Finding of a survey of Systems magazine subscribers: Thirty percent of

VeritasKarishma GMATNinja esledge

Finding of a survey of advertisers in Systems magazine: Most of the merchandise orders placed in response to advertisements in Systems last year were placed by people under age thirty-five.

I have a problem in interpreting the argument. How can a non-subscriber have access to the magazine's advertisement?

Most of the merchandise orders placed "in response to advertisements in Systems" last year were placed by people under age thirty-five.


Should I just assume that a non-subscriber has access to magazines advertisement

Please clarify my doubt.

Yes, for this passage to make sense non-subscribers must have access to the advertisements in the magazine.

The first piece of the passage deals only with subscribers who placed orders. In that group, thirty percent of those who placed orders were under 35. So, the majority of subscribers who placed orders were over 35.

The second piece of the passage deals with a wider group -- anyone who placed an order after seeing the advertisements. This would include both subscribers and non-subscribers (who perhaps looked through the magazine at their dentist's office or hair salon). In this wider group, the majority who placed orders were under 35.

I hope that helps!

Hi GMATNinja VeritasKarishma

For E option , i get conflicting answer:


please suggest

Case1:
30: <35 age subscribers
70: > 35 age subscribers
Most of people below age of 35 gave orders
Assume
50: < 35 age non-subscribers

Total people below <35 = 100
Total below above >35= 70
100/170 – hold true argument
Option doesn’t hold true: because subscribers ( 100) and non-subscribers (50)

Case2:
Or (most people <35 who orders, but only 30 <35 subscribers)
30: <35 age subscribers
70: > 35 age subscribers
1000: < 35 age non-subscribers

1030/1100-argument hold true
E option Statement hold true


Case 1 doesnt hold true for option E . hence how E can be MUST BE TRUE?

The data you are assuming is not correct.

Say there are 100 subscribers who order for merchandise in response to Ad. Out of these 100,
30 were young people
70 were old people

Then there are some non subscribers who placed order for merchandise in response to Ad.

So total number of orders in response to Ad must be greater than 100. Say they are 150.

Advertisers finding - They got 150 orders in response to Ad. They find that most orders (>50%) were from young people. This means more than 75 orders are from young people. But only 30 young subscribers ordered. so who are the other 45? Non subscribers.

Another way to look at it is as a weighted average problem.

30% subscribers were young.
x% non subscribers were young.

More than 50% total were young.

Then x must be quite a bit greater than 50 to bring the avg to 50%.

Hi VeritasKarishma ,

In the example, 45 non-subscirbers are still less than 70 . Option E does n't say that many people below 35 age,placed more orders.
(E) Last year many people who placed orders for merchandise in response to advertisements in Systems were not subscribers to the magazine
this is the confusion that 45 is still less than 100 ( 30+100). we have no idea about NON_SUBSCRIBERS (OVER_35 age)

what am i missing still? VeritasKarishma

imSKR
i think you are missing a specific word in Option E mentioning "many" and not MOST. 45% is many if option E mentioned
"most " then i would not pick this option as a correct answer.

(E) Last year many people who placed orders for merchandise in response to advertisements in Systems were not subscribers to the magazine

[/quote]

say total 150 orders
30: <35 age subscribers
70: > 35 age subscribers
Most of people below age of 35 gave orders

more than 50% of total <35 age means total 80 ( 50+% of 150)
it means non -subscribers <35 age = ( 80-30= 50)

Summary :-
total subscribers : 30+70 = 100
total non -subscribers = 80 ( lets say above 35 age non subscribers didn't order; all orders of non-subscribers were from
80 is less than 100

then 80 is many ? even 80 ( non-subscribers) is less than 100 ( subscribers)?

i am sorry , i am still confused.dave13

Hi AndrewN sir,
Can you help me to find out what silly mistake i am doing.

Hello, imSKR. I think you may be getting caught up too much in your numbers, at the expense of processing what the passage actually says. Look again. Since we already know the correct answer, I will omit the others. For ease of access, I will also use color coding.


Subscriber orders: 30 percent of all merchandise orders came from those under 35; therefore, 70 percent of all merchandise orders came from those 35 or older.

Total orders: More than 50 percent of all merchandise orders came from those under 35; therefore, fewer than 50 percent of all merchandise orders came from those 35 or older.

To reconcile this apparent discrepancy, it must be true that some unnamed group, one that we can call non-subscribers, placed orders in response to the ads in question, and, furthermore, that these non-subscribers must have included many people who were under 35. Otherwise, we would expect the subscriber data to hold, for the majority of all merchandise orders to have been placed by people 35 or older. Choice (E) has just what we are looking for, a reasonable way to account for the uptick in merchandise orders from the under-35 group. We do not need to get caught up in a numbers game. That is one way to rationalize the information. We can also imagine pouring liquid from two separate glasses into one larger pitcher. If we knew only about one glass with, say, less liquid and the total amount of liquid that ended up in the pitcher, we would be able to deduce what must have been in the other glass.

I hope that helps.

- Andrew

But 'E' may not be true always.
For example let us consider the following figures.
Total orders by subscribers = 100 ( 30 by <35 age ; 70 by >35 age group)
Total orders by non subscribers = 55 ( 50 by <35 age ; 5 by >35 age group) (since nothing was mentioned about the distribution of orders by non subscribers)
Hence total orders by <35 age group = 30+50 = 80
Total orders by >35 age group = 70+5 = 75

Please guide where I made a mistake in assuming the above figures.

Thanks in advance

I pacified myself with the following understanding of "many".

“Many" could mean several, more than a few. “Most" means the majority of whatever you're referring to, such as “Most people are right-handed.” Most means more than half and many simply means some.

Now we can choose E as the answer.

I've written a (quite detailed) solution for this question on this link: https://gmatwithcj.com/critical-reasoni ... bscribers/

Understanding the argument
Let's take All merchandise orders based on the response to the advertisement to X.
Now, the first statement says 0.3X were placed by subscribers < 35 years of age. Of course, the rest are placed by SUBSCRIBERS more than equal to 35 years of age.
The 2nd statement says - more than 0.5X is by PEOPLE > 35 years of age.
Logically, we can deduce that many PEOPLE who placed orders were not SUBSCRIBERS. That's what E shares.

Option Elimination -

(A) More subscribers to Systems who have never ordered merchandise in response to advertisements in the magazine are age thirty-five or over than are under age thirty-five. Subscribers who never placed an order are out of scope.

(B) Among subscribers to Systems, the proportion who are under age thirty-five was considerably lower last year than it is now. We don't know anything about NOW. Out of scope.

(C) Most merchandise orders placed in response to advertisements in Systems last year were placed by Systems subscribers over age thirty-five. Opposite of what was given. What's given is that most orders are placed by people below 35.

(D) Last year, the average dollar amount of merchandise orders placed was less for subscribers under age thirty-five than for those age thirty-five or over. The dollar amount is not the scope of the argument. Out of scope.

(E) Last year many people who placed orders for merchandise in response to advertisements in Systems were not subscribers to the magazine. Ok.