PT73.S4.Q12 - Worldwide, more books were sold

BlindReviewer

Hi all -- this question just has me stumped altogether. I would really appreciate it if someone could walk me through their thought process! In particular, if there are also tips on how to get through this kind of question faster (it's so fuzzy because it's MSS with a MBT-esque stimulus), that would also be really helpful.

Logic Gainz

Check out the second and third sentences. The inference behind the verbiage is that 51% of the largest number ever, will always be greater than 50% of any smaller number.

For my explanation to make sense, we first have to agree that more cookbooks were sold last year than in any previous year. The stimulus doesn't explicitly say this, but I took the pairing of the first and second sentences to mean this. If anyone disagrees, let me know because I'm not 100% sure this is the correct interpretation (I'm thinking the second sentence would mean the same thing if we changed it by tacking on, "...than in any previous year," to the end.

Secondly, I wanted to change the wording of the phrase, "a cookbook not intended for beginners," to, "intermediate cookbook." I hate mouth-full terms and it's just easier to reference, "intermediate cookbook."

Finally, we have the second and third sentences really just saying, "There were more cookbooks sold last year than in any previous year, and for the first time ever, most of these were intermediate cookbooks." The 'first-time-ever' reference implies that in all the years prior to last, less than most of these were intermediate cookbooks and if you add this to what we already know which is that there are more cookbooks last year than ever before, we know we sold more intermediate cookbooks last year than ever before which is what, A, says, and what my first paragraph above mentions in a more abstract manner.

This made a lot more sense in my head...