PT13.S2.Q18 - Each year, an official estimate of the stock

daniyal.mirza21

Can someone explain PT13 S2 Q18 to me

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glaezzo

Hi Daniyal,

When I started this question I immediately realized that it is a most strongly supported question due to there being no conclusion. Additionally, I took stock of what the stimulus was indeed saying. For example, I realized that there was no normative language such as "should." Therefore, I would be wary of answer answer choices that use "should" or other forms of normative language. Lastly, I noticed that there were no especially strong words such as "always" or "never" in the stimulus so I would also be wary of any answer choices that showed up using similar words.

Lastly, (and I have particularly struggled with this), I thought to myself that I can't pick an answer that overreaches or goes beyond what is said in the stimulus. Sure we can make inferences, but I try to limit myself to only supportable inferences.

One element of the stimulus that I felt was particularly important was in the last sentence. I can make an inference that the stock of cod has staid around the same number over the last decade. Why? The reason is that the number caught commercially has increased by the same amount the number caught for research has decreased. For example, lets say in 2008 commercially 40 tons of cod were caught and 60 tons were caught for research. That is 100 tons. Now in 2018, 70 tons of cod were caught commercially and 30 tons were caught for research. That still equals 100 but the number caught commercially increased by 30 and the number caught for research decreased by 30 in accordance with the stimulus.

Now I don't know which answer you selected but here is my analysis of the answer choices.
A. This is the correct answer for the reasons I mentioned above.
B. We can't make this inference necessarily, and in the past I probably would have selected this answer, however, maybe the commercial boats just got better at finding the cod or have stayed out on the water longer than before.
C. This is a comparative statement, the stimulus never makes this comparison.
D. A normative statement, the stimulus never tells us what we should do.
E. Never mentions anything about 20 years ago. We really only know what happened over the past decade.

I hope this helps and good luck in your studies!

GRC77777

Thank you!