Solution to Question in ‘Tackle Options in GMAT DS Questions the Oak’s Academy Way’ Blog Post
Question:
Given that a, b, c, d, e are positive integers and that ‘b’ is an odd integer, is the product (a+b)(a+c)(a+d)(a+e) an odd integer?
(1) a is an odd integer
(2) c is an even integer
by our Quantitative Reasoning Faculty
In last time’s blog we looked at why DS is so important in GMAT. In this one we’ll take a look at the 3 key things that you need to do in order to tackle this unfamiliar question type. There are:
1. Learn the Options
The first step in learning DS is to get absolutely familiar with the options. Fortunately, in DS, this is easy because the five options are always as follows:
(A) Statement (1) alone is sufficient but statement (2) alone is not sufficient to answer the question asked
~ by our Maths Faculty
My opening GMAT blog post will focus on Data Sufficiency, an important and unique Quantitative Reasoning question type in GMAT. Later on we’ll take up some sample questions to illustrate how to tackle this strange and interesting question type but first we will look at a fundamental point: why is DS important? Well, look at Figure 1 below
Figure 1
What this pie chart tells us is that, out of 37 questions in the GMAT Quantitative Reasoning section, you can expect around 22 to 23 will be of the Problem Solving (PS) type and 14 to 15 of the Data Sufficiency (DS) type.