On Sunday Morning, a Printing Press Printed its Newspapers at a GMAT Data Sufficiency

Question: On Sunday morning, a printing press printed its newspapers at a constant rate from 1:00 AM to 4:00 AM. How many newspapers did the printing press print on Sunday morning?

(1) The printing rate on Saturday morning was twice that of Sunday morning.
(2) On Saturday morning, the printing press ran at a constant rate from 1:00 AM to 3:00 AM, stopped for a half hour, and then ran at the same constant rate from 3:30 AM to 5:30 AM, printing a total of 4,000 newspapers.

  1. Statement (1) ALONE is sufficient, but statement (2) alone is not sufficient.
  2. Statement (2) ALONE is sufficient, but statement (1) alone is not sufficient.
  3. BOTH statements TOGETHER are sufficient, but NEITHER statement ALONE is sufficient.
  4. EACH statement ALONE is sufficient.
  5. Statements (1) and (2) TOGETHER are not sufficient.

“On Sunday morning, a printing press printed its newspapers at a”- is a topic of the GMAT Quantitative reasoning section of GMAT. This question has been taken from the book "GMAT Prep Plus". GMAT Quant section consists of a total of 31 questions. GMAT Data Sufficiency questions consist of a problem statement followed by two factual statements. GMAT data sufficiency comprises 15 questions which are two-fifths of the total 31 GMAT quant questions.

Solution and Explanation:
Approach Solution 1:
St.1: Not sufficient to solve. All we know is Sat= 2 * Sunday.
St. 2: With this information we can find only the rate of printing press on Saturday. But we need to find it for Sunday. So insufficient.

When Combining both (1) & (2):
We know the rate of the printing press on Saturday. Similarly from St.1 we know how many times the rate was higher on Saturday when compared to Sunday.

So we can find the printing press rate on Sunday. And hence we can find how many newspapers were printed on Sunday Morning.

Correct Answer: C

Approach Solution 2:
from 1) we know that the printing rate on Saturday morning was twice that of Sunday morning
i.e. rate of printing press on Sunday morning =(rate of printing press on Saturday morning)/2=1000/2=500 newspapers/hour.

from 2) on Saturday morning the printing press ran for 4 hrs (1:00 AM to 3:00 AM + 3:30 AM to 5:30 AM).
This tells us that in 4 hrs the printing press printed 4000 newspapers.
i.e. rate of printing press on Saturday morning : 4000/4=1000 newspapers/hour.

As we know from the question stem that the printing press worked for 3hrs(1:00 AM to 4:00 AM) on Sunday morning

Therefore, on Sunday morning the printing press printed : 500*3 = 1500 newspapers. Sufficient.

Correct Answer: C

Approach Solution 3:
Rate of printing = total number of paper printed (N)/ time taken(T). Duration is given as 3 hours but we cannot assume it to be 3 hrs coz we do not have the exact value of the working hours. There could be a stoppage in between as well.

The rate can be a positive number ranging from 0 to infinity.

In order to know the value of rate, we need the exact value of N and T or any equation or relation that can lead us to find the value of N and T or rate also.

STATEMENT ANALYSIS

St 1: rate on saturday = rate on sunday x 2. NOT SUFFICIENT. Hence option a and d is eliminated.

St 2: rate on saturday = 4000/ ( 2+2) = 1000. NOT SUFFICIENT as it cannot help us to find the rate on sunday. Hence option a, b and d is eliminated.

ST 1 & ST 2: from statement 2 we know the rate on saturday. Putting the value in the equation in statement 1 we get

Rate on sunday = rate on saturday/2 = 1000/2 = 500.

Correct Answer: C

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