@Zanderantochow While this question is annoying, I find that it is quite rare. With that being said, I can see why the answer is E, I just don't agree with the 7Sage explanation. A better explanation is that the passage is simply far too long to fit on a brochure, and is a bit too academic for a brochure. I have more issues with the explanation than with the question itself.

@mpglover Same boat as you when it came to narrowing down, but I picked E. Ultimately my choice was, even though I cannot say with certainty if pA author would view it as a success, saying that "political influence of women" is a current trend of scholarship is mostly unsupported. pA says the trend is away from women in particular and more toward gender relations (men, women, and the structures that relate them to each other). It never claims that the trend is toward the "political influence of women", and if anything, it would be a trend away from that and toward a more gendered view. My choice just came down to comparing the flaws in both C and E and deciding which flaw is worse. "Successfully" could have different interpretations (perhaps it just means that pA author would think using gender successfully achieved its stated purpose in pA, which it did). I couldn't really explain away "political influence of women" as well. I hope this makes sense.

I think the explanation for answer choice A is not fully encompassing. I would argue that Alex never makes this assertion, as Alex never says "most", and also "investors" does not imply owners. Therefore, Alex doesn't clearly address this assertion one way or another.

@EmboldenedJoyousMembership For a RRE (Resolve, Reconcile, or Explain) question, your goal is to not find a 100% full proof explanation for the results and try to poke holes in the answer choices. You're looking for the answer that simply could explain an unexpected result in some way. Unclear questions could indeed explain why a minority of the test subjects got the shading question wrong, perhaps because the question was misunderstood. Of course you could find a way to say that answer choice is not strong enough because "how does that mean the test subjects got it wrong? They could have still understood the question if it wasn't completely clear.". But that is not what the question is asking of you. Any explanation that could be plausible to explain unexpected results would meet the bar of "help to explain".

I misunderstood D but still picked A. Let's suppose you read D as saying that anti-environmentalism is actually the prevailing position. I would still argue that it is not strongly supported because just saying environmentalism is not politically orthodox and anti-environmentalism is not a dissenting view does not automatically indicate the reverse. It's possible that it is a 50/50 issue and neither side are "renegades" or "prevailing". It could just be a controversial issue, and the stimulus does not strongly support the reverse of what it is saying.

@jy1297 I agree with your explanation about "any" including hypothetical governments or governments yet to exist, whereas "no government" could only be referring to past and/or current governments. I think that is a more compelling explanation for "no government" to be a subsect of "any government". Regardless though, I cannot figure out a guaranteed way to not get a similar question like this right in the future, other than just being super careful with wordage and allowing some interpretation.

I'm not sure if anyone else will find this helpful, but I wanted to share a confusion I had and how I resolved it.

I initially misunderstood "only if" to mean that not increasing costs was the only condition that needed to be met in order to convert from a paper version to an online version. Because of that, I treated it as a sufficient condition.

What helped me was realizing that "only if" is inherently exclusionary. When someone says that an action can occur only if a certain condition is met, they are really saying that the action cannot occur if that condition is not met. In this stimulus, the treasurer is effectively saying that the journal cannot switch to an online version if doing so would increase publication costs.

That exclusion is what makes the condition necessary. The statement is identifying something that must be true before the conversion can occur, but it is not saying that the condition alone is enough to justify the conversion.

To see the difference, imagine the word "only" were removed and the treasurer instead said, "We should convert if doing so will not increase costs." That version is permissive rather than exclusionary. It tells us that avoiding increased costs is enough to justify converting, making it a sufficient condition.

What finally made the distinction click for me was focusing less on the word "only" itself and more on what the statement is doing. Is it excluding a possibility if a condition is not met, or is it permitting an outcome when a condition is met? Exclusion points toward a necessary condition; permission points toward a sufficient condition.

@bappel I agree that this sounds circular. But I would assume the explanation is that the "difficulty with modeling a particular economic assumption" is that the math involved is difficult. It's not really saying the math is hard because doing the math is hard, although honestly, it really does sound like that. In my opinion, the paragraph doesn't actually explain the difficulty in any meaningful way, only stating that the math is difficult. If it had elaborated a little more as to why, then I think the answer would be more clear.

@JamieAAbrams Thank you for this explanation. It makes sense that the question is really asking "Given the writing style, language, etc, where would you most likely find this type of writing". It would rule out a brochure, because brochures tend to use more simple language and probably could not fit this much text.

I think the explanations contradict themselves in this question. It says choice A is wrong because brochures would include additional things, like where to eat. But it does not stay consistant with choice E explanation. In a book about various North American folk songs, you would expect the passage would have discussed more than just Corridos, which is why I thought it was not the answer. I understand that this passage could have just been "drawn" from the book, but than it doesn't make sense for A to be wrong on the basis that it doesn't include every element of a brochure.

@msingh0831x225 I would agree and even just say that C is simply unsupported. No where is it said that the water department has history of enforcing over inclusive rules, and if anything, there's reason to think the opposite. I think that alone rules out C as a potential answer.

I figured A was a potential answer because passage A states "... since legislative oversight assures that the agency does not stray too far from the intended..." This indicated to be that the author of passage A was concerned with legislative oversight when making decisions regarding selective enforcement of the law, and would want the legislature to weigh in as a method of "oversight" before any decision is made. As for the answer being B, if passage A is so worried about social costs, wouldn't they want an option that completely eliminates any social cost by not shutting off anyone's water? Like choice E.

I'm really not getting this one. It seems that the purpose is to demonstrate an example (call attention) to the increasing prevalence of industries that demonstrate the Pin Factory. By using railroads as an example, I feel it serves to bolster practical examples of the Pin Factory. It doesn't necessarily exist to say that the Invisible Hand falls short, only that the Pin Factory has merit. I don't see answer choices C and D being at odds with each other. I just felt C was more supported due to discussions surrounding the Pin Factory, and not being surrounded by discussions of the Invisible Hand falling short.