Gender-Benders

By

KT Rajagopalan

The question:

A group containing certain number of men and women can complete a piece of work in 15 days working together. A woman is replaced by a man in the group and now all the people in the group can complete the same work in 12 days working together.

If again a woman is replaced by a man in the existing group, then in how many days the same piece of work can be completed by all the people in the group working together?

(a) 11           (b) 10           (c) 9             (d) 8             (e) 7   

Let us try the Conventional Approach first.

1