Benchprep Data Sufficiency

[tenfold]

I'm a first time poster here, but long time visitor to the forums.

So, I'm looking at a GMAT Math course from Benchprep.com and the following question came up.



In my opinion, this seems to be a poorly formed question, since the statements seem to conflict with one another. Am I correct here? (Additionally, there's the apparent typo where n in the question stem is replaced with m in statement one.)

Thanks.

[misterholmes]

There is no typo, since the n'th term is reserved for the last one in the sequence, while the m'th term stands for any term at all, from m=1 to m=n.
But I agree there is a contradiction. Though strictly speaking the items are to be considered separately, it may happen that you need to consider both together, and that is why you are unlikely to ever see question stems which contradict each other. Unless its a case of pilot error
misterholmes
www.gmatdojo.com

[kevincanspain]

I hope for your sake that this is a question that happens to have slipped by the editor(s) at Benchprep. It does not rise to the GMAT's standards of clarity and rigor. The two statements are both supposed to be true, and thus must never contradict each other. What's more, (2) is written in an off-handed manner.