GMAT Ninja Quant Ep 13: Overlapping Sets

Do overlapping sets questions on the GMAT or Executive Assessment leave you scratching your head? Are you getting tripped up by the tricky wording? And are you unsure whether to use a table, Venn diagrams, or equations?

In this video, Charles—a GMAT Ninja tutor with a perfect 800 GMAT score—will guide you through a streamlined approach to tackle overlapping sets questions with confidence. He’ll help you develop a consistent method for solving these questions, revealing that the skills needed to master even the toughest EA and GMAT overlapping sets problems are actually quite straightforward—the exam just gives these questions an intimidating illusion of complexity.

This video covers questions across a range of difficulty levels. Charles starts with the basics, laying the foundation you’ll need to handle overlapping sets, then ups the ante with challenging questions designed to test your skills, even if you're aiming for a top quant score well into the 80s on the GMAT.

This is video #13 in our series of full-length GMAT quant lessons. For updates on upcoming videos, please subscribe!

This video will cover:
➡️ Basic “2-way” overlapping sets questions
➡️ 2-way overlapping sets with wacky language
➡️ Data Sufficiency with overlapping sets
➡️ 3-way overlapping sets

This video is for you if:
➡️ You struggle with the basics
➡️ You feel inefficient
➡️ You get twisted up in the “word soup” of these questions
➡️ You like short, middle-aged GMAT tutors
➡️ You’re not sure why your method works and feel like it might let you down when it matters
➡️ You’re not sure why you struggle

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Want more GMAT test-prep tips and advice?

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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
01:58 Q1 - Overlapping Sets Basics
07:01 Q2 - Playing with wording
12:01 Q3 - 3-item Overlapping Sets
19:25 Q4 - Data Sufficiency
25:34 Q5 - Algebra in Overlapping Sets
32:24 Q6 - Probability and Overlapping Sets
38:39 Q7 - Making things difficult

[saireddy]

The last question is a great help. Just made the video worth double. I like how your videos start off from the absolute basics and gradually ramp up the difficulty. Makes them helpful for most of us. Thanks.

[NR-cntr]

This video made the concept very easy to understand and made me confident in answering such questions. Thank you so much for this entire quant series.

[pierof]

Hi,
for overlapping problems with 3 and not 2 groups, is there a way to leverage on your well explained tabular way?

[AllThingsAudio]

Hi - I was curious how I could identify an "overlapping sets" question and that in fact, a grid solution should be the way to go? For ex, I treated q5 as an algebraic word problem but of course the grid solution presented in the video made things much more efficient. Any help here would be appreciated - thanks!

[SatishSahoo-sh]

Hi Charles,

How to solve the below question using "counting's approach"?

In a class of 50 students, 20 play Hockey, 15 play Cricket and 11 play Football. 7 play both Hockey and Cricket, 4 play Cricket and Football and 5 play Hockey and football. If 18 students do not play any of these given sports, how many students play exactly two of these sports?

[VedangSharda]

Hi, I tried solving the below with your method, but the answer is showing up to be different:

Workers are grouped by their areas of expertise, and are placed on at least one team. 20 are on the marketing team, 30 are on the Sales team, and 40 are on the Vision team. 5 workers are on both the Marketing and Sales teams, 6 workers are on both the Sales and Vision teams, 9 workers are on both the Marketing and Vision teams, and 4 workers are on all three teams. How many workers are there in total?

[nitinsethi]

Hey, I'm unable to find the answer to this question with the same method. Can you please help here?

At a certain 600-person holiday party, all of the people like eggnog, dim sum, or mashed potatoes. A total of 250 people like eggnog, 350 people like dim sum, and 300 people like mashed potatoes. If exactly 75 of the people like all three foods, how many people like
exactly two of the foods?

[VedangSharda]

Of 20 adults, 5 belong to X, 7 belong to Y, and 9 belong to Z. If 2 belong to all three organizations and 3 belong to exactly 2 organizations, how many belong to none of these organizations? There is no question in the video that includes how to find the number of adults in the "None" category.