We know Stelma did not violate the rules. Thus, if there was an attempted escape from her sector before 9PM, we know Stelma left her station because the rules require it. So D) must be false.

The stimulus really reminds me of the proverb "Do as I say, not as I do." I thought of it like this:

• Mom: "You need to do better at keeping your room clean! It's a mess in there."

• Teenage brat: "But you didn't even make your bed this morning! Your room is just as messy as mine."

• Omniscient observer: The teenager's response is irrational. Mom is exhibiting the classic: "Do as I say, not as I do." The teen should make more of an effort to keep their room clean, regardless of the state of their mom's room. The value of keeping one's room clean is independent of the behaviour of another person and whether they keep their room clean.

D) is a good match for this reasoning structure. D) says: "Don't dismiss what the philosopher is saying just because his actions contradict his words. After all, a person's actions have no effect on whether what they're saying is valid." If we go back to the teen vs mom example, this is like the dad chiming in and saying: "Don't talk like that to your mother! Your mother's room is none of your concern. It's important that you keep your living space clean - it helps instill discipline."

Stimulus:

• instinct enables complex responses

• instinct --> /reasoning

• fewer nerve cells in instinct than non-instinct (flexible)

• flexible --> lots of brain neurons

• insect --> /lots of brain neurons

Analysis:

• By chaining premises, we get: insect --> /lots of brain neurons -->/flexible

• Thus, knowing something is an insect is sufficient to know that flexible (non-instinctual) behaviour is not possible.

• And if non-instinctual behaviour is not possible, we can infer that any behaviour insects engage in is purely instinctual.

Okay, so after reading some of the comments in this thread, I realized where I went wrong with this question. I picked D) because I thought that the pre-existing issue of starvation PLUS the recent loss of plankton (a food source) was a good explanation for the increased fish death rate. I didn't pick B) because it requires the assumption that the damage caused by the bacteria result in death of the organism (granted, this is a reaonsable assumption). When I saw that D) was the wrong answer, and that B) was the correct answer, I thought to myself: "Ohh okay I see. I picked the answer that connects fish deaths to plankton decline, but by saying the phenomena were "connected" in the stimulus, they meant that there was some factor responsible for both the fish deaths and the plankton decline."

HOWEVER, there is a nuance that I didn't grasp until I read some of the comments below: the question is asking us to explain the biologists' findings. What were their findings? 1) A 10% drop in P-plankton population. 2) Recent high death rates for fish species X, Y, Z. 3) No other species are affected. We can totally ignore the part about the phenomena potentially being connected. The fact that the biologists think the phenomena might be connected is really not necessary to answer the question and actually serves to lead us astray.

Going back to answer choice D), does it explain these findings? No! It explains the fish deaths, but not the decline in plankton. D) does NOT tell us why the plankton population is declining. D) isn't wrong because it fails to provide the factor affecting both fish and plankton (i.e. the connection aspect I discussed previously), but rather because it only explains one set of findings.

In contrast, answer choice B) does explain both sets of findings: the fish and plankton are both dying because of bacteria. I think that B would also have been correct had it said: "A new strain of bacteria is attacking P-plankton by destroying their cell walls. The regulations banning commercial fishing for species X, Y, Z were recently lifted." The biologists "beliefs" about the connection between the phenomena is distinct from their actual findings and because we are being asked to explain only the latter, the correct answer doesn't have to fit the "connected" hypothesis. Also, although B) doesn't address the 3rd finding (about no other species being affected) it does nothing to contradict that finding and is therefore the best answer.

I really wasn't sure why C) contributed to an explanation of the survey results, but I was fairly certain that B) did NOT help, so I managed to choose the correct answer by POE. Keeping in mind that what we are trying to explain is why, after a decade of downsizing etc, employees' perception of their job security remained fairly stable, I think the C) could help the explanation as follows:

• The employees in 1984 who had been expecting downsizing for several years likely did not feel very secure in their jobs (58% secure)

• The employees in 1994 might not have known that the downsizing was over (plus they had witnessed the downsizing over the past decade) and so likely did not feel very secure in their jobs (55% secure)

• The anticipated downsizing that preceded 1984 and the actual downsizing that preceded 1994 (and the uncertainty of what was to follow) helps to explain the similar perceptions of job security experienced by employees in the two different time periods

My mistake with this question was going in to the answer choices with only a fuzzy understanding of the flaw and hoping that it would become obvious by reading the answer choices (it did not lol). I had a half-formed thought that the flaw was that the conclusion was about skill in experimental pscy, whereas the premise was about understanding application of statistics. I forgot about the premise saying that the application of statistics is required for experimental psyc. In essence, I thought the issue was a mismatch between the concepts in the premises and those in the conclusion. Consequently, I was looking for an answer choice where the conclusion had a concept different from those discussed in the premises. In hindsight, if I had a better grasp of the flaw (the mistaken idea that the more training one has in one skill necessary for another skill, the more one's proficiency in the latter will increase), I would have seen the similar pattern of reasoning in A) (having more of something required for X will result in more X).

My mistake was not mapping the stimulus out with lawgic. If I had done that, I would have had a much easier time spotting A) as the correct answer.

Stimulus:

• /support -->/allow (translation: if an artistic endeavor is not supported by the government, it is not allowed)

• allow --> support (translation: government subsidy - aka support - is required for art to be allowed)

A:

• /arrested --> /break law

• break law --> arrested

• The country's total coal supply at the end of 1991 will be whatever the supply was in 1990, plus the amount of coal mined in 1991, minus the amount of coal consumed in 1991. For the total coal supply at the end of 1991 to be smaller than it was in 1990, then it must be true that the amount consumed was greater than the amount mined.

Algebra version:

• Supply 1991 = Supply 1990 + Mined in 1991 - Consumed in 1991

• Supply 1991 < Supply 1990

• By replacing 'supply 1991' with the first formula, we get:

  • Supply 1990 + Mined in 1991 - Consumed in 1991 < Supply 1990

• We manipulate the equation and get:

  • Mined in 1991 < Consumed in 1991

My concern about the split approach, apart from timing, is that sometimes I find the second passage easier to understand than the first and for the questions that ask about both passages, I'm better able to eliminate answers using my understanding of the second passage.

For a long time I couldn't see why C) is wrong, but it's because I was misunderstanding why the author claims that the analogy drawn between computer conferences and traditional communities does not work. In the last paragraph, the author writes:

"Further, while advocates claim that a shared interest makes computer conferences similar to traditional communities—insofar as the shared interest is analogous to a traditional community's shared location—this analogy simply does not work. Conference participants are a self-selecting group; they are drawn together by their shared interest in the topic of the conference. Actual communities, on the other hand, are "nonintentional": the people who inhabit towns or neighborhoods are thus more likely to exhibit genuine diversity—of age, career, or personal interests—than are conference participants."

When the author says that the analogy does not work, I thought they meant that it's because the computer conferences lack the shared location aspect of traditional communities. But this is not the case. What the author is actually saying is that the analogy is faulty because computer conferences lack diversity. The author is comparing a group brought together by a shared interest to a group brought together by a shared geographic location, and argues that because it is self-selecting, the former lacks diversity whereas the latter, because it is non-intentional, is likely to be more diverse. Location is just a superficial issue - diversity is what the author actually cares about. Now we can easily eliminate C).

• be kind --> want prosper

• dislike --> /content

• /dislike --> be kind

Chaining conditionals: content --> /dislike --> be kind --> want prosper

B) Must be false. The chained conditionals establish that being content is sufficient for wanting the other to prosper.

Stimulus structure: A occurred. For A to occur, we needed B and C to occur. Thus, we can conclude that B occured.

B) says: A occurred. Thus, we conclude B occured because for A to occur, we needed both B and C to occur. That's a great match for the stimulus.

Let's say there are 12 apartments on 20th avenue. We know they are all in old houses. We also know that there must be 6 old houses. BUT it does NOT follow that most (at least 4) of those houses have more than one apartment. That could be the case, for example: 6 houses, each with 2 apartments, but the distribution could also be very uneven. For example, it could also be the case that 2 of the old houses each contain 6 apartments, and that the other 4 houses don't contain any apartments.

POE worked pretty well for this question. When I was left with D), my understanding of the author's main point made me fairly confident it was the right answer.

POE:

• A) If a judicial decision is deemed by legal scholars to be problematic, subsequent courts should refrain from appealing to that decision.

  • the decision was not deemed problematic, but rather the rationale behind it. Also, the author never implies that courts shouldn't appeal to that decision, only that the rationale is problematic.

• B) If a private agreement is deemed judicially unenforceable, the substantive content of that agreement should be considered for inclusion in a statute.

  • The author does talk about contents of an agreement that would be illegal if included in a statue, BUT they never say they never talk about what should be included in a statute.

• C) If a judicial decision fails to address the most troubling aspect of a practice, then measures should be taken to prevent this practice from continuing in an altered form.

  • "measures should be taken to prevent this practice from continuing in an altered form" would mean "measures should be taken to prevent these racist covenants from continuing in an altered form". The author never talks about this

• E) If the rationale given in a judicial decision is found to be controversial, the decision should be supported by offering a new rationale.

  • Yes, the rationale was found to be controversial and the author thinks the courts were wrong to employ it, but the author doesn't say that the decision should now be given a new rationale

• D) If courts are hesitant to apply the rationale given in a past decision, this should be taken as evidence that the rationale is questionable.

  • Correct! The third paragraph solidifies this as the correct answer choice. The third paragraph starts off with the implications of consistently applying the rationale used in Shelley, why this would be bad, and goes on to say that for these reasons, the courts don't use this approach. The point of the passage as a whole is that the rationale used in Shelley was problematic. The third paragraph presents evidence to support this conclusion.

I was torn between A) and B). I chose A) on the PT but B) on BR. B) is wrong because the author doesn't say that the distinction between private action and state action employed in the rationale is incoherent, but rather criticizes the use of this distinction in the rationale. In fact, in the 3rd paragraph, the author highlights the importance of the distinction between private and state action.

• principle: increased likelihood of physical harm to others AND /motivated by desire to help others --> justified in interfering

• From this structure, we can draw conclusions about when a government is justified in interfering (if the two sufficient conditions are met), OR what must be true if a government was NOT justified in interfering (no increased likelihood of physical harm to others OR motivated by desire to help others). We can expect wrong answer choices to try to get us to confuse sufficient and necessary conditions. For instance, a conclusion of "not justified" CANNOT be the correct answer (which means we can eliminate A)

• B) C) and D) fail to meet the sufficient conditions for justifiable interference because they either don't tell us anything about the likelihood of harm to others, or they don't tell us about the motivations of those committing the actions, or both.

• That just leaves us with E), which is the correct answer. The two sufficient conditions are met (likelihood of physical harm and not motivated by desire to help others) and the proper conclusion (justified interference) is drawn.

• Rational choice theory says: You want to know which political party will receive the most popular support? Okay, well all you have to do is figure out which party voters think will give them the greatest economic advantage. That party will get the most support.

• Sociologists say: No, that theory is not correct. The rise of a politial organization is a complex phenomenon that CANNOT be explained by a simple phenomenon.

• Analysis:

  • By disagreeing with the theory, the sociologists are saying that it is NOT the case that popular support for political parties can be explained just by looking at voters' beliefs about economic advantage.

  • We can infer that the sociologists take issue with rational choice theory because they believe it attempts to explain a complex phenomenon with a simple phenomenon.

  • Thus, we can infer that sociologists believe voters' beliefs about economic advantage are a simple phenomenon, which is more or less what answer choice A) says.

• reliable source --> reasonable belief

• reliable source <-s-> /self-evident and /observable evidence

• We can swap 'reasonable belief' in for 'reliable source' in the second premise (because we know the latter MUST imply the former) to get: reasonable belief <-s-> /self-evident and /observable evidence.

• That means some reasonable beliefs are both not self evident and not grounded in observable evidence.

I was stuck between C) and D) until I realized that D) is not flawed.

I was stuck between B and C and chose wrong, sigh. I couldn't see how the first sentence of the stimulus explained the second, but I thought they had to be related in some way. It never occurred to me that the two premises might work together to produce the conclusion (which, of course, they do).

Task: find 4 correct answers that explain the characteristics of the repressors (less shy, less anxious, better tolerate frustration, better social skills, better grades, better self esteem). The remaining answer should NOT contribute to the explanation.

A) It makes sense that better focus and being less prone to distractions would result in better grades. Eliminate.

B) It makes sense that repressors have better social skills than sensitizers if the latter tend to alienate others. Eliminate.

C) If they are more likely to be rewarded for good grades and desirable social behaviour, it makes sense that repressors are more likely to engage in these behaviours than sensitizers. Eliminate.

D) The explanation is in the wrong direction. I want the thing that explains i.e. causes) the characteristics of repressor, whereas D) talks about the effects of those characteristics.

E) If sensitizers focu on the negatives more than repressors do, then it makes sense that repressors are less anxious, more tolerant of frustration and get better grades. Eliminate.

Thank goodness for the negation test. I couldn't decipher the first two sentences of the stimulus and pretty much just ignored them. I focused on the last sentence (the conclusion): "Therefore, we should be able to determine how a star's relative actual brightness correlates with other characteristics by studying stars in the same distant galaxy." When I negated D), meaning that apart from brightness, we cannot discern the characteristics of any stars in distant galaxies, I realized that the conclusion no longer held. How could we correlate brightness with other characteristics if we cannot discern those characteristics?

I was completely baffled by this question during my PT and still am to some extent. Here is my attempt at an explanation.

My problem was that I misinterpreted what was meant by "regardless of whether they were treated by a GP or a specialist". I interpreted it to mean: if patient A is seen by a GP, they have a 31% chance of improving and if that same patient is seen by a specialist, they would also have a 31% chance of improving. However, what I actually think it means is that patient A seeing a GP and patient B seeing a specialist each have a 31% chance of improving. The stimulus concludes that this means that the choice between a specialist and a GP won't affect the patient's chances of improvement. BUT we have to think about who is seeing GPs versus who is seeing specialists? What kinds of patients are they? What kinds of issues are they being treated for? We aren't given this information, but we know that this was not an experiment where patients were randomly assigned to treatment groups. The information we're given is drawn from records (i.e. from real world medical practice) where patients are NOT randomly assigned to GPs versus specialists.

Let's imagine patient A is seeing a GP for a sprained ankle whereas patient B is seeing a specialist after a serious car accident where they suffered a spinal cord injury. If patient B sees the GP rather than the specialist, are their chances of improving still the same? The flawed argument we're given would say: "yes, patient B's chances of major improvement are the same, regardless of whether they see a GP or a specialist for their spinal cord injury". But the evidence provided in the argument does not allow us to draw this conclusion. We only know about the chances of improvement for those patients who self-selected into the GP vs specialist treatment groups. We don't know what would happen if they were to be treated by a different practioner instead.

Answer choice E) hints at the idea of patients self-selecting into treatment groups (the practioner they see depends on their injury and who is best placed to treat it).

I picked B) because I remembered a past question about the predictions of economists where the correct answer picked up on this idea of changing circumstances between now and the future. When I saw B) I thought: "Well yeah, if the transportation costs were to decrease in the future, then the conclusion that it won't be economically feasible to colonize Mars starts to look pretty weak." BUT I had made an assumption without even realizing it! I was assuming that the cost would decrease by a significant amount - enough to make the endeavour economically feasible. A tiny reduction in what we know to be very high costs does very little to undermine the conclusion about economic feasibility.

In contrast, if we negate E) and Mars IS a practical source of the materials needed for establishing human habitation there, then transporting the materials through space is no longer necessary and the argument falls apart.

I flagged this question during my PT because I was unsure about my answer but I ended up getting it right. I was quite confused because three of the answer choices looked attractive to me (B, C and E) but what really helped me was taking a step back and identifying the conclusion in the stimulus. The conclusion is the first sentence: "Some of the rare pygmy bears should be moved from their native island to the neighboring island." The support for this prescriptive conclusion is that the bears risk extinction from habitat loss on their native island and the only way to save them is by moving them to a neighboring island, which is the only place with a similar habitat. In very specific terms, the principle we are looking for would be something like: "If the only way to potentially save a species at risk of extinction from habitat loss is to move them to a new location with a similar habitat, then we should move some of the members of that species to said new location."

• Answer choice C) is a good match for this principle, expressed in more general terms. C) says : "If a species is in danger of extinction, whatever is most likely to prevent the extinction should be undertaken."

  • Now let's check that this matches the stimulus:

    • Is the pygmy bear in danger of extinction? Yes.

    • What is the thing most likely to prevent their extinction? Moving them to a neighboring island (the stimulus says this is the only viable chance and even if those chances are very slim, it is still the most likely way to succeed in saving the species).

    • The principle would tell us to undertake this move. Does the argugment say to move the bears? Yes.

    • It's a match!

• B) is incorrect because it tells us when rare animals should NOT be moved (if the habitas are not similar). In other words, similarity between habitats is a necessary condition for moving a rare animal. We meet that condition (we know the habitat on the neighboring island is similar) BUT we must not confuse a necessary condition for a sufficient one. We're looking for the principle that tells us when animals SHOULD be moved and meeting the necessary condition in B) does not help us reach this conclusion.

• E) is incorrect because we are not looking for a conclusion that says something is "permissible", but rather a prescriptive conclusion that tells us we SHOULD undertake an action