Gmat prep 2 ques

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Gmat prep 2 ques

by abhinav85 » Mon Jun 08, 2009 7:37 pm
In a survey of 248 people, 156 are married, 70 are employed , and
25 percent of those who are married are self employed. If a person
is to be randomely selected from those surveyed,what is the probability
that the person selected will be self - employed but not married?

1.1/8

2.4/31

3.117/248

4.1/4

5.31/117.


A

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by tohellandback » Mon Jun 08, 2009 7:56 pm
abhinav,
check the image.
248-(70+156)=22 will be the number of people self employed and not married.
Though I would say, the question is a little ambiguous.

Thanks
Ok I a wrong here. I don't know what I was thinking. I guess sitting in a Japanese office does stuff to your mind.
Last edited by tohellandback on Mon Jun 08, 2009 8:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The powers of two are bloody impolite!!

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by yogami » Mon Jun 08, 2009 7:58 pm
Those words "employed" and "self employed" threw me completely off and I started breaking this down to Self employed- non -self employed (i.e.e working for someone else) and unemployed and I was sinking into a quagmire. Later on I realized that employed should be replaced by self-employed in the question and the answer comes to 1/8.
My approach is to solve this by drawing a table with rows comprising of married and unmarried and columns comprising of self-employed and unemployed and you should get this 31/248 = 1/8
200 or 800. It don't matter no more.

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by tohellandback » Mon Jun 08, 2009 8:05 pm
thanks Yogami,
I think you are right. pheww lost my few pecious minutes.:))
The powers of two are bloody impolite!!

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by Claret » Mon Jun 08, 2009 8:20 pm
yes this question surely is an ambiguous one ..

the 'employed' in the first line should actually be 'self-employed'

wonder how GMAT prep question can be so unclear in its wording