Store S sold a total of 90 copies of a certain book during

[Guest]

Can someone provide clarification why the answer is B and not C.




Thanks.

[esledge]

In the future, would you please type the question text in unless there is a necessary picture or diagram? The images take up too much space and slow down the loading of the forum. Thanks!

This is an interesting one. On my paper, I would draw 7 lines or boxes to represent that 7 days of the week, to be filled in with the # of books sold.

The question stem tells us that the 7 days sum to 90 books, that Saturday had the max sales, Friday had the 2nd greatest sales, and all of the days had a different number of books sold.

(1) tells you nothing much, since it just gives you the number for Thursday. We know that Friday and Saturday are greater than Thursday, but not how much greater. So, I would definitely start with (2), as it gives you the quantity sold on Saturday, which you know is the maximum.

Evaluate (2) with this question in mind: "Could 11 or fewer books have been sold on Friday?" If not, you know Friday's sales had to be greater than 11:

Try Friday = 11, and fill in the rest of the days with the best case scenario (the maximum books sold). I thought to maximize the other days because 38 is far short of the 90 total--the store must have sold a lot of books between Sunday and Thursday:

6 7 8 9 10 11 38

The sum: 6+7+8+9+10+11+38 = 89.

So, if only 11 books were sold on Friday, there is no way that the store sold 90 books. The number of books sold Friday must be greater than 11. The answer is definitely Yes.