HootersGeek

The first question is not necessarily a "math question", but either way, I am just writing my take on it. Obviously everyone here can weigh in, so it's what "I" think the question is asking. John: You are correct. No money means he can't afford anything! This question is really frustrating for that reason! :-\ Endy: I believe that the plural is the point. It seems to be aimed at "based upon that statement, assess the other statements" kind of thing... Deacon: The only person who truly knows the "most appropriate" answer is the creator of the question. I don't plan to click any random links to whatever that is... So you can explain it here in the forum, if you'd like. Otherwise, no one else here has an answer. I know that the exam has like 30-40 questions to take in 2.5 hours time, so it's supposed to be challenging but not time consuming. This means you need to eliminate the wrong answers pretty quickly or you can spend 20 minutes on this question and run out of time. Your choice. And you can't phone a friend or poll the audience, so that's that. Again, this is just my opinion.

Hi Daecon, It's totally frustrating, I know, but when you take an exam of this nature, you have to make due with what's given. The information you have is the information you have. This is a frustrating thing for computer science people (I'm a biology person), but you must take what it says literally and you apply it to the choices. There is no choice to say "not enough information". The EPIC test (from what I was told) is a brain teaser. It is meant for you to become frustrated and say "not enough information" or randomly guess because it's not making sense , but from what you are given, make the best "most appropriate" choice. It's not perfect, but the others don't make sense and you have to choose one answer. Not choosing is also a wrong answer.

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So, if Peter doesn't have enough to buy 5 pens, the most appropriate answer (to me) is (A) that Peter has enough to buy 1 pen. This is because all the other answers we cannot answer DEFINITELY because we do not know the cost of the other items, we just know the relative cost to pens. They may not even be a reasonable price relative to pens, so we cannot judge how much Peter can afford unless the amount is cheaper than 5 pens. It seems to me to be less about math and more about reasoning and reading the question verbatim. Don't overthink it. It's silly, but I believe the nature of the test is to see how well you think it out. Let's go through each answer and reason it out. A.) Peter has money to buy 1 pen. YES. If Peter doesn't have enough to buy 5 pens, then he obviously has enough to buy 4 pens or less. So he has enough to buy 1. B.) Peter does not have money to buy 1 pen. NO. The statement just said Peter does not have money to buy 5 pens. So this is incorrect. He just doesn't have enough for 5 pens. Anything less than 5 pens is okay. C.) Peter has enough to buy 5 pencils. Probably, but not sure. Pens could cost $5 each and pencils could cost $4.99. In that case, 5 pens are $25 even and 5 pencils are $24.95. If Peter has $24.97, he cannot afford 5 pens or 5 pencils. If I saw Peter in this predicament, I would just give him the $0.05, so we can end this misery, but apparently there isn't anyone willing to do that right now. D.) Peter has enough money to buy pencils, but not enough money to buy pens. Again, like answer C this is probably true, but it is not able to be determined with the information given. It is possible to not be able to afford pens and not afford pencils at the same time. Notice they didn't say 1 pen or 1 pencil, they say pencils (with an "s"). That could mean 10 pencils, 50 pencils, who knows? E.) Peter has enough to buy erasers. What? Where did erasers come from? He can't even afford 5 pens! If erasers are more expensive, we can't be sure he can afford them. If 5 pens = $25, and 1 eraser = $25, they still fulfill the limits on the statement and he can't afford it. No Peter!! Just no. For the second question Dayan in the previous post nailed it. It's exactly how he explained it. It helps to count out the order of each variable which was my first inclination when you see things in a random (letters, numbers, symbols, etc) pattern like this. Another type of question is If they were all numbers, think about counting the amount between the numbers, like, 1,3,5,7 are 2 apart. You can sometimes see a pattern there or increments. Always try to find a pattern. There is always a pattern. I find this years later, but I hope this helps someone one day! - HootersGeek