GMAT Data Sufficiency - What is the Product of 6 Consecutive Numbers?

bySayantani Barman Experta en el extranjero

Question: What is the product of 6 consecutive numbers?

The greatest integer is 4
The sequence has both positive and negative integers

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

“What is the product of 6 consecutive numbers?” – is a topic of the GMAT Quantitative reasoning section of GMAT. This question has been taken from the book "GMAT Quantitative Review". 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.

Answer:

Approach Solution 1

Consider S (1), the greatest integer is 4. Since 4 is the greatest out of 6 consecutive integers, then all 6 integers can be found and thus the product calculated.

Hence this statement is sufficient.

Just to illustrate: 6 consecutive integers would be {-1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4}. Since there is zero among them, the product will also be zero.

Now taking S (2), the sequence has both positive and negative integers. Since, a sequence of consecutive integers has both positive and negative numbers in it, then it must also contain zero, so the product of terms of such sequence will also be zero.

Hence this statement is sufficient.

Correct option: D

Approach Solution 2

The greatest integer is 4.

Sufficient: Max is 4, so consecutive integers = {-1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4}

It has 0, so product will be 0

The sequence has both positive and negative integers –ve and +ve number, so 6 consecutive integers has 0 in it, so product will be 0.

Correct option: D

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