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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 #19

If j and k are integers, is j + k an odd integer?

(1) j > 12

(2) j = k – 1

Explanation

This is a pretty straightforward number properties question drilling us on our odds and evens rules. Remember that when adding, the only way to end up with an odd sum is to have an odd number of odd values in the list of numbers to be added together. If this is unclear, pick a few different values– odds and evens– and test it out! 🙂

Statement (1) doesn’t give us much to work with. It’s certainly not sufficient.
Statement (2) is enough to know for certain that the sum of j and k would be odd. Make up a few numbers to check it out. You’ll find that the sum of consecutive integers is always odd. Sufficient. The correct answer is (B).