Q34) Manhattan 5lbs : Fractions & Decimals

[xerocoool]

Q) 4/5 of the women and 3/4 of the men speak Spanish. If there are 40% as many men as women, what fraction of the group speaks Spanish ?

Need to plug in answer into the fraction box.

My doubt is if we consider,

M = 40% Women
Say W = 100
M = 40

Solving this we get "11/14 or equivalent form" (which is the answer given behind)

But if we consider,
W = 200
M = 80
(4/5) of 200 = 160
(3/5) of 80 = 48

Fraction of group speaking Spanish = 208/280 = 26/25

Why this ambiguity ?

Thanks
x

[tommywallach]

Hey Xero,

Something that's true for one set of numbers will of course be true for all numbers. If this ever happens to you, you must have screwed up the arithmetic somewhere. Just keep checking your work. It's better practice to find the error yourself than to have it pointed out. In this case:

But if we consider,
W = 200
M = 80
(4/5) of 200 = 160
(3/5) of 80 = 48

See the problem? The question said 3/4, not 3/5.

-t

[xerocoool]

Ah ! I've been interpreting a lot of questions wrong lately. Apologize for the mistake.

Will double check before posting hence forth :)

Thanks for pointing out.

-xero

[tommywallach]

No worries! Please don't take that as a criticism; just a recommendation. "Silly" errors are super deadly on the GRE, so it's always important to have a method in place for learning to make fewer of them. One way is to recognize that a given answer could ONLY be wrong because of a silly mistake (i.e. if it's just an arithmetic or algebra question yet you end up with an answer not in the choices).

Good luck with it!

[xerocoool]

roger ! :)

[tommywallach]

: )