Data Sufficiency

I'm also curious where the question is from.

Clearly Statement 1 is sufficient. If you know the value of xy, you can obviously decide whether xy is less than 1.

Statement 2 is not sufficient; if you choose a value of y very close to zero (-1/3, for example, so that x = -7/3), xy can be less than 1, while if you choose a small enough (very negative) value for y, xy can be as large as you want. If we had more information- if we knew, for example, that x and y were both negative integers- this information might be sufficient, but it is not sufficient as stated.

So the answer is A.

krazy800 wrote:.. Ian I didn't understand ur statemenrt...


Statement 2 is not sufficient; if you choose a value of y very close to zero (-1/3, for example, so that x = -7/3), xy can be less than 1,

from the above xy = 7/3 >1 ..

am I missing something?

I guess you found a different example, but (-1/3)*(-7/3) = 7/9, not 7/3.