Monday · August 04 2003
It will take me 95 seconds to find a dollar bill, walk to the soda machine, purchase the pop, and walk back. The time is currently 2:36 pm. I leave work at 4:00 pm.
a. How many dollar bills would I need if I chose to spend the remainder of the afternoon buying Diet Pepsi?
b. If there are only 14 Diet Pepsis in the soda machine, at what point will I have to get my ass back to work, focus, and do something?
I teach the GMAT for Kaplan and your quandary sounds something like a type of problem called the data sufficiency. The point of the problem is identifying what piece of information is missing.
We need to know how long it takes you do drink a Diet Pepsi and how you feel about your job. Until then, it's anyone's guess.
Let's assume that I make no effort to drink the Diet Pepsis or do anything else in between purchases. I look for a buck, walk to the machine, get the pop, walk back, and set it down. Rinse and repeat.
Give this one to your biz-school hopefuls. It's far more relevant to their lives in cube land than interest rates or focus group results.
Um. I don't know the answer to either of these questions, but I do have a response. Get that Diet Pepsi and go back to your desk to surf the Web.