how these three groups of 5 scores 'relate' to one another - maybe the groups cover three completely different ranges (with no 'overlap' or maybe the groups completely overlap with one another. As such, the minimum possible range MUST be the largest of the three ranges (as that range exists whether the other two ranges are considered or not).

Final Answer: C

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by Matt@VeritasPrep » Fri Apr 28, 2017 12:10 am
rohan.tarun wrote:I realized the silly mistake after seeing the reply. Is this a 700+ range question? Thank you so much Brent.
It actually might be! I've found that many of the questions that have the lowest % correct are the ones in which there's an easy mistake that *everyone* makes. Obviously hard questions often have a correct rate of around 20% (since people just guess), but these "gotcha!" type questions can be as low as 5-10% correct.
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