PT132.S4.Q16 > Question

SECTION 1 · rc

PASSAGE 1

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7 Question 8

PASSAGE 2

Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13 Question 14

PASSAGE 3

Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19 Question 20 Question 21

PASSAGE 4

Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25 Question 26 Question 27

SECTION 2 · lr

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7 Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13 Question 14 Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19 Question 20 Question 21 Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25 Question 26

SECTION 3 · rc

PASSAGE 1

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7

PASSAGE 2

Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13

PASSAGE 3

Question 14 Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19 Question 20

PASSAGE 4

Question 21 Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25 Question 26 Question 27 Question 28

SECTION 4 · lr

The author concludes that, for engraving, there are more engraving etching tools than non-engraving etching tools. Why? Because all etching tools are either pin-tipped or bladed; pin-tipped are always engraving tools, and bladed tools could be either.

The conclusion is a comparative statement of quantity (actual numbers), but we don’t have information about quantity. If pin-tipped tools aren’t high enough in numbers, the conclusion won’t be true. We need to know either that pin-tipped and bladed are equal in number of tools, or that pin-tipped is larger in number.

Illustrating the argument’s weakness in a hypothetical: Maybe pin-tipped only accounts for two tools, while bladed accounts for 300 tools and 2/3rds are non-engraving.

This does not solve the weakness described in our analysis. Without knowing the total quantity of the sets pin-tipped and bladed, we could still have a situation where non-engraving tools outnumber the engraving tools.

If this is true, then there’s no possible distribution of bladed tools that could prevent our conclusion. Even if there’s only one bladed tool used for engraving, the combination of pin-tipped and bladed engraving tools will still outnumber non-engraving.

We already knew this. Though not explicitly stated, we can safely interpret “All etching tools are either pin-tipped or bladed” to mean that they must be one or the other, but not both. It also does not guarantee our conclusion.

This does not guarantee that engraving tools outnumber non-engraving, or the other way around. We could manipulate the unknown total number of bladed or pin-tipped tools to suit either conclusion. We need to know that the total number in each set will prevent that from happening.

We know this as inference from the support: All etching tools are either pin-tipped or bladed, and all of the non-engraving etching tools are in the bladed category.

PrepTest 132 - Section 4 - Question 16

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