Finding of a survey of Systems magazine subscribers: Thirty percent of

Question

Finding of a survey of  Systems  magazine subscribers: Thirty percent of all merchandise orders placed by subscribers in response to advertisements in the magazine last year were placed by subscribers under age thirty-five.

Finding of a survey of advertisers in  Systems  magazine: Most of the merchandise orders placed in response to advertisements in  Systems  last year were placed by people under age thirty-five.

For both of the findings to be accurate, which of the following must be true?

(A) More subscribers to  Systems  who have never ordered merchandise in response to advertisements in the magazine are age thirty-five or over than are under age thirty-five.

(B) Among subscribers to  Systems , the proportion who are under age thirty-five was considerably lower last year than it is now.

(C) Most merchandise orders placed in response to advertisements in  Systems  last year were placed by  Systems  subscribers over age thirty-five.

(D) Last year, the average dollar amount of merchandise orders placed was less for subscribers under age thirty-five than for those age thirty-five or over.

(E) Last year many people who placed orders for merchandise in response to advertisements in  Systems  were not subscribers to the magazine.

KarishmaB · Accepted Answer

Survey of Subscribers: 30% of all orders placed by them were by people under 35 (Rest 70% people were 35 or above). Survey of Advertisers: Most of the orders placed were by people under 35. What must be true: (A) More subscribers to Systems who have never ordered merchandise in response to advertisements in the magazine are age thirty-five or over than are under age thirty-five. Beyond the scope of the argument since it talks about "never ordered". We have information only on last year orders. (B) Among subscribers to Systems , the proportion who are under age thirty-five was considerably lower last year than it is now. Beyond the scope of the argument since it talks about "now". We have information only on last year orders. (C) Most merchandise orders placed in response to advertisements in Systems last year were placed by Systems subscribers over age thirty-five. Not true. Most of the orders placed were by people under 35. (D) Last year, the average dollar amount of merchandise orders placed was less for subscribers under age thirty-five than for those age thirty-five or over. Not known. Dollar amount is not discussed. We only know about the number of orders. (E) Last year many people who placed orders for merchandise in response to advertisements in Systems were not subscribers to the magazine. True. Most people who had ordered were below 35 years of age. And only 30% of the subscribers who had ordered were under 35. So who were the others who were under 35 but had placed orders? They were non-subscribers. Hence this is correct. Answer (E) My webinar discussion on this question using the Quant concept of weighted averages is available here: https://youtu.be/tnFX99OpyYs

gummybear · Answer

Let's assume 
 1. A total of 100 merchandise orders were placed last year by the subscribers in response to the advertisement.
 2. A total of 200 merchandise orders were received by Systems in response to the advertisement (place by non-subscribers, or in the survey's terminology - people)

Therefore, total non-subscriber (people) orders = 100

It follows from #1 that
Subscribers under 35 years old = 30 orders
Subscribers equal-to/more than 35 years old = 70 orders

Since,  From stimulus: Most of the merchandise orders 
placed in response to advertisements in Systems last year were placed by people under age thirty-five ,

Subscribers + Non-subscribers (people) less than 35 years old = 101 and above

Hence, the OA is " E "

jatinrai · Answer

Answer is E.

Orders placed = subscriber + non subscriber
If say 100 subscribers placed order & 30 of them were below thirty five.
If nonsub, who placed order, were 1000 & out of them 900 were below thirty five.
Now the total orders placed = 1100 & out of them 930 are from people below thirty five.

This makes both the statement stand true.

priyankurml · Answer

IMO E.

Stmt1: 30% order placed by Subscriber and less than 35 age people
Stmt2: Most of the order came from 'less than 35 age people'
Conclusion: Most is not all; however, if 500 people below 35 placed their order, only 150 people are subscriber and rest 350 people are NOT subscriber.
Hence, E is correct.

A: No info on present statistics
B: No info on present statistics
C: Opposite statement: Order actually placed by less than 35 age people mostly
D: Can't predict average $ amount 
E: IMO

esledge · Answer

You could almost do this as a Quant problem: 3-circle Venn diagram with circles for Ordered, Under-35, and Subscribe. In fact, I did so to disprove (C). Try it with the following test numbers, all of which would be allowed by the argument: 100 orders, 90 by Under-35 people, 10 by Over-35 people. x orders by subscribers, so 0.3x orders by Under-35 Subscribers and 0.7x orders by Over-35 Subscribers. Note that you will have numbers/expressions in every segment of the Order circle.

Since this is CR, not Quant,  where  the numbers are matters more than  what  the numbers are when eliminating most of the wrong answers.

(A) Concerns non-Ordering Subscribers. This doesn't explain anything about the relative numbers within the Order circle.
(B) Last year vs. now is irrelevant. The argument was only about last year.
(D) Dollar amount is irrelevant. The argument was only about the number of orders.

(C) and (E) both look promising, as they concern the Order circle of the Venn. But if you test (C) with the numbers given, you get negatives in some sections of that circle, indicating that (C) doesn't have to be true. Maybe if we used 51 and 49 instead of 90 and 10, (C) could be true (though I am not so sure...), but by using the more extreme 90 for "most," we can show how (C) might not work. In contrast, (E) basically says that many of the people who placed Orders (100 total) were not subscribers (x). So 100-x = many, or x = few. This is certainly possible.

It's probably too time consuming to deal with numbers in the Venn on the test. The more important take-away is to make the easy eliminations of choices that are way off base (off-topic or off-category, e.g. non-ordering people), then hone in on the choices that directly address the relevant category (the people who place orders).

Then, weigh the words: "many" is more flexible than "most," and thus more likely to pass the "must be true" test.
Also, (C) seems to exacerbate the apparent discrepancy by suggesting more orders by Over-35 people, when we are trying to explain more orders by Under-35 people.

IanStewart · Answer

Yes, this is definitely E. The two surveys discuss different groups of people. The first is a survey of *subscribers* to the magazine. The second discusses *all* people who bought merchandise in response to magazine ads. Both claims can be true if a lot of under-35 non-subscribers bought merchandise, which is what E says.

nusmavrik · Answer

Hit and Run case ! The argument hits on one group and then starts talking about another group. The catch is 70% of merchandise orders can be placed by any of the 2 groups - over 35 yrs and exactly 35 yrs

30% of merchandise orders come from source X (subscribers)
70% of merchandise orders will come from different source. And composition of this group is unknown.

A cannot be necessarily true.
B cannot be inferred.
C makes a wrong assumption that over 35 yr group has placed more merchandise orders. What if the 35 yr group has placed most orders?
D is out of scope since we don't know the order value in different groups
E Answer

IanStewart · Answer

No, you may have misinterpreted one of the two findings. The second finding says that most orders were placed by people under 35; that includes orders from  both  subscribers and non-subscribers. I think you are interpreting that finding to be about orders from non-subscribers only, but it's not. So in your hypothetical example, you have 105 orders in total, but still, only 34 orders come from people under the age of thirty-five. That isn't consistent with the second finding in the stem which tells us that most orders come from under-thirty-fives, so is not a possible scenario.

It's actually mathematically impossible for C to be true. Say you have S subscribers and N non-subscribers who placed orders. We know that 0.7S orders came from subscribers over thirty-five. Say you have X orders in total from non-subscribers over 35. We know from the second finding that less than half of all orders come from people over thirty-five, so:

(0.7S + X)/(N+S) < 1/2

But the proportion of all orders coming from subscribers over thirty-five is 0.7S/(N+S), and this is clearly less than the left side of the inequality above, so must be less than one half. So it's impossible for 'most' orders to have come from subscribers over thirty-five, and C cannot be true.

MICKEYXITIN · Answer

i think E correct because E can be translated to the assumption that many people under the age of 35 who read the advertisement on the magazine decided to order merchandise but many of them did not buy magazine. They could read by chance.
C is counter fact.

arzad · Answer

I picked E...by POE it's very hard to understand the argument....I like gummybear explanation

Premise 1: Subscribers...... 35 years old or younger...... accounted for 30% of the orders
Premise 2: 35 years old or younger..... accounted for most of the orders
Therefore many orders were placed by non subscribers.

VarunBhardwaj · Answer

As per the finding 1,  of all the subscribers of the magazine,  The 30 % of the order were made by people under age of 35.
As per finding 2, of all the orders,  People over age of 35 placed most of the orders i.e this figure(orders placed by ppl over 35) should be greater than 50 %.

If both the facts have to true then  all the orders  cannot come from  of all the subscribers of the magazine, .So, there must be another set of people i.e people who are not subscribers.

A. More subscribers to Systems who have never ordered merchandise in response to advertisements in the magazine are age thirty-five or over than are under age thirty-five.
Irrelevant. We are not concerned about who have never ordered.
B. Among subscribers to Systems, the proportion who are under age thirty-five was considerably lower last year than it is now.
Irrelevant. We are concerned about only last year.
C. Most merchandise orders placed in response to advertisements in Systems last year were placed by Systems subscribers over age thirty-five.
Redundant.This is just another view of Finding of survey 1.
D. Last year, the average dollar amount of merchandise orders placed was less for subscribers under age thirtyfive than for those age thirty-five or over.
Incorrect. Not concerned about dollar amount.
E. Last year many people who placed orders for merchandise in response to advertisements in Systems were not subscribers to the magazine.
CORRECT.

gauravkaushik8591 · Answer

Finding of a survey of Systems magazine subscribers: Thirty percent of all merchandise orders placed by subscribers in response to advertisements in the magazine last year were placed by subscribers under age thirty-five.

Finding of a survey of advertisers in Systems magazine: Most of the merchandise orders placed in response to advertisements in Systems last year were placed by people under age thirty-five.

According to 1st survey: no. of orders placed by subscribers = 100; order by subscriber under 35 = 30 (i.e. 30%)

According to 2nd survey: if total orders = 200, order by people under 35 (subscribers and non subscribers) = 100+

E supports this directly!

Divyadisha · Answer

Let's say that we have 100 people participating in the survey.

There are Subscribers and Non subscribers, and then there are people >35 or <35

Subscribers say that 30 were subscribers and <35
Advertisers say that most of the orders (more than 50) were placed by people <35

The above two statements mean that at least 21 (51-30) people were non-subscribers who placed the orders.
And, we do not get any information on people equal to or more than the age 35 other than <49 people ordered from this group.

(A) More subscribers to Systems who have never ordered merchandise in response to advertisements in the magazine are age thirty-five or over than are under age thirty-five. We have no information on split of group equal to or>35.

(B) Among subscribers to Systems, the proportion who are under age thirty-five was considerably lower last year than it is now. We have no information an the data of people then and now.

(C) Most merchandise orders placed in response to advertisements in Systems last year were placed by Systems subscribers over age thirty-five. No. this is exact opposite to the information we have.

(D) Last year, the average dollar amount of merchandise orders placed was less for subscribers under age thirty-five than for those age thirty-five or over. We don't know the dollar value.

(E) Last year many people who placed orders for merchandise in response to advertisements in Systems were not subscribers to the magazine. Correct choice.

AndreiGMAT · Answer

It was very difficult to operate these statements in my head. So I used a diagram for overlapping sets.

I used 100 people who placed order as total (convenient for % problems)
I plugged in 99 people as people under age 35 who ordered merchandise (includes both subscribers and non-subscribers). Why 99? 99 can absolutely refer to most of people who placed order.

When I looked over the answers, I checked with my table:
(A) In my table there are only people who placed order. We don't know anything about subscribers who did not place order.  Irrelevant  
(B) We only regard the information from last year. What is happening "now" doesn't matter.  Irrelevant 
(C) Only 30% of subscribers under age 35 placed order last year. But the statement states "most". 30% is way to low for being "most".  So untrue 
(D) Wait a minute. The statement talks about dollar amount. We are only given information about number of people.  Irrelevant  
(E) In the table we see that at least 69 comprises the number of people who placed order. 69 absolutely qualifies to refer to "many" non-subscribers.  True

It is a very time consuming question. If I get this question on the Test I probably would random guess.

Consider giving some kudos. I have only 0 kudos from the users. Appreciate it.

felippemed · Answer

Here is my contribution.

It is an overlapping set problem.

Posted from my mobile device

gmatexam439 · Answer

Finding of a survey of Systems magazine subscribers:  Thirty percent of all merchandise orders placed by subscribers in response to advertisements in the magazine last year were placed by subscribers under age thirty-five.

Finding of a survey of advertisers in Systems magazine:  Most of the merchandise orders placed in response to advertisements in Systems last year were placed by people under age thirty-five.

For both of the findings to be accurate, which of the following must be true?

A. More subscribers to Systems who have never ordered merchandise in response to advertisements in the magazine are age thirty-five or over than are under age thirty-five.  not worried about the people who never ordered merchandise

B. Among subscribers to Systems, the proportion who are under age thirty-five was considerably lower last year than it is now.  not worried about the proportion of the people reaching the age of 35

C. Most merchandise orders placed in response to advertisements in Systems last year were placed by Systems subscribers over age thirty-five.  this is opposite of the premise

D. Last year, the average dollar amount of merchandise orders placed was less for subscribers under age thirtyfive than for those age thirty-five or over.  not worried about dollar amount

E. Last year many people who placed orders for merchandise in response to advertisements in Systems were not subscribers to the magazine.- Correct

Nunuboy1994 · Answer

What the first statement is basically telling is that among the subscribers to Systems magazine who purchased products in response to ads in the magazine, most were in fact over the age of thirty five. SO if Harvard Business Review posts an ad for special Harvard Business mugs and pens and shirts, then 75% of people who buy Harvard accessories are subscribers over 35 and 35% are subscribers under 35.

What the second statement tells us is that most of the people buying stuff because of ads in the magazine are thirty-five. How can that be? The majority of people buying stuff as a reponse to ads cannot be subscribers because then the majority of people buying stuff, say Harvard accessories, would have to be people over thirty-five. What E is basically saying is disregard the fact that most of subscribrs who bought stuff were over thirty-five because have a ton of other non-subscribers who are under 35 that buy our stuff. SO maybe a lot people just look at Harvard Business Review at the doctors office or grocery store and buy stuff but not many people actually subscribe to it.

E

gmat1393 · Answer

Hi  GMATNinja   chetan2u

Can you please help in explaining Why E is the correct choice here?

Thanks!

chetan2u · Answer

Hi....

In both the research , the mer handige order is the same, sa 100 orders.
Now survey of subscribers yo that magazine sat that 30% were purchased by people<35 yrs of age. So 30 orders by them.
Second svy talks of total orders and does not restrict to the subscribers and says moat so atleast 50 orders were placed by people <35 yrs of age.

So in two svy, the pool of people purchasing items has changed. - one limits to subscribers and other overall.

Now this gap (of same age group making orders ) of >50 and 30 means are NOT subscribers

And E says the sane

Finding of a survey of Systems magazine subscribers: Thirty percent of

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