Last year Kate spent between 1/4 and 1/3 of her gross income on her mortgage payments. If Kate spent $13,470 on her mortgage payments last year, which of the following could have been her gross income last year?
Indicate all such gross incomes.
$40,200, $43,350, $47,256, $51,996, $53,808
3 Explanations
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Zarreen Amin
Hi!
Can you further explain why it is $13,470*3 (or 4) and not 1/3 or 1/4?
Sure! Let's say Kate spent between 1/4 of her gross income on her mortgage payments, and we'll call her gross income x.
So we know that 1/4 of x was spent on her mortgage payments. So we can say:
1/4 * x = amount spent on mortgage payments
The problem tells us she spent $13,470 on mortgage payments, so:
1/4 * x = $13,470
Now, we want to solve for x, so we divide both sides by 1/4.
1/4 * x = $13,470
x = $13,470 / (1/4)
This becomes $13,470 * 4 = 53,880.
If you have a hard time seeing how we got $13,470 * 4, think of it this way:
x = $13,470 / (1/4)
x = $13,470 / (0.25) = 53,880
Finally, note that if we did $13,470 * 1/4, we would be calculating 1/4 of her mortgage payments. That's not what we want to do - we want to find 1/4 of her her income, and set that equal to her mortgage payments so we can find her income :)
I got this one wrong when taking the test. I assumed from the wording in the paragraph that they were only looking for values "between" 1/4 and 1/3 of her gross income, so I did not pick $53,808 (4*$13,470) because it is not "between" 4*$13,470 and 3*$13,470. GRE math is not that difficult, but the way they word things is very difficult. I should have focused on the actual question at the end of the second sentence, "which of the following could have been her gross income last year?" Focusing on that statement would have made me select all the right answers because they don't care about "between", they want to know all the values to include both extreme ends of the calculations. I believe this is why the question was set-up this way to catch people who are not reading closely or rushing. So always remember to identify what you are trying to find before solving. It may seem like it will waste time but it will increase the chance of you not falling for the test maker's traps.
3 Explanations