ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS: PROBLEM SET 15

Easy
1. 6

The question asks how much greater y is than x. Set the equation equal to y, since that’s
what the question asks for. You get –y = –6 – x. Multiply through by –1 and you get y = 6
+ x, so the answer is 6. For an easier solution, you could also plug in here: say x = 2
and y = 8, which satisfies the equation. Then y is equal to x plus 6. This is the correct
answer.

2. 140

The question asks for the value of x, an angle marked on a figure. The unmarked angle in
the triangle is 40°, since triangles have 180° and the other angles are 50° and 90°. The
40° angle and x lie on a straight line, so 40 + x = 180, and x = 140. This is the correct
answer.

3. 5.5 or

The question asks how much additive must be added to 11 liters of water. You can set up
the proportions as follows and cross-multiply:
 Cross-multiply to get 7x = 38.5. Divide both sides by 7 to get x = 5.5. However, if you
noticed that the number of grams is one-half the number of liters (not accounting for

units), then all you need to do is divide 11 by 2. Either grid in 5.5 or as the correct

answer.

Medium

4.

question asks for the value of an expression. This is a good example of plugging in on a
grid-in question. If you make x = 1 and y = 2, the equation will work:

Now it is easy to solve the problem. By the way, if you noticed that is the

reciprocal of , you didn’t need to plug in. Just square ! The correct answer is .

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5. 5400

The question asks for the speed of the spacecraft 9 minutes after launch. The variable t is

time in minutes, so plug t = 9 into the given formula to get M(t) = = 200(3)3 =

200(27) = 5,400. This is the correct answer.

6. 112
The question asks how many people answered “Other” in a survey of climate preferences.
Make sure you understand the information you are given and the information you need to

find before trying to answer the question. There are 280 people who answered “Humid”
or “Other,” not 280 total people, so don’t take 10 percent of 280. Also, there is no need to
calculate the total number of people surveyed. Of the people who answered “Humid” and
“Other,” 4 out of 10 answered “Other.” Thus, the number of people who answer “Other”

is of 280, or 112. This is the correct answer.

7. 173
 The question asks for the speed in kilometers per hour, so make sure to use the distance

in kilometers and the time in hours. The distance is given as 5,800 kilometers, but the

time is given as 2,010 minutes rather than a number of hours. To convert minutes to

hours, set up the proportion . Cross-multiply to get 60x = 2,010.

Divide both sides by 60 to get x = 33.5 hours. To get the speed of the airplane, use the rate
formula, d = rt. Substitute d = 5,800 and t = 33.5 to get 5,800 = 33.5r. Divide both sides

by 33.5 to get r ≈ 173.13. The question asks for the answer rounded to the nearest
kilometer per hour, so the correct answer is 173.

Hard
8. 5

The question asks for the sum of the first 31 numbers in a sequence. If you are stumped
here, you can always type the pattern into your calculator and find the answer. However,
on pattern questions, once you understand how the pattern operates, you can arrive at
the answer faster. Here, add up the first four numbers of the repeating sequence. They
add up to 1. Thus, every time you add another set of the sequence, the total sum will
increase by 1. Because you are interested in the first 31 terms of the sequence, there will
be 7 complete sets (the first 28 terms) added together and then part of a set (the
remaining 3 terms). Those 7 complete sets will add up to 7. So now add in –4, 0, and 2 to
get 7 – 4 + 0 + 2 = 5. This is the correct answer.

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9. 126
The question asks for the area of the shaded region of the figure. Without answer choices,

you can’t Ballpark, so you need to slog through! The area of the entire rectangle is 144(18

× 8). Now you need to find the area of the triangles inside of the rectangle. You can see
that the measurements on either side of the squares are all 6 and the entire length of the

rectangle is 18, so the portion of the rectangle inside each square is also 6. When a square
is cut in half along its diagonal, two 45:45:90 triangles are created. If you don’t know how

45:45:90 triangles work, you can look up the ratio in the formula box at the beginning of
the section. If each side of the triangle (here, the sides of the square) is x, the hypotenuse

(here, the diagonal) is . Thus, here 6 = , so x = . Now that you have the sides

of the squares, you can find the areas of the squares: . Because the two

triangles inside the rectangle add up to one square, you can subtract 18 from 144 to find

the area of the shaded region. The correct answer is 126.

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10. 1.1

h
 The question asks for the value of m in the equation. The equation n = 200(m)h is in the
form of the standard equation for exponential growth: final amount = original amount(1
+ rate)number of changes, where rate is the percent in decimal form. The final amount is n,
the original amount is 200, and the number of changes is h. Therefore, m from the
original equation represents 1 + rate from the standard equation. Since the increase per
hour is 10%, m = 1 + 0.10 = 1.1. This is the correct answer.

11. 1928

The question asks for how many more microbes Bacteria Culture B contains than Bacteria
Culture A after 20 hours. As you learned in the previous question, m, the rate of increase,
is equal to 1.1 for Bacteria Culture A and 1.15 for Bacteria Culture B. After h = 20 hours,
Bacteria Culture A has n = 200(1.1)20 ≈ 1,345.5 microbes, and Bacteria Culture B has n =
200(1.15)20 ≈ 3,273.3 microbes. Therefore, after 20 hours, Bacteria Culture B has 3,273.3
– 1,345.5 = 1,927.8 more microbes than Bacteria Culture A. The question asks for this to
be rounded to the nearest whole number. The correct answer is 1,928.
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