Cherry International Company is a leading business firm dealing in var

­Actually the value in the graph is 17, and that makes the answer what it is right now, as (33)/37 > 17/20. So, the question and answer is correct.

But, I would agree 17 and 18 is a very close call, and I'll change the question.

­Thanks for clearing that up!

Can someone help me understand the first drop down?

Solution:

The graph has three lines depicting number of employees and sales & cost. Further Profit = Sales - Cost

First Blank: We have to give the year tha had maximum profit per employee.
=> \(\frac{Profit}{employee}=\frac{Sales-Cost}{employee}\) ­
We don't require to calculate the value for each but scanning the graph should help us. 

As normal in the official questions, a seemingly easy question too has some trap/trick.

So, we look for the larger value of Sales- cost, which is nothing but the gap between orange line and blue line,  and smaller value for employees.
Scanning the graph, the lgaps are the biggest in year 2008, 2009 and 2011.
Now, 2008 is a trap because it is opposite of what we are seeking. The gap gives Cost - Sales, which is loss.
Let us see 2009 and 2011 now. The gap is almost same but the number of employees are much lesser in 2011.
So, the value of  \(\frac{Profit}{employee}=\frac{Sales-Cost}{employee}\) will be largest for year 2011.

­
Second Blank: We have to give the year that had maximum percntage change in cost.
What one has to be careful on is the difference in maximum change vs maximum % change.
Although maximum change in cost is the drop of almost 112-8 or $104 billion, but drop will never be more than 100% here.
On the other hand, the increase in 2010 is 30 - 8 or $22 billion, a % increase of almost 300%. => 100*22/8
=> \(100*\frac{22}{8}=275\) ­%. 
Answer: 2010

gjijon

­Hi chetan2u, shouldn't the answer for the second dropdown be 2009 because from 2008 to 2009 it is almost more than 100 billion dip ?

­Hi

The thing is that we are looking at maximum % change and 100 dip is numeric. In terms of % it will be 100/110 or so, which will be surely be less than 100%. A decrease of 100% would mean that a value becomes 0.

But when you look at the next year, the change is almost 22 over 8, that is 22/8, which is almost 250%. Thus, our answer

­The profit per employee is the highest in [2011],

Should be

• when difference between sales and cost is large
• number of employee is low

2008: 20/50 = 0.4
2009: 10/40 = 0.25 (< 2008)
2010: 10/30 = 0.33 (< 2008)
2011: 11/25 = 22/50 > 2008
2012: 5/20 = 0.25 (<2008)

==> 2011


while the maximum percentage change in the cost has been in [2010]

% decrease can never be greater than 100%

2009 to 2010: 10 to 30 => x3
2010 to 2011: 30 to 60 => x2
2011 to 2012: 60 to 105 => less than x2

==> 2010