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This series is designed to help you step up your Data Sufficiency practice while we all spend a little extra time at home during the coronavirus situation; I’m going to publish one practice Data Sufficiency question each day! You can choose to do all of them, or none of them. 

Click on the tag “Social Distancing DS Challenge” at the bottom of this post to see all of the questions in this series! 

And remember to take whatever precautions you need to stay healthy over the next few weeks! 

Question #12

Is the integer m a prime number?

(1) 2m = 10

(2) 3 < m < 6

Explanation

A number is prime when it has exactly two factors: itself and 1 (NB: 1 is not a prime number because it only has one factor, itself which is one).

With statement (1), we can solve for a single value of m (and that’s enough to know we can get an absolute yes or absolute no, so you can mark this one as sufficient here and move on to the next statement). If you want to see it: 2m = 10; m = 5; 5 is prime: Sufficient.

Statement (2) gives us a range of integers that includes 4 and 5. Since 5 is prime and 4 is not prime, this statement is NOT sufficient to answer the question. The correct answer is (A).