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dracarys007
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What is the minimum number of distinct factors that y must-have? 13 Jul 2020, 10:36
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Be sure to select an answer first to save it in the Error Log before revealing the correct answer (OA)!

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55% (hard)

Question Stats:

58% (01:44) correct 42% (01:32) wrong based on 98 sessions

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What is the minimum number of distinct factors that y must-have?

(1) y^4 is divisible by 60
(2) y is not a prime

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What is the minimum number of distinct factors that y must-have? 13 Jul 2020, 10:42
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If y^4 is divisible by 60, it must be divisible by 1,2,3,5,6,10,15,30,60.

Hence y must also have a min of these distinct factors. A is sufficient

Now, AD

Second part says y is not prime. This gives us a variable range. If y=10, the factors are 1,2,5,10. If y=16, it will have a min of one factor that is distinct i.e 1,2,4,8,16. So, not sufficient.

So, OA is A
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What is the minimum number of distinct factors that y must-have? 30 Jul 2020, 03:21
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Please provide official explanation for this question
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What is the minimum number of distinct factors that y must-have? 30 Jul 2020, 08:32
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dracarys007
What is the minimum number of distinct factors that y must-have?

(1) y^4 is divisible by 60
(2) y is not a prime
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The question clearly makes no logical sense, so test takers should just ignore it. The GMAT can never ask a DS question like this, because literally any information at all could be considered sufficient. For example, if we're told y is a positive integer (something the question needs to say to make any sense to begin with), Statement 2 is surely sufficient, because if you know y is not prime, the minimum number of factors y must have is one (because y could equal 1). But for a similar reason, you can argue that Statement 1 is sufficient alone as well -- there's of course some value of y with the smallest number of factors which satisfies this statement too (it's 2*3*5 if y is an integer). Any other statement they could have written would be sufficient for the same reason.

There's no way to tell what information is sufficient and what is not when a DS question asks about a minimum or maximum characteristic of a variable. So this kind of question setup (which I've seen quite often in various prep company materials) is completely illogical, and you'll never see anything similar on the real test.

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