In the very first episode of our numerical reasoning explanations video series we discuss the role decimal places in the context of apples.
Watch this entertaining 4 minutes long video to refresh your knowledge on decimal places and to add another preparation tool to your library!
Transcript
Hello, and welcome to Test Tube, Online EU Training’s video explanation series on European Personnel Selection Office tests.
In this installation, we will talk about numerical reasoning tests and the role of decimal places in the context of [pause] apples.
Here is the question posed by the test:
Based on the data in the table, Germany harvested 56200 more tonnes of apples in 2006 than in 2005 on a slightly larger land area. How much apple (in thousand tonnes) would they have harvested in 2006 if they had used 400 hectares more land than they did in 2005?
Quite a handful, isn’t it? Remember, there are three things you always have to do to solve a numerical reasoning test:
1. Collect the data you will use.
2. Figure out what you’re gonna do with it.
3. Calculate!
Let’s start with the first one. The question establishes a relationship between the area harvested for apple and the weight of the apples harvested. ’The larger the area harvested, the more apples there will be’ – the thinking goes.
We are going to use three pieces of information from the table:
1. The weight of the apples harvested in 2006 (947.6 thousand tonnes)
2. The total area harvested in 2005 (32.3 thousand hectares) to which we will add the extra 400 hectares
3. The total area harvested in 2006 (32.5 thousand hectares) to calulate the 2006 apples / hectare value
Next, we need to figure out what we are going to do with this information. First, we’re gonna want to figure out how much apple was harvested per hectare in 2006. Once we have that, we can take the area harvested in 2005 and increase it by 400 hectares, as instructed in the question text. As a last step, we will calculate the total weight of the apples that could have been harvested on this increased land area.
Let’s start calculating. To calculate the weight of apples harvested per hectare in 2006, we divide the total weight by the total area:
947.6 / 32.5
This results in 29.16 tonnes of apple per hectare. Recall how both the total weight and the land area were given in thousands? Well, since we divided thousands by thousands, they cancelled each other out, so we don’t need to worry about them any more.
Now let’s calculate the new land area by adding 400 hectares to the 2005 harvested land area. Since the area is given in thousands, we need to convert 400 into thousands as well, which will be 0.4.
The new area is then 32.3 + 0.4 thousand hectares, which adds up to 32.7 thousand hectares.
There is only one thing left to do: calculate the weight of the apples harvested. Since we know how many hectares we have and how much apple is harvested per hectare, this will be easy enough: we mutiply these two numbers.
32.7 thousand multiplied by 29.16 tonnes equals 953.53 thousand tonnes.
That’s a lot of apples, isn’t it?
Remember:
Collect the data. Figure out what to do. Calculate.
Good luck in your preparation for the next EPSO exam!