swarman wrote:
Hi
I was going through Kaplan book DS question. I just wanted someone to verify/comment on what i m thinking. the question is:
What is the minimum number of RECTANGULAR shipping boxes Company L will need in order to ship 120 rectangular packages that are rectangular solids, all of which have exactly the same dimensions?
(1) The dimensions of the packages are 3 inches in length, 4 inches in depth, and 6 inches in height.
(2) Each box is a cube of length one foot
Well certainly we can use both the statements to find out the answer easily, which is stated as the answer in the book too.. Just that what made me wonder was since we know the net volume of packages which is 3x4x6x120.. can we not equate this with volume of a BOX (i know dimensions are not given) whose dimensions we think upon to give the least number of boxes??
Let me make myself clear:
3x4x6x120= X (volume of box).. we need to minimize X or we can say maximise volume of box..
can the volume not be maximised by putting values based on assumptions ( which we tend to do in DS).. coz if we do so.. dimensions of the box can be 12x6x120 or 24x3x120 or etc etc.. each giving the same volume and making the number of rectangular boxes as ONE.. which would be least.. HENCE ''A'' SHOULD BE SUFFICIENT?
Please tell me where I am going wrong!!
Thanks
p.s. i usually get embarrassed when ppl ask me to search for a topic before posting one
, I swear i did this time.. and I believe the similar posts have slightly different doubt with a slightly moulded question..
Dear
Swarman,
I believe
Zarrolou gave a fine response, but I am going to add my 2¢ as well.
The prompt says "
What is the minimum number of RECTANGULAR shipping boxes Company L will need in order to ship 120 rectangular packages that are rectangular solids, all of which have exactly the same dimensions?' We do not know how many packages will fit in each box. Pay very close attention to the wording --- "packages" vs. "boxes" ---- both are rectangular, and we are putting the former inside the latter. We assume that the packages are smaller than the boxes, but we have no way of knowing how small. We also don't know, from the prompt, whether we will be able to pack the packages into the boxes neatly with no space left over.
As it happens, if we take both statement #1 & statement #2, we see that we can pack the packages neatly --- 4 packages wide, 3 packages deep, 2 packages high, or 24 packages total in each box. Without knowing the size of the box, we could not have calculated this, so we would have no way to know the size of the box.
Does all this make sense?
Mike