[Aptitude] Alligations,Mixtures,Alloys: Water,Milk,Wine mixing: Weighted

Average Made Easy for CSAT,CAT,CMAT,IBPS Aptitude

1. Easy Wine and Water Mixing Problem
2. Two Solutions: Selling Price of Wine and Prot
3. Dilution by adding Water in the Wine
4. Average Prot / Interest Rate: Jethalals Mobile shop
5. Average weight of Group : Gokuldham societys case
6. Recommended Booklist
7. Previous Articles
Introduction
Mixture, Alligation and Alloy questions routinely appear in Aptitude exams for
Government jobs, Bank PO (IBPS) and MBA entrance exams (CMAT, CAT).
The concept is very easy, You can master this concept, after barely 2 hours
practice, unless you try to complicate it by yourself by mugging up the formulas
from R.S.Agarwals (Most bogus) book on Quantitative aptitude.

A typical problem runs like this

there is a cheap liquid (water), and there is an expensive liquid (Milk, Wine)
sometimes, instead of liquid, solids are given: rice / wheat of different variety,
gold, silver, zinc and iron alloys etc.
both are given in different quantities, and mixed together. You are asked to
calculate the concentration of nal mixture or its selling price.
Or you can be asked to nd the amount of water or milk to be added in given
mixture to bring the concentration to 50% etc.
The same concept can be extended for nding average speed, average height,
interest rates etc.
Mathematically speaking, this is a problem of weighted average
Let us start with a very basic (and easy) problem
Case: Easy Wine and Water mixture Problem

you have a big bottle of Blue water 10 lit.

and youve a glass of Pure Red wine 2 lit. (assuming that a glass can be that big
!)
You mix them both, and you get a purple colour solution. (10+2=12 lit)
(Mixture) what is the concentration of wine in the nal mixture?
Step 1: Arrange them in a straight line

First arrange these three bottles in a straight line, in ascending order of their
price / quality / concentration.
Water is cheapest, and wine is costliest. The Mixture is going to be not as cheap
as water and not as costly as wine, so we put it in between these two bottle.
(alternative logic:), since weve to nd the concentration of wine, : Water bottle has
0% wine in it, so in terms of concentration it has 0% wine. So it goes in the left, wine
is pure, so it has 100% wine, and the mixture will have wine between the range of 0 to
100%.
Step 2: Write down the Quality /concentration /price
On the head (top) of each item, write down its concentration, price, speed
(Whatever is given in the sum).
Since we are asked about wines concentration in mixture, it looks like this
Blue Water =0% wine
Purple Mixture= m% wine (weve to nd out)
Red glass= 100% wine

Step 3: Write down the weight / volume.
Step 4: Divide and Rule!
Now our table looks like this
You dont need to mug up any formulas for cheaper liquid and expensive liquid. Just
remember this visual-move
100 minus m = 10 lit..(i)
Same way
(M minus 0) =2 lit..(ii)
We cannot do (0 minus M) because M is concentration of wine in the nal mixture. It
is bigger than 0% and smaller than 100%.
Matter is over. Sum is solved. Game Finished.
Just divide equation (i) from equation (ii) or you can do reverse divide (ii) from (i),
youll get the value of m% in either case. See this image for actual calculation
Final answer= the concentration of Wine in given mixture is 16.66%
Which also means, concentration of Water in this given mixture
=100 16.6% ;because conc. Of water + conc. Of wine =100%
=83.4% water.
Ofcourse real exam questions wont be this easy so lets take a few cases.
Case: Average price and profit after mixing two solutions
16 lit. of Soda is mixed with 5 lit. of Wine. Price of this Soda is Rs.12 / lit
and price of wine Rs.33/lit. What is the average price of this mixture.
And if the bartender wishes to make 25% prot on his investment, at what
price should he sell this mixture?
Our method remains the same. Arrange them in ascending order, put values on the top
and bottom of each item. Itll look like this
Now do the visual move. And you get two equations
33 minus m = 16
M minus 12 = 5 ; very important. Donot make mistake. M is bigger than 12.
Divide them
(33-m)/(m-12)=16/5
Manually solving this equation
(33-m)x5=16(m-12)
Now you can manually solve this equation to get the value of m, but as You can
understand, this can be time consuming method to solve equation because weve
to multiply 33 with 5 and 16 with 12 and then do addition, subtraction might
make mistake in calculation.
So better apply the
Componendo principle of ratio proportion
Sidenotes
Answer for average must be between the two extremes: 12 and 33.
So if you get the answer outside this [12-33] range, know that youve made
mistake somewhere in calculation.
Whenever possible, do this componendo method to solve the sum quickly
without making mistakes in lengthy multiplications. At time youll have to use
Dividendo principle i.e. same but instead of adding (+) bottom to top, you
subtract (-) bottom from top.

Back to the question:
Price of Final mixture is 17 Rs. Per litre. But this is the cost-price for the
bartender. HE wants to make 25% prot on this.
What is 25% of 17? = 17 x (25/100) = Rs.4.25
So his Selling price = Cost price + prot of 25% =17 + 4.25 = 21.25
Quicker method for profit calculation
25% =25/100 = 1/4
You add this one fourth part to the total one part of given cost price.
So 1 plus ! =5/4 parts.
Multiply (5/4) with 17 and you get 21.25 = our selling price.
Final Answer : Bartender should sell this mixture at 21.25 rupees per liter, if he
wants to make 25% prot.
Same way, if he had asked to nd selling price for 50% prot, multiply 17 with
3/2. (because 50%=1/2)
Case: Add water to decrease the concentration (dilution)
A 75 liter mixture of wine and water contains 80% wine. How much water
should be added to decrease the concentration of wine to 75%?
We are already given a mixture and weve to add water and create a new diluted
mixture.
Assume that purple bottle contains this 75 liter mixture of 80% wine.
Well add v liters of pure water into this purple bottle to dilute it and get the
middle mixture of 75% concentration.
The process is same, arrange them in ascending order, and then add values at top
and bottom.
Now apply the visual move:
80-75=V lit. eq.(1)
75-0=75 lit eq.(2)
Very easy, divide eq. 1 with 2 and you get V=5 liters directly.
Case: Average profit or interest Rate

The owner of Gada Electronics, Jethalal sold total 108 mobiles of two
companies last month. Samsung at 36% prot and Nokia at 9% prot. If he
made total 17% prot on total sales of these mobile phones, how many
Samsung phones did he sell?
It is same wine and water problem, but instead weve phones.
108 phones = total volume of nal mixture containing wine + water.
Our procedure remains the same, rst arrange them in a straight line, in ascending
order of their prot (Value or whatever).
Assume that weve V number of Samsung mobiles
Since total mobiles =108 = Samsung + Nokia,
hence Nokia mobiles = 108-V
Now do the visual method:
36-17=108-V
17-9=V
Divide them and apply componendo principle of ratio
Final Answer= Jethalal sold 32 samsung mobiles.
Which also means he sold 108 minus 32 =76 Nokia phones.
Case: average weight of group
400 people live in Gokuldham society. Average weight of men is 80kg and
women is 60 kg. If the average weight of all people combined is 65 kg,
how many women live in this society ?
First arrange them in a straight line, in ascending order of their average weight.
Assume that Number of women = V. and since total residents are 400, men are
400-V.
The the simple Visual step and division of two equations
(80-65)/(65-60)=v/(400-v)
Solve it and you get
Number of ladies (v)=300.
This answer seems plausible too, because the average weight 65 is closer to 60,
that means more number of women in the weighting scale, so the balance shift
towards their side. because Men are only 100.
Case : Average speed.
Will be covered under separate article on TSD (Time, Speed, distance)

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URL to article: http://mrunal.org/2012/03/aptitude-alligationsmixturesalloys.html
Posted By Mrunal On 20/03/2012 @ 19:33 In the category Aptitude