Walkabout wrote:
A certain country had a total annual expenditure of $1.2 x 10^12 last year. If the population of the country was 240 million last year, what was the per capita expenditure?
(A) $ 500
(B) $1,000
(C) $2,000
(D) $3,000
(E) $5,000
The key to solving this problem is to accurately translate what is being asked to a mathematical expression. We need to determine the “per capital expenditure”. As an expression this is:
(Total annual expenditure)/(Total population)= per capita expenditure
The easiest first step is to express 240 million as a number times a power of 10 since the other number is in this format.
240 million = 240,000,000
Since we have a 24 with 7 zeroes we can write this as:
24 x 10^7
Next, we should adjust 1.2 x 10^12 to make it a more usable number in our expression.
1.2 x 10^12 = 120 x 10^10
We now can solve:
(Total annual expenditure)/(Total population)
(120 x 10^10)/(24 x 10^7)
5 x 10^3
5 x 1,000 = 5,000
Answer E.
_________________
See why Target Test Prep is the top rated GMAT course on GMAT Club.
Read Our Reviews