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# An electronics salesman earned a x% commission on each of

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Current Student
Status: Attending Duke in May!
Joined: 08 Jan 2013
Posts: 32
Location: United States (NC)
Concentration: Leadership, Strategy
GMAT 1: 640 Q42 V35
Followers: 2

Kudos [?]: 25 [0], given: 18

Re: An electronics salesman earned a x% commission on each [#permalink]

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23 Apr 2013, 00:36
00:00

Difficulty:

15% (low)

Question Stats:

90% (03:01) correct 10% (02:46) wrong based on 79 sessions

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rakeshd347 wrote:
An electronics salesman earned a x% commission on each of
the m digital music player he sold in the month of March at the
retail price of $p. In April, he earned a y% commission on sales of the same item, and the price remained the sale. If y > x and he sold q more digital music players in April than in March, how much more money did he earn selling digital music players in April than in March? (A) p/100 [ym - x(m + q)] (B) p/100 [x(m + q) + ym] (C) p[y(m - q) - xm] (D) p/100 [x(m + q) - ym] (E) p/100 [y(m + q) - xm] KUDOS please if you like my question If you lay out the facts, it's not nearly as daunting as it looks. March - x% commission on m players @ p price. April - y% commission on m players @ p price. y>x AND he sold q more players in APRIL. You can immediately eliminate C because it doesn't change the percentage into a dollar value (MUST have p/100 to accomplish this. The question asks how much more money?), so you're down to A,B,D,E A) ELIMINATE. Has (m+q)x which doesn't fit the given fact :q more players in April (q needs to multiplied by y) B) ELIMINATE. Adds y and x together - fails to answer the question. You need to subtract x from y to determine how much more money he earned. D) ELIMINATE. Had the difference backwards, you're subtracting y from x here and not x from y. E) CORRECT. All the elements are there, y(m+q), correct order of subtraction, and p/100. [Reveal] Spoiler: OA Current Student Status: Attending Duke in May! Joined: 08 Jan 2013 Posts: 32 Location: United States (NC) Concentration: Leadership, Strategy GMAT 1: 640 Q42 V35 Followers: 2 Kudos [?]: 25 [0], given: 18 Re: An electronics salesman earned a x% commission on each [#permalink] ### Show Tags 23 Apr 2013, 00:49 rakeshd347 wrote: WpackAlumDukeBound wrote: rakeshd347 wrote: An electronics salesman earned a x% commission on each of the m digital music player he sold in the month of March at the retail price of$p. In April, he earned a y% commission on sales
of the same item, and the price remained the sale. If y > x and
he sold q more digital music players in April than in March, how
much more money did he earn selling digital music players in
April than in March?

(A) p/100 [ym - x(m + q)]

(B) p/100 [x(m + q) + ym]

(C) p[y(m - q) - xm]

(D) p/100 [x(m + q) - ym]

(E) p/100 [y(m + q) - xm]

KUDOS please if you like my question

If you lay out the facts, it's not nearly as daunting as it looks.

March
- x% commission on m players @ p price.

April
- y% commission on m players @ p price.

y>x AND he sold q more players in APRIL.

You can immediately eliminate C because it doesn't change the percentage into a dollar value (MUST have p/100 to accomplish this. The question asks how much more money?), so you're down to A,B,D,E

A) ELIMINATE. Has (m+q)x which doesn't fit the given fact :q more players in April (q needs to multiplied by y)

B) ELIMINATE. Adds y and x together - fails to answer the question. You need to subtract y from x to determine how much more money he earned.

D) ELIMINATE. Had the difference backwards, you're subtracting y from x here and not x from y.

E) CORRECT. All the elements are there, y(m+q), correct order of subtraction, and p/100.

You solved the question that is the main thing but how much time it took that is to be considered. I generally find these questions by assigning some value to them and then solve within 45 seconds. Without putting value sometimes it just gets tricky and you have to look over again and again.

It took me 1:36, so not nearly as good as your 45 seconds, but still under my 2 minute goal.
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Re: An electronics salesman earned a x% commission on each [#permalink]

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23 Apr 2013, 02:12
Expert's post
rakeshd347 wrote:
An electronics salesman earned a x% commission on each of
the m digital music player he sold in the month of March at the
retail price of $p. In April, he earned a y% commission on sales of the same item, and the price remained the sale. If y > x and he sold q more digital music players in April than in March, how much more money did he earn selling digital music players in April than in March? (A) p/100 [ym - x(m + q)] (B) p/100 [x(m + q) + ym] (C) p[y(m - q) - xm] (D) p/100 [x(m + q) - ym] (E) p/100 [y(m + q) - xm] KUDOS please if you like my question Set q=0, and immediately you can discard options D.Put any set of convenient values now and solve. p =100, m = 50,x=50,y = 100. E. _________________ Manager Joined: 30 May 2012 Posts: 99 Location: United States (TX) Concentration: Finance, Marketing GPA: 3.3 WE: Information Technology (Consulting) Followers: 0 Kudos [?]: 39 [0], given: 82 Re: An electronics salesman earned a x% commission on each of [#permalink] ### Show Tags 18 Dec 2014, 04:15 Any other interesting approaches to this type of questions? How could one do it with assumed numbers? Senior Manager Joined: 02 Dec 2014 Posts: 284 Location: Russian Federation Concentration: General Management, Economics WE: Sales (Telecommunications) Followers: 0 Kudos [?]: 54 [0], given: 325 Re: An electronics salesman earned a x% commission on each of [#permalink] ### Show Tags 18 Dec 2014, 07:24 Here is my approach March: commission m*p*(x/100) April: commission (m+q)*p*(y/100). To find the difference April - March = (m+q)*p*(y/100) - m*p*(x/100) ==>factor out (p/100) ==> (p/100)*((m+q)y-xm). The answer is E _________________ "Are you gangsters?" - "No we are Russians!" EMPOWERgmat Instructor Status: GMAT Assassin/Co-Founder Affiliations: EMPOWERgmat Joined: 19 Dec 2014 Posts: 6204 Location: United States (CA) GMAT 1: 800 Q51 V49 GRE 1: 340 Q170 V170 Followers: 261 Kudos [?]: 1833 [0], given: 160 Re: An electronics salesman earned a x% commission on each of [#permalink] ### Show Tags 20 Dec 2014, 19:38 Expert's post Hi Blackbox, This question can absolutely be solved by TESTing VALUES. Here's how: You can see from the answer choices that there are 5 variables, so you want to keep your values relatively simple. Before I TEST any values though, I'm going to take some quick notes on what the prompt tells us: March: X% commission on M players @$P/player

April:
Y% commission on (M+Q) players @$P/player We're told that Y > X and it's implied that all values are > 0. Here are my VALUES: X = 10 (percent) Y = 50 (percent) M = 1 (player) Q = 2 (players P = 10 (dollars) Using these values, we get... March: 10% of 1 player @$10/each = 10%($10) =$1

April:
50% of 3 players @$10/each = 50%($30) = $15 The DIFFERENCE =$14

Since the answer choices are suitably "crazy"-looking, we need to take advantage of any repeating patterns (such as P/100 = 10/100 = 1/10) and math "shortcuts" so we can avoid any unnecessary work.

Answer A: (1/10)[50 - 30] = $2 Not a match Answer B: (1/10)[30 + 50] =$8 Not a match

Answer C: 10[-50 - 10] = NEGATIVE. Not a match

Answer D: (1/10)[30 - 50] = NEGATIVE. Not a match

Answer E: (1/10)[150 - 10] = $14 MATCH Final Answer: [Reveal] Spoiler: E GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made, Rich _________________ # Rich Cohen Co-Founder & GMAT Assassin # Special Offer: Save$75 + GMAT Club Tests

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Re: An electronics salesman earned a x% commission on each of   [#permalink] 20 Dec 2014, 19:38
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# An electronics salesman earned a x% commission on each of

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