I got it right and then missed in BR for essentially the same reason: I had a hard time seeing what the conclusion was.

I chose E but was very unsure for this exact reason. Let's say a country establishes a government and they put in their constitution that bartering will be the primary economic system. Later they amend the constitution when they develop currency. Is bartering not the original economic system? It really depends on the the interpretation of "original." Is a system being in place when a community/state was established sufficient for that system to be the original, or does original depend on what people were doing prior to the establishment of that community/state, i.e. the beginning of human civilization?

same - i think this is the chief difficulty of this question

I considered this briefly during the test, but I think it's way too large of an assumption, especially compared to those required for the other choices.

agreed found #3 and #6 to be quite difficult

missed this question for the same reason - had B and then came back to this question with time left over and changed it b/c I noticed this. Then I couldn't get it right in blind review because literally none of the answers made sense.

got everything else right on this passage except this question lol cuz I interpreted "freely assumed" to mean something else

I thought the same thing as well and dismissed D during the test. Perhaps, D is referring to the social science field in general and thus implicitly makes a claim about ALL social science researchers, in which case we know just from the example in the passage that they can't remain totally objective.

Agreed, this might be the hardest RC question I've encountered thus far

Nvm I understand it now

I do not understand at all why E is correct. E simply tells us that the longer a beverage is in use in a place, the more widely used the beverage is. From this we can only conclude the following: if place X starts using a beverage today, 10 years from now, it is likely that there will be wider use of the beverage in place X. However, if there is widespread use of a beverage in place X today, we have no indication as to whether or not the beverage has been used for a long time. It could be the case that upon it's introduction, the beverage was extremely popular and matched the preferences of a great number of people living in place X. For this same reason, we are not permitted to make comparisons about use across different places. Simply because place X has more widespread use than place Y does not imply that place X started using the beverage before place Y. It could be the case that place X has much greater demand/ preference for a beverage so popularity exploded upon introduction, while use has gradually increased over a much longer period of time in place Y, while still not reaching the level in place X.

I chose A during the test and see why it's wrong as we cannot equate "more varieties" with "a great variety." But, IF this assumption is granted, which (arguably) isn't terribly unreasonable, since there are more varieties of the beverage in Paraguay than anywhere else in the world, we know that it's likely the beverage was used for a long time in Paraguay. This doesn't greatly strengthen the argument, but at least it tells us SOMETHING. As far as I can see, with or without any assumptions, E tells us absolutely nothing.

#help

got it right through POE but also thought that was the very definition of graft

agreed - i do think that if they moved into the exact same colors with the same frequency as the bacteria in the stimulus that could weaken the argument. but also they mention that it's different species of bacteria, so it would still be a questionable choice.

Because this isn't a MSS question; which answer, if TRUE, would strengthen the argument. As JY mentioned, the correct choice can be a necessary assumption, or in this case, a sufficient assumption.

I thought E was correct for the same reason. The first sentence tells us that lawsuits ‑m→ neg perception and the conditional later in the stimulus tells us that doctors act better → lawsuits can be avoided. It clearly makes sense for there to be some connection between how doctors act and the perception that patients have.

-4 and all four from this passage lmao, absolutely brutal

I thought the same! Even for myself, I haven't read that many books, so the 'book that has influenced me the most' hasn't necessarily had a great influence on my life. I suppose this could be true even if you have read a lot of books, so A is, at best, weakly relevant.

I didn't select D for the same reason and thought the focus of A or B more accurately captured the gist of the passage

Agreed - I think it maps to the second passage, but how is being a felon legal?

It has to do with logical relationships. If I have 100 people in a room, then, of course "most", which could mean 60 people, or "some", which could mean 10 people, are subsets of "all." But this is not what we mean here. Consider the following: If all people in the room can read, then some people in the room must be able to read. In this sense, "all" is a subset of "some." This does NOT imply "all" is a subset of "some" in absolute quantitative terms, it actually means that the statement "all people can read" is a subset of the statement "some people can read." Think about a smaller circle inside of a bigger circle. In the smaller circle, we have the statement "all people can read," and the bigger circle is the statement "some people can read." All possible instantiations of "all people can read" coincide with those of "some people can read." However, not all possible instantiations of "some people can read" (e.g. exactly 10 people can read or exactly 40 people can read, etc.) coincide with those of "all people can read," so we can be within the larger circle but outside the smaller circle.

TLDR: These quantifiers are subsets and supersets of one another in terms of the logical possibilities of the statements they modify NOT in absolute quantitative terms.

They would be two perfectly overlapping circles. A->B implies A is a subset of B, and B->A implies B is a subset of A. For this to be true, sets A and B must be "equivalent."

You should determine the direction of support. MSS = correct answer choice supported by passage; Strengthen = passage supported by correct answer choice. This question asks "the conclusion is most strongly supported if which [choice]... is assumed?" Since it's asking which choice best helps to support the passage, it is a strengthen question.

Can someone explain why E is wrong? E says that the tuition has not increased in recent years. JY says this is irrelevant since the hypothesis is that the tuition is too low; however, this explanation ignores the first line of the stimulus: the applicant pool has been shrinking over the last few years. If we negate E, i.e., tuition has increased over the past few years, and the applicant pool has shrunk over this same time period, how does the argument make any sense? I would think E is wrong because it's possible that ALL universities increased tuition over the past few years, meaning the tuition at this university has remained relatively low in each of the previous years. Hence, E is not necessary. Would this explanation be correct?

The way I see it is that if we accept the premises in the stimulus to be true, along with the correct answer choice, the conclusion necessarily follows. Assuming that at least 1 company refused to hurt its competitor is not enough to guarantee the professor's conclusion. If the question was MBT, then C would be right.

The way I interpreted it was "used in operation of business" is a necessary condition for being justified. However, the stimulus then says "if, in addition, there exists reasonable grounds..." you are justified. Essentially, this is saying that there being reasonable grounds is enough to be justified AS LONG AS the previous necessary condition is also met. In other words, used in operation of business AND reasonable grounds TOGETHER form a sufficient condition.