Q23 - There are about 75 brands

[jiyoonsim]

I still don't fully understand why D is the correct answer. Especially with D's phrase, "...microwave food products that take longer to cook."

Yes, we can infer that ppl spend more on microwave food products that take 3 minutes.

But why does the comparison have to be "microwave food products that take longer too cook?"
Can we actually know anything about the "microwave food products that take longer too cook" from the given stem?
What about 3-minutes microwave rice or pizza?

Or, should I just interprete ""microwave food products that take longer too cook" as "microwave food prodcts that is not 3 minutes microwave popcorn?

Please explain...thank you!

[bbirdwell]

I see what you're saying. Below is how I would approach it. Also, I myself would never use these early preptests for my own personal preparation -- i'd stick to the most recent 30 tests or so.

What we know from the argument is this:

1. microwave popcorn takes 3 minutes to cook AND accounts for over half of all microwave food sales.
2. microwave costs 5x more than conventional popcorn

Now for the choices:
(A) eliminate. we know nothing of the market share of different brands.

(B) eliminate. we know nothing of brands of other products.

(C) eliminate. we know nothing about volume.

(D) ?? products that take less than 3 minutes vs others? Doesn't sound right.

(E) eliminate. we know nothing about the number of products.

At this point I'd go back to (D). What do I know about products that take 3 minutes or less to cook? Well, I know that popcorn fits into that category. And I know that popcorn ALONE accounts for over half of all microwave food sales.

Now, what do I know about "products that take longer to cook?" I know this category does not include popcorn and therefore accounts for LESS THAN HALF of sales.

Therefore, I can conclude that POPCORN ALONE outsells any other group of foods, including the group that takes longer than 3 minutes. Potentially including other foods with the popcorn (all foods that take 3 min or less) only increases the sales gap between that group and the group of foods that takes longer.

[BackoftheEnvelope]

Can we actually know anything about the "microwave food products that take longer too cook" from the given stem?

We know exactly what we need to know about microwave food products (MFP) that take longer to cook: that they account for less than half of sales from all MFP. That's it. We don't need to know anything else.

There are two different ways of approaching this question (neither of which are mutually exclusive; one simply involves more steps than the other):

(1) The first is how the poster above approached the questions: Microwave popcorn takes 3 mins to cook. It accounts for more than half of sales. Therefore, (D) must automatically be true.

(2) If that doesn't seem intuitive enough, you could approach (D) in another way. Divide microwave food products into two groups: (a) those that take 3 minutes or less to cook; (b) those that take more than three minutes ("longer"). Microwave popcorn takes 3 minutes -- falls into (a). Microwave popcorn also accounts for more than half of sales of all MFP. Therefore, from microwave popcorn alone being in (a) we know that this group (MFP that take three minutes or less to cook) must account for more than half of all MFP sales.

We do not need to know anything else about any other products. 3-minute microwave pizza or rice could generate ZERO revenue. It still wouldn't change that (D) is the correct answer.

Keep it simple.