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PTA.S1.Q5 - Productivity in the office
isdmyung
Member
I am having a hard time understanding why AC E is better than D. I also do not understand what makes B wrong.
Comments
What is PTA? which prep test is this?
Hi there,
This is PrepTest A - February 1996. You can find all the PrepTests ever published on this page: https://7sage.com/preptests/ but I'm afraid we don’t have a video explanation for the LR questions of PrepTest A - February 1996.
The Ultimate+ course includes explanation videos for all questions in every PrepTest section as follows:
Logical Reasoning: PrepTests 17-89 and PrepTest May 2020
Logic Games: every PrepTest ever published
Reading Comprehension: PrepTests 1-89 and PrepTest May 2020
Let us know if you have any further questions.
That is unfortunate. I don't have access to that test. If you still would like it answered, perhaps you can let me know.
@"Theo --" just a suggestion, what I do think would be helpful for the LR preptest questions that do no have explanation videos would be to set up placeholder pages where people can go to comment on these questions, instead of people putting them in the forums? I think the forum is fine, but I think my idea is helpful because it's a permanent place people can go as the foolproof/do questions, and look to see if people have already written about them/posted information, rather than searching through the forums. Not sure if this made sense, but if you're interested in me fleshing it out I can explain more what I mean? thanks.
@isdmyung Here's my explanation. hope it is helpful.
First, my translation of the stimulus: The manager believes that productivity is being kept down due to unauthorized breaks. That is context. Then the argument starts with a simple premise, sub conclusion/main premise, and main conclusion at the end. The argument basically says: decreasing managing case load (e.g. works to managers) means greater supervision, and less unauthorized breaks. Based on this, the author concludes that productivity will increase if unauthorized breaks decrease.
I think then we need to look at this relationship between unauthorized breaks and productivity. They are inferring causation, right? But we need to look at what happens if we were to negate the conclusion. What if unauthorized breaks decreases, but productivity doesn't increase? What if it stays the same, or even decreases as well? What if being more closely monitored means people are even less motivated to be productive? (this is actually what E is getting at) Now knowing this loophole or potential way to weaken the argument and knowing what the argument depends on, we have an idea of what we need to look for. We also know we need to make sure that a decrease in unauthorized breaks are definitely related to an increase in productivity. Because if they weren't, then you could decrease unauthorized breaks, and it wouldn't impact productivity at all. We also need to block any explanations that would weaken this.
Now looking through the answers, I think about the following, keeping i mind that 1) the AC for a NA should not have language that is too strong, and 2) it must be a provable answer, e.g. no need to bring in outside information from the AC choices that are too irrelevant, unless it is a blocking answer.
A: I would eliminate AC A right away because it says ""the best way to improve productivity"". This is 1) way too strong, and too, the stimulus isn't about the best way to improve productivity. It's about a specific way the manager thinks productivity will be increase.
B: I would eliminate this because 1) why do we need to compare the present to the past? What does saying that office workers spending more time now taking unauthorized breaks than they used to do to help us find a necessary assumption? This does not get at the heart of the relationship between unauthorized breaks and productivity, it's just a relative time comparison. this is why I would eliminate Also if we negate this, and say that Office workers spend equal time now taking unauthorized breaks, or they take less unauthorized breaks now vs the past, does this negate the conclusion that productivity will increase? I don't think so.
C: I would not pick this based on the fact that 1) it is too specific and brings in another element that was not mentioned at all in the passage and doesn't help to block the idea that unauthorized breaks aren't related to increases/decreases in productivity. This is just saying that financial incentives is not related to office productivity, but it doesn't help us with the relationship between unauthorized breaks and office productivity. Furthermore, if we negate it and say ""giving financial incentives to workers.... would have a significant effect on overall office productivity"" in my sense would weaken the conclusion in the negated sense, possibly because it is introducing (in the negated sense) another causal factor that is not unauthorized breaks.
D : I would get rid of this because it says ""the most efficient way"" 1) what does efficient have to do with the cause and effect relationship introduced in the stimulus? and 2) for NA, you don't need something this power, that it is the most efficient way. Also, if we negate and read this as ""supervising employees more closely to reduce unauthorized breaks is not the most efficient way of increasing overall office productivity"" does this negate the conclusion? No. The manager doesn't care about the most efficient way, just cares about increasing productivity. What if the most efficient way were to just pay people more? That doesn't do anything to the argument, and it's not necessary that supervising people more closely is the most efficient way to increase productivity.
E: Lastly, we have E. without even having read it closely first, in just skimming through, I like it already because it links productivity AND unauthorized breaks. Now looking at it closely, it says the following ""gains in productivity from less unauthorized breaks is greater than a loss in productivity caused by closer supervision"". Think about that, we need this to be true BECAUSE what if we negate this? The negation of this would say closer supervision causing loss in productivity is EQUAL TO OR GREATER than any gains in productivity, meaning that there would be no gains, because the loss in productivity would equal out the gain, OR the loss would be greater than the gain in productivity. If this is the case, there can't be an increase in productivity in the office."
Hi,
So the stimulus tells us that productivity isn't as high as it should be because people keep taking these unauthorised breaks. If we have the supervisors watch them, productivity will go up.
The rest of the information about switching managers and stuff is just kind of fluff.
The argument takes for granted that having a supervisor watch someone is going to increase productivity. Fine. But what if that supervisor spends like 7 hours of their 8 hour day watching their employees and not actually doing work?
So, the ACs.
A is wrong because it says the best way. We can't prove that something is the best way and therefore, how is it necessary? It is just too strong of an answer. If I said, productivity will increase. Therefore watching your employees is the best way to increase their producitivity, you'd be like wait a minute, what if you gave them bonuses (or something).
B. So, this doesn't match the flaw/weakness in the argument that we came up with. The simulus already tells us that people spend too much time on unauthorised breaks. Whether they take 1 45 minute break or 3 15 minute breaks, it doesn't really matter. They're spending too much time on break. This to me just talking about a premise.
C. This is like A. Just as we can't tell the best way we can't determine whether something will 'not have any significant threat". We can't prove that and a necessary assumption must be true because it's necessary. It might have some.
D. This was a really tricky and tempting answer at first, but it's wrong for the same reasons that A and C are wrong. This says it's the MOST EFFECTIVE way to increase productivity. We cannot prove this at all. If we were to say, Productivity will increase, so the most effective way to increase it is to watch employees, you'd be like wait.... what? Or converseley, if we said, it is not the case that watching employees is the most effective way to increase productivity, you'd be like okay.... so what is? it wouldn't break the argument.
E. This is correct. this gets to the flaw we determined at the beginning of the process. It talks about that supervisor who sits for 7 hours a day watching people and not doing her own work. The amount of productivity gained has to cover hers and then some. We can try the negation test: 'The productivity gained will not exceed the amount lost by increased supervision. Therefore productivity will increase' Clearly this doesn't make sense.
Hi there,
Thank you for your suggestion. I have taken note of this and I will pass it on to my team.
@Juliet-- yeah! It's sort of like the benefit of having people comment on the videos JY does, people can have the discussions in the comments. This would just be that there is no explanation video, but people could go to that "explanation page" to discuss in the comments. I guess the downside would be that people might not check there and may only look at discussion boards, but I think people go to the discussion boards now, obviously, because there is no space like that.