Can you please add me to the group as well? I am taking the June exam, thanks!

I think the flaw had to do with the fact that the AVERAGE saved was $250 per person. This speaks nothing to the distribution of which people saved. For example, if there are 100 people who switched, 75 people could have saved $0 and the other 25 all saved $1000. On average, the saving per person is $250 per person, but the majority did not save anything... (just an illustrative example)

kind of stuck on this one...

Answer choice A) says that a HUNGRY caterpillar follows the route that leads to food. Why does it have to be a hungry caterpillar? Are we supposed to know that they aren't somehow like bees or ants that look for food for the colony even when they aren't hungry? Based on that presumption, I didn't pick A).

I thought that D) had to be a necessary assumption because if their pheromones were the same as other animals, then the pheromones that they leave behind are not specifically for those in their own colony? Any explanation would be appreciated!

What a nightmare of a question lol. There's basically two presumptions made in here, and I think the "worse" assumption is the latter. The argument implicitly infers that [Similar income] --> [Similar appeal] --> [Popular appeal]. Answer choice B) attacks the first assumption (saying that similar income equates to similar appeal), which is not as bad of an assumption as answer choice C), which attacks the second assumption (similar appeal equates to popular appeal). Extremely tricky...

I chose B and got A when I BR'ed. I think the main problem with B is that the Premise already states that the variety of books has gone down. Therefore, the relationship between chain/independent bookstores and whether or not the variety has decreased does not need to be proven, because it is given in the premise. The Premise-Conclusion relationship ("the variety of books going down" and "to the detriment of the consumer") is what is missing, and that is exactly what A addresses. B was a very clever trap answer choice though.

I have an issue with A... in the example JY gave, the chicken-eating group lost 20 lbs. Say for example all that 20 lbs lost was fat. For the bread eating group, they lost 5 lbs. If A is true, there is a chance that maybe they lost more than 25 lbs of fat, but gained 20 lbs back in water weight and therefore only lost 5 lbs (in which case the P-->C relationship would be weakened). But what if they only lost 10 lbs of fat and gained 5 lbs of water weight? In that case, the conclusion that the chicken eaters lost more fat still holds.

I guess the question stem says "most weakens"... but A does not weaken the argument in all cases.

I think the reason why this question is difficult is that the correct answer and trap answer choices attack Premise and Conclusion, respectively. We are taught NEVER to do either in weakening questions and so this method of reasoning seems unfamiliar...

I think that in your reasoning for a person is so efficient that s/he puts two people out of work will demand a higher wage and therefore pay more taxes would be another assumption that has to be made if you were going down that train of thought.

@jennadrussell431.d.russell Thank you so much Jenna! I was getting so nervous about training there the day before the test and not knowing anything about Pamplona, you really put my mind to peace :) I'm located in Barcelona, 4 hours train shouldn't be that bad, do you have any other good tips for me? Thank you!

Does anyone know what "argument part" is (Q 3, 10, 43)? Did I miss an entire section on this question stem??

yes please! Thanks!