xcusemeplz2009 wrote:IMO c
chic=x;cow=y;sheep=z
eqn 1.... x+y=3z
eqn 2.....2x+4y=100 (feet- for chick 2 and cow 4)
eqn3 y> x,z
from eqn 2 x+2y=50( to solve this we need some hit and tral..we have to keep in mind y> x ; x+2y has to be div by 5 or 10)=> y=20,x=10, from eqn 1 z=10
OA pls
All of your chicken and cows are headless! The horror!
(Although I'm sure some evil genius is working on genetically modified headless chickens as we speak.)
100 is the total of heads and feet for chickens and cows, so there are actually 3/chicken and 5/cow (by the way, on the real GMAT you're not required to know any farm animal anatomy).
So:
co + ch = 3sh
5co + 3ch = 100
co > ch; co > sh
At this point we can do some trial and error, knowing that the number of chickens has to be a multiple of 5 to get that "100" total.
5 chickens (15 chicken head/feet) would mean we need 85/5 = 17 cows. 5+17 isn't a multiple of 3, so bzzt.
10 chickens (30 chicken head/feet) would mean we need 70/5 = 14 cows. 10+14 = 24, which is a multple of 3... yay! 24/3 = 8 sheep, choose (B).
Just to play:
15 chickens (45 chicken head/feet) would mean we need 55/5 = 11 cows. We now have more chickens than cows, which violates our rules (and leads to chaos on the farm), so we don't have to worry about any other possibilities.