by RonPurewal Wed Oct 24, 2007 5:11 am
OK, so statement 2 is definitely insufficient (it doesn't include ANYTHING about men, so you know it can't be). That narrows the field to choices A, C, and E.
Taking statement1 by itself, we have that W:C is 5:2 and that C:M is 5:11. To combine these ratios, we have to make the common term (children) the same, so we change these ratios to W:C = 25:10 and C:M = 10:22. So the overall ratio is W:C:M = 25:10:22.
Still, statement 1 by itself is insufficient, because there's only a ratio - no clue at all as to the actual NUMBERS of people on the trip (there could be thousands of them, for all we know, or there could literally be 25, 10, and 22). We do know that the numbers of W, C, and M must be MULTIPLES of 25, 10, and 22, respectively.
If we take statements 1 and 2 together, though, the number of women must be 25, because that is the only multiple of 25 that's less than 30. Therefore, we can solve the ratio to determine the number of men (notice that we don't HAVE to solve the ratio - it's good enough that we know we CAN do so).
Answer = C.