During blind review, I was stuck between C and D.

C is wrong because we do not know if the second group is "already highly motivated" to exercise. It requires us to make the assumption that this applies only to the second group and not the first group.

D is correct because it shows that maybe watching a recording of yourself doesn't motivate you to exercise more. Maybe you get confused by the fact that you watch the recording that you think you exercised more than you actually did and thus, you overreported the amount of time you exercised. So perhaps, the two groups exercised the same amount, one group just overreported.

I got thrown off by D because of the whole "identical twins" thing but the stimulus also encourages us (discreetly) that the recording of yourself motivates you BECAUSE it's you and not because it's someone that appears like you.

I found this question difficult because the principle I pre-phrased could match with B and C. I had to be more flexible with how the first sentence of the stimulus was presented in the principle.

C is wrong because the conclusion introduces a new variable not previously presented - a report. We don't have an underlying principle suggesting that the report should not be released until something occurs.

B is correct because it does just that: something should not be done because something hasn't been fully done (tested). This matches the stimulus: the proposed office complex should not be done (aka be blocked) because something has not been done (the scientific assessment).

@BoazMouzon I did the same and got the wrong answer in blind review. But this is how I reasoned it after coming to accept C as the right answer (from my wrong answer journal):

I thought C wasn't correct because I thought the stimulus didn't talk about a manager's effectiveness directly. However, the stimulus does talk about one of the best ways for a manager to achieve something, which would mean effectiveness in the manager's role.

Although the stimulus doesn't directly word something as you expected, be open to other phrasing.

@MarcosGuzman415 according to the stimulus:

If MarcosGuzman415 is the first child and is a premy baby, then it is likely that MarcosGuzman415's younger sibling will be also.

@NolanWright

B isn't correct because there isn't a sufficient-necessary relationship in the stimulus. Rather the flaw in the argument is in the premise ("After all, the argument Arnot makes for this claim depends on the dubious assumption that government can be trusted to act in the interest of the public").

Remember that the flaw will always be in the support - and that support relationship is focused on the last two sentences, the first sentence is giving context as it is the opposing viewpoint.

If you still have a hard time with eliminating B, can you share what you find to be the sufficient-necessary relationship?

If you're thinking that this is the sufficient necessary relationship: fundamental change -> eliminating social ills

Then I would suggest redirecting your focus on the support instead, which is saying that there is a dubious assumption that the government can be trusted to act in the interest of the public. Where does it fit into in the sufficient-necessary relationship?

Lmk if that makes sense or not!

Here's another way to resolve the discrepancy:

Most students have a stronger preference that plays into their decisions about choosing a candidate than the preference that the new president has extensive experience. If that stronger preference is fulfilled, then the preference for extensive experience does not matter as much and thus, they will choose someone who fulfills the former even if they don't fulfill the latter.

Another way to think about the flaw (other than the explanation given: what we know vs. what others know) is that social theorists are brought up in the conclusion but not in the premises. There is a gap that exists here - it goes from fact to beliefs of social theorists. So the answer should address that gap.

When there's something new in the conclusion that was not brought up in the premises, there is some assumption or gap that has not been addressed.

I was tempted by A. However, as said in the video, a source attack can provide reasonable suspicion, but it can never on its own refute the argument or claim. Reasonable suspicion does not equate evidence of falseness!

After all, quality of reasoning is independent of the source here. We have no evidence to not believe the report.

This question is a reason I read through all the answers and use process of elimination - even when I'm confident in the answer. Answer paranoia is useful in situations like this when you might not catch the reason why it's right by just skimming. It's a conclusion - more than that, it's a sub-conclusion!

As soon as I read C, the JY voice in my head said "WHO CARES about the students"

@BenjaminDooley

This is my thought process on your question:

The conclusion says that colored paper is should be used. But for what should it be used? When teaching art students.

The premises state that colored paper is preferable because it has these traits. Okay, but is that relevant to teaching? What if it's only relevant when first trying out different mediums of art? (Maybe there's a better example, but that's what I can think of rn).

I got this question wrong at first because I glazed over the stimulus and got tricked into making the assumption that colored paper should be used because of the premises. But the right answer just gives you what you already assumed.

For those suffering from Necessary Assumption questions, here's another one for you:

Premise: Who cares what James thinks? ( JY doesn't)

Conclusion: James suffers from middle child syndrome.

What is the necessary assumption? :)

Note: When making visual representations, make sure to keep track of which decisions were arbitrary!

I eliminated A because it refers to harming "someone" which doesn't necessarily mean it's talking about the target of the joke.

This is a common pattern in wrong answers which I sometimes glaze over: "Should have realized" vs. "believed"

Other examples:

"occurred" vs. "believed"

The question is not asking for additional reasons, instead take the reasons already provided in the stimulus and make them more relevant

I would previously be slower at reading these type of stimuli if I don't understand a word or would get stuck on some pronunciation. In this question, I ended up just changing Hagerle to H as soon as the narrator (me) in my head was saying it. I got through it so much quicker this way than if I didn't use this trick :)

Hope this helps someone too!

I got this right and was so confident about it - just to have a different way of getting the answer (hopefully that's still a good thing...).

Process of elimination works wonders, of course. But I also thought A strengthened the analogy that fraud in physics and fraud in biology worked relatively similar, because it broadens the topic to "scientific fraud" (and they both fall in this category). Or even biology and physics both fall within the "scientific discipline" category mentioned in A.

Is this a good way of thinking about this? Or is this sort of thought process not the best when it comes to these types of questions? Like maybe it worked because it was this specific stimulus?

Without the prior lesson, I don't know if I would have guessed this was an argument by analogy

In this question, I got confused by the previous lesson which mentioned that for causal logic weakening questions, we can find an alternative hypothesis in the answers to weaken the argument.

I found that it helped, in this instance, to forget about an alternative hypothesis (the answer just did not seem like one to me). Instead, it helped to just focus on weakening the support (that is, what supports the tv program being biased) on a more intuitive level.

Moral of the story: don't even try Goku, try his beam :)

My hypothesis before reading the explanation: Perhaps Detective Conan solves the most difficult of cases while the average detective solves around 35% relatively easy cases.

After reading the explanation: surprised pikachu face

Is there another explanation possible that someone else can think of?

Any strategies to get through this question more quickly? I thought diagramming would take too long, but I ended up taking long anyways because of all of the conditional relationships.

Writing this out helped me come to terms that C is completely wrong (I changed it to D during blind review but still didn't eliminate C), I hope this helps someone else too!

C is incorrect because it says "most coffeehouses that are well-designed". The stimulus mentions "most well-designed public places" -- coffeehouses would be a subset of that if they were well-designed. We don't know if this applies to coffeehouses as well:

coffeehouse -> public place -m-> feature artwork

It would have been different if the -m-> was like this:

coffeehouse -m-> public place -> feature artwork

REMEMBER:

A -m-> B -> C means A -m-> C

HOWEVER, this relationship gets lost and does not apply when A -> B -m-> C. This is what we saw in wrong answer C.

He read my mind...I diagrammed pet stores...shameful, I know.

INSTEAD, kick things up the domain. We know from reading the rest of the stimulus, that it is only talking about pet stores in West Calverton so we can momentarily ignore that and go straight into the other conditions!

@Njbrunette This is what had me stumped at first, since I felt like diagramming would take too long under timed conditions. But getting overwhelmed with a long conditional relationship and trying to do it in my head just eats up the time anyway (for this one at least, it was just so looooong)