GMAT PREP 2.0 Table Analysis

[vikram4689]

How to solve question no. 2. i do not know what was the adjustment for the month before Mar'2010



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[RonPurewal]

take a closer look at the headlines in the table.

for each month listed, the headline is "seasonally adjusted changes from preceding month". so, the column for march -- by itself -- represents seasonally adjusted changes from february to march.
since there is a positive number in that column for march, you know that the quantity was greater in march than in february.

[vikram4689]

I thought statement no. 2 compare seasonally adjusted CPI-U for all items for March and for February i.e.

CPI-U (March-February) and CPI-U (February-January)

I know i am wrong because answers depicts that but don;t you think that language is not clear. Also, any advice on how should i proceed in order to not to fall into such traps.

[tim]

this is not a trap. this is language comprehension. there is no substitute for practice at reading and interpreting written English..

[vikram4689]

tim,
if go by literal translation, which i should, of that sentence, it converts to something like - X was higher in march than in february. now that implies that i have to compare X for march and for february. Also, X for march = CPI-U adjustment from Feb-to-Mar & X for feb = CPI-U adjustment from Jan-to-Feb

please tell where i mistook

[tim]

you didn't read the legend for the chart correctly. the .1 in the chart IS the measure of change between February and March..

[vikram4689]

you didn't read the legend for the chart correctly. the .1 in the chart IS the measure of change between February and March..

sir,
i read that chart shows measure of change between mar and feb but we need more information. in my last post, quoted below, i tried to explain what i inferred by translating the statement. can you please tell where am i mistaken.

if go by literal translation, which i should, of that sentence, it converts to something like - X was higher in march than in february. now that implies that i have to compare X for march and for february. Also, X for march = CPI-U adjustment from Feb-to-Mar & X for feb = CPI-U adjustment from Jan-to-Feb

[RonPurewal]

I thought statement no. 2 compare seasonally adjusted CPI-U for all items for March and for February i.e.

CPI-U (March-February) and CPI-U (February-January)

this is the problem here; this sort of statistic doesn't exist.

as described in the passage, the cpi-u represents a price index -- in other words, the average price of some theoretical "bucket" of goods.
such an index can have an average numerical value for a given month.

in any case, this may not be purely a language issue -- there's also a common-sense component. i.e., even if the language is not 100% perfectly clear (to you), it's expected that you will still pick up on the correct meanings of "from previous month" and so on.
also, you can't contradict the problem statement. if the problem statement mentions the cpi-u for the month of march -- as this problem does -- then, well, you've got hard proof that the cpi-u is a statistic that has values for each individual month.