All the clients that Company X had at the beginning of last

[sharmin.karim]

All the clients that Company X had at the beginning of last year remained with the company for the whole year. If Company X acquired new clients during the year, what was the ratio of the number of clients that Company X had at the end of last year to the number of clients that it had at the beginning of last year?

1. The ratio of the number of clients that Company X had at the beginning of last year to the number of new clients that it acquired during the year was 12 to 1.

2. Company X had 144 clients at the beginning of last year.

[nitin_prakash_khanna]

Lets assume company had x clients at the begining of the year and it acquired y clients during the year.

Question is asking what is the ratio (y+x) / x

St 1.
x/y = 12/1
y=x/12

x+y/x
plugging y=x/12, the above ratio is 13/12.

SUFFICIENT

St. 2 x=144, y = not known.
INSUFFICIENT

Ans A.

[Ben Ku]

When attempting ratio problems, I like using the unknown multiplier.

This means if "The ratio of the number of clients that Company X had at the beginning of last year to the number of new clients that it acquired during the year was 12 to 1," then the number of clients at the beginning of the year is 12n, new clients is n.

We're looking for the ratio of (end of year clients) / (beginning of year clients), or (12n + n) / (12n) = (13n)/(12n) = 13/12.

So (1) is sufficient, and (A) is the answer. Hope that helps.

[prajeen_v]

Hello,
I have a specific question here. The question explicitly says that "All the clients that Company X had at the beginning of last year remained with the company for the whole year. "
Could this also mean that there is a chance that the newly joined clients could leave the company before the end of the year?
If such a case happens, i believe A is not sufficient.

Could you please correct me if i am missing anything?
thank :)

[RonPurewal]

Hello,
I have a specific question here. The question explicitly says that "All the clients that Company X had at the beginning of last year remained with the company for the whole year. "
Could this also mean that there is a chance that the newly joined clients could leave the company before the end of the year?
If such a case happens, i believe A is not sufficient.

Could you please correct me if i am missing anything?
thank :)

this is technically a valid question. when you get problems like this, then, you should go with the least "tricky" reading of the problem.
there are a couple of other problems in which the same is true (e.g., in OG12 DS #70 you must assume that mary does not have 0 friends). in these problems, one thing seems to be constant: GMAC seems never to require students to detect a "tricky" interpretation of a problem statement that can be interpreted in a simpler or more straightforward way.