Tuesday, December 20, 2011

this week's MGRE Math Beast Challenge problem

Here it is:



Give it a go! My own attempted answer will appear in the comments; MGRE's official answer will appear next week.


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2 comments:

Kevin Kim said...

We're given that Pharma spends $720,000 on legal expenses. Chem spends between 1/3 and 1/2 of this amount:

1/3 of $720,000 = $240,000

1/2 of $720,000 = $360,000

So to answer this question, and given that Chem's legal expenses are 15% of its total budget, we need to ask ourselves:

(a) $240K is 15% of what?

(b) $360K is 15% of what?

The answers:

(a) $240K/.15 = $1.6M

(b) $360K/.15 = $2.4M

So now it's just a matter of finding an answer that falls inside our established range.

Et voilà: only (D) satisfies the condition! $1.8551M is between $1.6M and $2.4M.

Kevin Kim said...

I seem to have left off choice (E):

$2,451,900

This doesn't matter, though; (E) is outside our range, which goes only as high as $2.4 million dollars.