tarun.mahan Wrote:Because the option B says clearly that p is a positive INTEGER. so the value of p can only be 1 and th value of q = 0. Therefore the question is solved p - q = 1.
Hope this helps.
yep -- this is good.
it also falls under the general rubric of "problems on which you can't use pure algebra". for a bunch more of these, check out the NOVEMBER 4 recording here:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/thursdays-with-ron.cfmas for the first statement, after a little bit of reflection (or a lot of algebra -- a little bit of reflection is probably better (: ) you can come up with two possibilities:
p = 0, q = 1
or
p = 1, q = 0
one of these possibilities yields a "yes" to the prompt question, while the other yields a "no". so that's insufficient.