For its grand opening, a gym decided to sell individual and partner me

VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL SOLUTION:

From the stem, we can set up an equation for revenue: TR = IR + PR, where TR=total revenue, IR=individual revenue, and PR=partner revenue. We know that for each type of membership, revenue is equal to the price multiplied by the number of memberships. IR=375i where i=number of individual memberships, and PR=xp where x=price of a partner membership and p=number of partner memberships. We can even go a step farther since we know how the relationship between the number of partner and individual memberships sold: p=3i. Bringing all of our information together, our equation is TR = 375i + x3i. We can see that the statements must fill in two variables: partner price and the number of individual memberships. Let’s look at Statement 1:

1) The cost of each partner membership was $500.

It’s fairly obvious that we now have a value for x, but i still remains unknown. Statement 1 is insufficient. What about Statement 2?

2) The revenue from individual memberships was 1/5 of the total revenue from all memberships.

We know that IR (or 375i) equals , which we can simplify to TR=1875i. We end up with the same problem (i is unknown) that we did in Statement 1, so Statement 2 is also insufficient.

When we combine the statements, we don’t learn anything new. Each statement has the same problem, so there’s no way for us to find a value for i, and as a result we can’t find a value for total revenue. Even with both statements, we do not have sufficient information to solve.

Answer: E.

As we can see, spending time with the base of our statue makes fitting the other two pieces easier. Identifying what we need makes our work with the statements much more efficient. The sooner we can put the statue together, the more time we have for the harder challenges that await us later on in the Hidden Temple.