PT8.S4.Q09 - it can safely be concluded

TexAgAaron

So I am still working on figuring out SA questions. I came across this question the other day in drills and have no idea how the correct answer connects with the passage above.

I can see where the connection may be but it still doesn't make sense. These are the type of questions I'm struggling with because there is very little, if any, lawgic used here and I seem to be thrown off by these all the time.

Thoughts?

BinghamtonDave

Often times, with complex LR questions, I used to feel like I joined the conversation in the middle of a speech, that in essence, where we started to read from was a spot of confusion/uncertainty. This question in my estimation has that confusing feel, but looking a bit deeper, it isn't all that bad.

Our reasoning for this question mirrors this:
There are at least as many people in NYC, as there are in Brooklyn.
How can we be really confident of that? By understanding that Brooklyn is within NYC. That NYC subsumes Brooklyn.

Another example:
There are at least as many people in the United States as there are in the Texas.

The take-away concept for this question is familiarity with a set and superset. This is a concept that comes up in various ways.

I hope the above explanation helps.
David

JustDoIt

This is a really good question for learning purposes.

You have two circles, A and B. A is within B. So we know that everything is a part of A is also a part of B. Thus, we have a conditional statement: A --> B. So within A, there are 100 trees. And within B, but not A, there are 50 trees. Since all A’s are B’s, there actually are 150 trees in B. So we know regardless, as long as there is at least one tree in B but not A, there will be more trees in B than A because if you are in A you are necessarily within B as well.

Hope this helps!

TexAgAaron

Thanks @BinghamtonDave and @JustDoIt . I see where both of you are going; I never considered looking at it like that. How did you recognize though that this is a sub-set issue? From looking at the stimulus, at least from my eyes, I never saw any key words that suggested that one was bigger than the other. I just saw them as 2 separate towns, instead of a country/state and a town.

Would this be an example of where you have to look at the AC's to see what kicks?

BinghamtonDave

I believe the most effective way to answer this question would be to see it for what it is. We are asked to provide an assumption that would allow for what is stated (the conclusion) to follow logically, meaning this assumption we provide better actually establish the conclusion, if it doesn't then it is not a sufficient assumption.

We are told that one thing has equal or more of a particular aspect as another thing. To prove that, to prove what is stated as the conclusion, we would have to supply something about the relationship between those two things: take a look at the answer choices, none of them have anything to do with establishing the relationship between these two places except for (B), the rest of the answer choices talk about individual aspects of this or that variable within a single place, leaving unanswered how this effects the other of Seclee or Martown. Go down the list: are we to assume that the tree eating virus effecting Martown in (C) is not effecting Seclee?

The other answer choices put us in the position to play botanist with incomplete information: are we to assume that the mere presences of "more" rainfall would allow us to draw our conclusion? What about other factors?

It just so happens that we reach into the set/super set framework to solve this question. Another sufficient assumption could be: both Seclee and Martown are finite regions and when it comes to finite regions in the universe, Seclee has by far the greatest number of trees. Seclee is the #1 when it comes to the number of trees. Here we would be introducing a previously unstated fact about the world that would allow us to draw our conclusion.

I supposed another sufficient assumption would be something along of the lines of: Seclee and Martown have precisely the same amount of trees per square mile as each other no more and no less and Seclee contains 813 more square miles than Martown. I supposed they could have formulated more of a math type of answer choice.

TexAgAaron

@BinghamtonDave Ahh I see now. Thanks that cleared up a lot for me. Kind of an odd question and most of those AC's try to push me to think about the trees and not focus on the relationship between the city/country.