Question 119
HardOriginal questionEvery evening, Kamla sold vegetables from a at the corner of Gandhi Road. She had never been to school, but she could add up a bill for six kinds of vegetables, take a five-hundred-rupee note and count out the change faster than any customer could check it on a phone.
One evening a college boy bought two kilos of onions, one kilo of tomatoes and half a kilo of beans. Kamla said, "One hundred and forty," before he had even put his wallet away.
The boy took out his phone and did the sum. "How did you do that so fast?" he asked.
Kamla laughed. "Onions are forty, so two kilos are eighty. Tomatoes are forty. Beans are forty a kilo, so half is twenty. Eighty and forty and twenty." She shrugged. "I have been doing this since I was ten."
The boy studied . He told her that in his class they were learning about and margins, and that he found it difficult. Kamla asked what a was. He explained: the difference between what you pay for something and what you sell it for.
She thought for a moment. "I buy tomatoes at the mandi for twenty-eight and sell them for forty," she said. "But one kilo in every ten goes bad. So my real margin is less."
The boy stared at her. "That," he said, "is exactly what our professor took an hour to explain."
Why does Kamla say her "real margin is less" than the difference between 28 and 40?
Show the answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
"One kilo in every ten goes bad", so she pays for tomatoes she cannot sell, and her actual gain is smaller.
Worth noting
The reason she gives is waste, not discounts or rising prices.
- Concept
- Following a practical argument
- Typical timeTypical
- 55 s
- Your timeYours
- —
Ten questions from Narrative passages, at your own pace.