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Bunuel
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A local restaurant recently renovated its dining space, purchasing new 12 Dec 2015, 09:01
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72% (01:53) correct 28% (02:07) wrong based on 360 sessions

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A local restaurant recently renovated its dining space, purchasing new tables and chairs to use in addition to the original tables and chairs. The new tables each seat six customers, while the original tables each seat four customers. Altogether, the restaurant now has 40 tables and is capable of seating 220 customers. How many more new tables than original tables does the restaurant have?

A. 10
B. 20
C. 30
D. 34
E. 36
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Kurtosis
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A local restaurant recently renovated its dining space, purchasing new 12 Dec 2015, 23:46
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X = Number of original tables
Y = Number of new tables
Capacity of original tables = 4
Capacity of new tables = 6
Total number of tables = X + Y = 40.....(1)
Total capacity = 4X + 6Y = 220.......(2)
(2) - 4*(1) --> 2Y = 60 --> Y = 30, X = 10

How many more new tables than original tables does the restaurant have? --> Y - X = 30 - 10 = 20

Answer: B
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A local restaurant recently renovated its dining space, purchasing new 14 Dec 2015, 17:25
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Hi Bunuel,

I believe that the above prompt has been incorrectly attributed to the wrong company. It's actually a Kaplan question:

https://books.google.com/books?id=WBVZC ... an&f=false

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A local restaurant recently renovated its dining space, purchasing new 21 Dec 2019, 08:56
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It is written in the book when you do backsolving trick with option D it will be "37 new tables and 3 old tables" where does the "3" come from for the Backsolving trick? :dazed
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A local restaurant recently renovated its dining space, purchasing new 21 Dec 2019, 13:30
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Hi desziky,

The prompt tells us that the restaurant has 40 total tables - and we're asked how many MORE new tables than original tables the restaurant has.

This question can be approached in a couple of different ways, including TESTing THE ANSWERS/backsolving. If we started by TESTing Answer D first, then we have to do a little work with that result.

Answer D: 34 MORE new tables...

For there to be 34 MORE new tables than original tables, then there are 37 new tables and 3 original tables. From here, you can total up the number of seats that this would create (which would be MORE than 220 - and that's too many), so we would need to TEST a smaller number (with fewer of the new tables) next...

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A local restaurant recently renovated its dining space, purchasing new 22 Dec 2019, 11:25
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EMPOWERgmatRichC
Hi desziky,

For there to be 34 MORE new tables than original tables, then there are 37 new tables and 3 original tables. From here, you can total up the number of seats that this would create (which would be MORE than 220 - and that's too many), so we would need to TEST a smaller number (with fewer of the new tables) next...

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Hi, thanks for answering. Yes, I understand it, but how can you know that there are 37 new tables and 3 original tables? I know the restaurant has 40 new tables now.
If you take D for the backsolving test, how can you know that there were 3 "new" tables and 3 "old" tables?

I mean if you use choice D for backsolving, I still can not understand how could it be possible to choose 37 as the number for new tables. :dazed
Thanks for your help!!!
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A local restaurant recently renovated its dining space, purchasing new 22 Dec 2019, 18:46
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Hi desziky,

It might help if you look at this as a 'system' of equations:

We know that there are 40 total tables, so let's refer to "N" as the number of NEW tables and "P" as the number of ORIGINAL tables (instead of using an "O" because that looks like a "0")...

N + P = 40

The answer choices represent how many MORE New tables there are than Original tables, and that's essentially a DIFFERENCE between two numbers, meaning that with Answer D, we can create the following equation:

N - P = 34

With these two equations, we can then solve for N and P (and we'll end up with N = 37 and P = 3).

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
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A local restaurant recently renovated its dining space, purchasing new 06 Jul 2025, 09:11
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Why is my answer 30 instead of 20? I considered x to be the number of new tables.
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A local restaurant recently renovated its dining space, purchasing new 06 Jul 2025, 13:21
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Why is my answer 30 instead of 20? I considered x to be the number of new tables.
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x => no. of new tables; y => no. of old tables

"How many more new tables than original tables does the restaurant have?" => we are asked to find x - y, and not x

You got x = 30, so y will be 10, since we are given that in total there are 40 tables.

x - y = 30 - 10 = 20.
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