If list S contains nine distinct integers

[EnriqueR905]

Hello, I can not understand this question too much, could somebody please help me?

If list S contains nine distinct integers, at least one of which is negative, is the median of the integers in list S positive?

(1) The product of the nine integers in list S is equal to the median of list S.

(2) The sum of all nine integers in list S is equal to the median of list S.

the correct answer is A

Thank You.

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

Please see my reply to this thread: https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... 33247.html

[RonPurewal]

Hello, I can not understand this question too much, could somebody please help me?

hi,
on this forum, it's not acceptable to just post a problem and say "please advise", or "i had no idea how to solve this".

1/
first of all, this is almost certainly not true.
you probably started the problem in some way, and then got stuck at some very specific point(s) along the way.

2/
in the unlikely event that this actually is true—i.e., if you actually looked at this problem and thought, "wow, i have NO idea how to do this at all"—then you're better off leaving the problem and returning to it later.
if we just posted an answer key—which you should have anyway—that wouldn't help you develop your problem-solving skills—and then you'd waste the problem!

so...
please post specifics about the issue(s) you're having with the problem.
what was your approach?
what did you understand?
what didn't you understand?
where did you get stuck?
did you try any alternate approaches?
etc.

thanks.

[EnriqueR905]

Hello, I am truly sorry for the inconvenience, I did not read the rules of the forum.

My approach to this question was the following:

Since we have 9 integers, we know that the 5th term is the median and, since the prompt says that at least 1 integer is negative, I assumed that we could have 1 up to 9 negative integers, but of course, these integers could be any.

statement A: I was not able to understand too much of it.

statement B: Since it says that the sum of them gives me the median, I thought that since there are 1 or more negative integers, we could have the same integer twice, one with different sign than the other (1,-1) making the sum 0 and therefore, sufficient.

Of course,since i did not understand the first statement, I assumed that only statement 2 was sufficient and the answer was B.

[EnriqueR905]

Another thing, could we consider a positive integer with a value and a negative integer with the same value distinct integers?

[RonPurewal]

hm? it's impossible for a positive number and a negative number to have the "same value"!