At a medical convention attended only by pediatricians and general sur

Hi Masterscorp, yes each statement should be considered alone, and be sufficient, for the answer to be D. Generally what we get from one statement cannot be applied to the other statement. It was just that statement (2) in this case resulted in an intermediate that was part of the calculations for statement (1), and following those exact same calculations for this particular case it turns out to be sufficient.

For statement (2), we know that 60% of the general surgeons were male, and hence 40% must be female. Thus given that we know the number of female general surgeons in attendance (150) from statement (2), we can work out that there are 375 general surgeons that attended. Given that we know there were 250 pediatricians, we can figure out that the total number of attendees was 625. This is exactly the same calculation as for statement (1), from after we figured out the number of female general surgeons based on the 2:3 ratio given. It is merely a time-saving strategy to recognize the calculations to result in the answer was the same from that point for both statements, and hence save time, rather than having to calculate the answer for statement (2) all over again.

Yeah you're right, I overread the statement that 60% of all surgeons are male. However, I will not delete my post so perhaps someone else can learn from my mistake.

Kudos to you

(1) 100/(0.4x) = 2/3
Sufficient

(2) 0.4x = 150
Sufficient

Answer D