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Free GMAT Graphs & Tables Practice Question

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Five production lines in rows; columns: units produced, defect rate (percent), total cost (thousands of dollars). Sortable.
Line	Units produced	Defect rate (%)	Total cost ($K)
L1	5,000	2%	120
L2	8,000	5%	160
L3	6,000	3%	150
L4	4,000	6%	100
L5	10,000	4%	220

The table shows, for five production lines at a factory, the number of units produced, the defect rate (the percentage of units produced that were defective), and the total operating cost in thousands of dollars, all for last month. The table can be sorted by any column. For each statement, select Yes if it must be true based only on the data shown; otherwise select No.

(1) More than half of the lines produced more than 200 defective units: . (2) Line L4 has the lowest cost per unit produced of any line: . (3) Among the lines that produced more than 6,000 units, more than one has a defect rate below 5%: .

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Answer & Explanation

Correct answer

1: Yes · 2: No · 3: No

Each statement asks you to build a quantity from two columns: defective units, cost per unit, and a conditioned count.

Statement 1: Yes. Defective units is units times defect rate: L1 100, L2 400, L3 180, L4 240, L5 400. The lines above 200 defective units are L2, L4, and L5, three of the five, which is more than half, so the statement is true. The trap is to rank by defect rate, see L4's 6% on top, and assume only the highest-rate lines are the high-defect ones; but L5 turns out 400 defects at only 4% because it produces 10,000 units.

Statement 2: No. Cost per unit is total cost divided by units: L1 is $120,000 / 5,000 = $24, L2 is $160,000 / 8,000 = $20, L3 is $150,000 / 6,000 = $25, L4 is $100,000 / 4,000 = $25, and L5 is $220,000 / 10,000 = $22. The lowest cost per unit is L2 at $20; L4 is $25, tied with L3 for the highest, so L4 is not the lowest and the statement is false. The bait is that L4 has the smallest total cost, $100,000; but spread over only 4,000 units that is a high per-unit cost, not the lowest.

Statement 3: No. First keep the lines that produced more than 6,000 units: L2 (8,000) and L5 (10,000). Among those, a defect rate below 5% holds only for L5 at 4%; L2 is exactly 5%, which is not below 5%. That is just one line, not more than one, so the statement is false. The traps are reading "below 5%" to include 5%, and checking the defect rate across all lines instead of only the two large ones.

The through-line: a rate times a base gives the real count, the smallest total need not be the smallest per unit, and a conditioned count is taken only over the survivors. Correct answers: Yes / No / No.