DS

This topic has expert replies
Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts
Posts: 144
Joined: Fri Apr 13, 2007 2:25 am

DS

by radhika1306 » Mon Aug 27, 2007 2:39 pm
A jewelry dealer initially offered a bracelet for sale at an asking price that would give a profit to the dealer of 40 percent of the original cost. What was the original cost of the bracelet?
(1) After reducing this asking price by 10 percent, the jewelry dealer sold the bracelet at a profit of $403.
(2) The jewelry dealer sold the bracelet for $1,953.
Source: — Data Sufficiency |

Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts
Posts: 37
Joined: Sun Aug 26, 2007 3:45 pm
Thanked: 1 times

Re: DS

by Jameschan168 » Mon Aug 27, 2007 3:31 pm
Hi Radhika,

Is the answer to this question A?

My reasoning is as follows:

From the question stem you know that the inital price offering is 40% above the original cost, which means that P = 1.4C

From stmt one, you know that the final sale price is 10% below the asking price, which means that P now becomes 1.3C. An additional piece of info you can extract from stmt 1 is that profit = sale price - cost.

So 403 = 1.3C - C and you can solve for C from this equation.

Your first impression from stmt 2 may have been that hey we have enough info to solve the problem, but notice the question stem only refers to the inital offer price, but you don't have any any info regarding the final sale price. The final sale could be the intial asking price, or it could be not. Hence, stmt 2 is insufficient.
radhika1306 wrote:A jewelry dealer initially offered a bracelet for sale at an asking price that would give a profit to the dealer of 40 percent of the original cost. What was the original cost of the bracelet?
(1) After reducing this asking price by 10 percent, the jewelry dealer sold the bracelet at a profit of $403.
(2) The jewelry dealer sold the bracelet for $1,953.

Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts
Posts: 144
Joined: Fri Apr 13, 2007 2:25 am

by radhika1306 » Mon Aug 27, 2007 5:08 pm
you are correct ,
thanks