by mschwrtz Wed May 12, 2010 3:26 am
sen.sreeroop, I'm afraid that the formatting options might have let you down here. Your reasoning is correct, except that you assume 45 lbs of flour when you should read 40, but I'm not sure how clear you were able to make your diagram.
sen.sreeroop is approaching this mixture problem as a weighted average, often the most efficient approach if you have a good intuitive understanding. Well, what feels like intuition is really a well-developed sense of weighted averages.
You can usefully represent sen.sreeroop's reasoning on something like a number line or line segment (see page 107 of the Manhattan GMAT Word Translation Strategy Guide for examples).
1.95----------2.25---------------2.70
(The gap between 1.95 and 2.25)/(the gap between 1.95 and 2.70)=the portion of the mixture due to 2.70 flour. So the mixture is 30/75 1.95 flour, or 2/5 1.95 flour.
Why? The more 2.70 flour you have, the closer the weighted average will be to 2.70, and the more 1.95 flour you have, the closer the weighted average will be to 1.95.
We could begin this same approach with a more algebraic account:
(The gap between 1.95 and 2.25)x(the number of lbs of 1.95 flour)=(The gap between 2.70 and 2.25)x(the number of lbs of 2.70 flour)