A supermarket sells a certain brand of jelly in two jars of different

Bunuel - Actually my confusion arises with the answer explanation on prep, it says 1.39 / (pi*(2/9D)^2*h) = 6.255 / (pi*D^2*h). I know this is simple algebra but can you walk me through how I could easily convert this in 2 min if I were not able to see that t/2=d/3 and I kept it in the form T=2/3D. Thanks so much for your help with these problems.

Hi jmuduke08,

Since this conversation is over a 1.5 years old, I'm not sure if your'e still interested in an explanation, but here goes.

On the GMAT, DS questions sometimes involve "crazy-looking" numbers as a way to test if you can "get around" the crazy numbers and get to the correct answer without doing lots of extensive calculations. In that same way, Problem Solving questions will rarely force you into doing lots of "crazy math" because the GMAT Quant section isn't really a "math test" (by traditional standards). If you CHOOSE to do lots of crazy calculations, then that's on you - most PS questions can be approached in a variety of ways though, so "your way" of doing things might be the "long way."

If the type of prompt that occurs here were to occur in a PS prompt, then you'd likely see the word "approximately" in the wording (so that you wouldn't be forced into doing long-winded and excessive calculations) and you'd have 5 answers to choose from. If the 5 answers were sufficiently "spaced out", then you wouldn't have to do much to solve the problem beyond the basic formulaic set-up, simplification and some estimation/pattern-matching.

Even here, once you combine the two Facts, the two equations have the exact same variables AND are each set equal to a value, so performing the last set of calculations is unnecessary - you KNOW you could figure out which costs less per unit volume, so that is enough to choose the correct answer.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

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