Hi All,
We're told that a will was written such that an estate would be divided among FIVE beneficiaries with the remainder donated to charity, with one stipulation in the will is that no one beneficiary can receive an amount within 20% of another's amount. One of the beneficiaries received $10,000 - and we're asked for the SMALLEST possible range between the highest and lowest amounts (rounded to the nearest dollar) among the five beneficiaries. This question comes down to a certain amount of Arithmetic, but the answers are sufficiently 'spaced out' that we can do a little estimation along the way.
To start, since percentages are calculated from a 'base value', to MINIMIZE the RANGE, we want to DECREASE the values from the initial $10,000 (as opposed to increasing those values, which would increase the actual difference between each pair of values).
20% of $10,000 = $2000, so the 2nd beneficiary could receive close to $10,000 - $2,000 = $8,000
20% of $8,000 = $1600, so the 3rd beneficiary could receive close to $8,000 - $1,6000 = $6,400
20% of $6,400 = approximately $1300, so the 4th beneficiary could receive close to $6,400 - $1,300 = $5,100
20% of $5,100 = approximately $1,000, so the 5th beneficiary could receive close to $5,100 - $1,000 = $4,100
The range of these values is approximately $10,000 - $4,100 = approximately $5,900
Final Answer:
GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich