challenge problen of the week on 11/09/2007 :: Manhattan GMAT Forums

Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 9:25 pm

The question has a statement "If the total number of people in Town X is four times greater than the total number of people in Town Y....".
I understood it as : Population of town X = 4*(Population of Town Y) + Population of town Y.
After going through the math, I ended up looking for a multiple of 14 instead of multiple of 11..which was wrong.

Wasn't the question printed wrong?..instead of saying "four times greater than" it should say "four times as much as". Does anyone agree with me?..or am I reading it wrong? Please clarify.

Thanks

Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 9:26 pm

sorry...the date of the question was 11/19/07

Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2007 4:27 am

You are correct.

Incidentally, if you happen to have our strategy guides, there are a couple of instances of the same mistake. In fact, IIRC, this mistake was repeated every time this particular construction appeared in the strategy guides.

So, for the time being, if you have the 2007 or earlier editions of the strategy guides (which, as of this writing, is all of them), read 'X times greater/bigger than Y' as 'X times as great/big as Y'.

We're fixing all this for the next edition. Incidentally, I've never seen 'X times greater than' on an official GMAC problem; I've only seen 'X % greater than'