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what is the answer?

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by sana.noor » Wed Jul 17, 2013 1:30 am
In the xy plane, if line k has negative slope and passes through the point (-5, r), is the x intercept of line k positive?

1) The slope of line k is -5
2) r>0
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Source: — Data Sufficiency |

by GMATGuruNY » Wed Jul 17, 2013 3:24 am
In the xy-plane, if line k has negative slope and passes through the point (-5, r), is the x-intercept of line k positive?

1) slope of line k is -5
2) r > 0


oa-E
Many slope problems are best solved by DRAWING.

Statement 1: Slope = -5
Statement 2: When x = -5, r > 0


Both statements are satisfied by the following cases:

Case 1:
Image

Here, the x-intercept is negative.

Case 2:
Image

Here, the x-intercept is positive.

Thus, the two statements combined are INSUFFICIENT.

The correct answer is E.
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by swathi8388 » Wed Jul 17, 2013 3:34 am
My guess is that the answer is E.

We know that slope is negetive and passes through (-5,r) the question is to find the x intercept.

let k's equation be y=mx+c , x intercept is the value when y=0 , so plugging in y=0 in the equation we get 0=mx+c or x=-c/m , and the quesiton is wheter -c/m is positive or not.

1. says that m is -5 so we kno that x= -c/-5 = c/5 , but since we do not know whether c is -ve or +ve this option doesnt help us.

2. r>0 which means the line passes throuh (-5,r) where r is a positive number

hence plugging in the values in k's equation x=-5 and y=r we get r = -5m+c

since we dont know the numerical value of r we dont know whether the value of c is +ve or -ve which means we cant predict the value of -c/m
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