Do I need to know pounds to gallons conversion to answer

[dlginsberg89]

This problem is from Advantage Testing's GMAT Math Test #5 section 1 question 13.

Company A sells rice by wight, while company B sells it by volume. Which company has the better price for a certain customer?

1) The price of rice at Company A is $0.70 per pound, while that at Company B is $5.00 per gallon.

2) The customer wants to buy 50 pounds of rice


The answer to the question is (E), but is it possible to answer this without knowing that there at 8 pounds in a gallon.

[RonPurewal]

the gmat exam will not require you to know any unit conversions whatsoever, except for time conversions (seconds/minutes/hours/days/weeks/years). so, yeah, this is just weird.

also, there's no such thing as "pounds to gallons conversion" anyway, because they aren't comparable units -- a pound is a unit of weight, but a gallon is a unit of volume (space that something takes up). for any two different substances, you'll have two different numbers of pounds in a gallon. (for instance, a gallon of water weighs about 8.3 pounds; a gallon of pure gold would weigh about 161 pounds; a gallon of air only weighs a couple of ounces.)

[dlginsberg89]

Thank you so much for responding to all of my questions. It's helpful to get an idea of what will most likely be on the test, but it's especially helpful to see the strategies you use to simplify the problems. You're great!

[RonPurewal]

Thank you so much for responding to all of my questions. It's helpful to get an idea of what will most likely be on the test, but it's especially helpful to see the strategies you use to simplify the problems. You're great!

thanks for the kind words.