Q25 - A clothing manufacturer reports

[livia.maas]

Hi all,

I ended up choosing (D) for this question, although the correct answer is (E). How is (E) correct? Just because there's a difference in how unsalable and recycled garments are counted, it doesn't necessarily explain the percentage change.

I'm also confused whether the percentages are being drawn from two different groups. Please help?

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type: Explain the Discrepancy

Reading Goal:
Given that IDEA 1 is true, how is it that IDEA 2 is also true?

PARADOX

Given that 7% of garments produced are unsalable (and they all get recycled as scrap)
How is it that 9% of garments produced are recycled as scrap?

WHAT WE WOULD EXPECT
If 7% of garments can't be sold and get recycled, we'd think that
7% of garments get recycled.

Why is the % higher than 7%?

PREDICTING THE ANSWER
That's actually kinda dangerous for these questions, as the test writers love to surprise us with how they resolve the paradox.

My prediction for this paradox is "some garments that CAN be sold still end up getting recycled".

That would allow for
7% of garments are unsalable and get recycled
+
2% of garments are salable and get recycled
==================
9% of garments get recycled

But they don't go that direction.

ANSWER CHOICES
mantra: "Why is the % of recycled scrap higher than the % of unsalable garments?"

(A) This is about salable, which we only care about if we learn that it gets recycled as scrap sometimes.

(B) Hearing about WHY something is deemed unsalable doesn't help us resolve the % math.

(C) Again, we don't care about the backstory behind this 7% unsalable figure. We just need to reconcile it with the 9% statistic.

(D) Actual numbers don't matter, because we're talking percentages.

(E) This answer speaks to the 7% (unsalable) vs. 9% (recycled) stats. It shows how the same quantity of clothing (a huge stack of unsalable clothing) might be measured as 7% of all garments (70 out of the 1000 garments we made) or measured as 9% of garments (90lbs out of the 1000lbs of clothing we made).

Apparently, the reject pile is heavier than our average piece of clothing. We apparently are most likely to mess up heavy jackets and sweaters. So 7% of items becomes 9% of fabric.

Hope this helps.

[AshleyT786]

But how do you even know to focus on E? For me, it seemed like an irrelevant difference.

[AshleyT786]

I thought C was correct because if some inspectors were overeporting defects then those garments were not truly "unsalable" which could possibly explain the discrepancy in percentages.