ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS: PROBLEM SET 7

Easy
1. B

The question asks for the smallest of three integers. If the three integers add up to 258,
then their average is 258 ÷ 3, or 86. Since the integers are consecutive, they must be 85,
86, and 87. Check it on your calculator. If you picked (C), what did you do wrong? Forget
what the question asked for? Divide 258 by 3 and then quit? Even easy problems may
have more than one step. This would also be a good question in which to use PITA. The
correct answer is (B).

2. B

The question asks for the number of unbroken plates a factory produces each day. First,
estimate. You’re looking for the number of unbroken plates—if only one broke out of 15,
there should be a lot of unbroken plates, right? Cross out (C) and (D). Now set up a
proportion:

Now cross-multiply. You get 6,000 = 15x, so using your calculator, x = 400. That’s the
number of broken plates, so subtract 400 from 6,000 and you’ve got the answer. If you
picked (D), you could have gotten the problem right if you had either estimated first or
reread the question right before you answered it. The correct answer is (B).

3. C

The question asks for the time it would take for 8 friends to wash the windows in Maria’s
house. There are twice as many people, so the work will go twice as fast. You can’t set up a
normal proportion because it’s an inverse proportion—the more people you have, the less
time the work takes. So if you multiply the number of people by 2, you divide the work
time by 2. The correct answer is (C).

Medium
4. D

The question asks about the effect on variable t that results from making a change to

variable w. Since no values were given, try plugging in values of your own to test what

happens. If t starts out as 10 and w starts out as 5, you can set up the formula for inverse

variation as follows: t1w1 = t2w2. In this case, the t1 is 10, w1 is 5, and w2 is 25 (since you

multiply it by 5). Set up the equation as: 10 × 5 = t2 × 25. Next, = t2 = 2. So what

happened to the value of t? It decreased by a factor of 5. The correct answer is (D).

5. B
 The question asks for a possible number of socks in a drawer. The total must be the sum
of the numbers in a ratio, or a multiple of that sum. In this case, 4 + 3 = 7, so the number
of socks could be 7 or any multiple of 7. (You can have fractions in a ratio, it’s true, but
not when you’re dealing with socks or people or anything that you can’t chop into pieces.)
The correct answer is (B).

6. B

The question asks for the number of pieces of fudge in the bag. Here’s what to do: take

of 40, which is 8 caramels. Take of 40, which is 25 butterscotches. The caramels and

the butterscotches are 8 + 25 = 33. Subtract that from 40 and you’ve got the fudge. The

correct answer is (B).

7. A

The question asks for the amount of money Dixie spent on shirts and hats. There are
variables in the answer choices, so plug in. Let x = 2. If Dixie spent an average of $2 a
shirt, then she spent a total of $10 on shirts. Let y = 4, and she spent an average of $4 a
hat, for a total of $12. Your total is 10 + 12 = $22. Circle that. Now on to the answer
choices, plugging in x = 2 and y = 4. Choice (A) is 5(2) + 3(4) = 22. The correct answer is
(A).

8. A

The question asks for the value of y, which is the amount that Kiana made on one of the

days she worked. The question says the mean of the amounts Kiana made was $0.20 less

than the mean of the amounts that Sydney made, so figure out the mean for Sydney.

Since there are five days total, take the sum of Sydney’s earnings and divide by 5 to get

= 12.40. Since the mean for the days Sydney worked

was $12.40, the mean for the days Kiana worked was $12.40 – $0.20 = $12.20. Set up the

Average Pie. Put $12.20 as the average and 5 as the number of things. Multiply to get a

total of 5 × $12.20 = $61.00. Therefore, the sum of Kiana’s earnings is $61.00, so set up

the equation 13.70 + 10.20 + 14.80 + 12.10 + y = 61.00. Simplify to get 50.80 + y = 61.00.

Subtract 50.80 from both sides to get y = 10.20. The correct answer is (A).

Hard
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D
 The question asks for the value of x. First, multiply the ratio by something big to get rid of

the fraction. Any multiple of 6 and 5 will do. So 30 . Now you’ve got 5:6 =

35:x. Since 35 is 5 × 7, x is 6 × 7, or 42. The new ratio is 35:42, which is the same as 5:6.

The correct answer is (D).

10. B

The question asks for the fractional part of the paint used by an artist that was yellow.
Write down your ratios and label them neatly. You have

If the artist uses equal amounts of blue and red, you have to multiply each ratio so that
the numbers under b and r are the same:

The result is

The yellow is 8 parts + 9 parts = 17 parts, and the total is 6 + 8 + 6 + 9 = 29 parts. On

11. B

The question asks for the radius of the larger of two circles. There are numbers in the
answers, so use PITA, starting with (B). If the larger radius is 6, the smaller radius is 2
less than that, or 4. The area of the smaller circle is 16π, and the area of the larger circle is
36π. 16π : 36π is a ratio of 4:9. (Just divide the whole ratio by 4π.) The correct answer is
(B). If you picked (D), you must’ve had a momentary blackout—that answer is way too
appealing to be right on a hard question. If you’re going to guess, guess something that is
not too good to be true.
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