We should recognize this as a must be true question, as it asks: If both G’s assertions and H’s assertions are true, which one of the following must also be true*?*
This MBT question takes the form of a dialogue between “G” and “H”. G thinks the Met art show is biased because more photographs were shown despite equal submissions between photographs, sculptures, and paintings. So it seems like photographs were selected at higher rates despite applying at the same rate. H counters this accusation of bias by informing us that all and only those works that met the traditional criteria were submitted. An all and only statement indicates a biconditional, in this case: met criteria ←→ exhibited. Every application that met the criteria was exhibited, and every exhibited artwork met the criteria. In that case it seems like, rather than bias, more sculptures and paintings just didn’t meet the traditional criteria this year. Since the criteria is traditional, we can infer it is the same as prior years, and therefore doesn’t represent a change that could be biased. Let’s see the answer choices:
Answer Choice (A) This must be false as we were told there were equal numbers of submissions between categories, and each artist was only allowed to submit work in one category.
Answer Choice (B) All the exhibited artworks did, but since all the artworks that met the criteria were exhibitted, and not all submitted works were exhibited, then some submitted works did not meet the traditional criteria.
Answer Choice (C) We are told nothing about comparative quality.
Answer Choice (D) For all we know all submitted photographs were accepted.
Correct Answer Choice (E) Bingo! Based on our biconditional and the fact that more photographs were exhibited, more photograph submissions must have met the traditional criteria.
We should recognize this as a must be true question, as the question stem states: If the statements above are true, which one of the following must also be true*?*
This stimulus is quite short for a MBT question. The first sentence tells us about the plan of an airport designed for private aircraft to cover its expenses by charging fees to private aircraft users. Unfortunately, the plan failed and the airport was unable to meet its expenses because the revenue from the fees was lower than expected. And that’s all we get! Since this is a MBT question, we know the correct answer is going to be a 100% guaranteed inference from just this information. The only thing we’ve really been told about is that the expenses were greater than both total revenue (superset) and specifically revenue from user fees (subset). The correct answer will have to somehow relate to this information. Let’s see what we get:
Answer Choice (A) We’ve been told nothing about where the county’s citizens live!
Answer Choice (B) The fact that there was any revenue from user fees strongly suggests this is at least partly false, and it certainly isn’t something we know for sure.
Answer Choice (C) This is just a total non sequitur, nothing was said about the airport’s construction.
Correct Answer Choice (D) If the airport was unable to pay its operating expenses, then its expenses must have been larger than its total revenue, and therefore it must be true that its expenses were greater than a subset of its total revenue.
Answer Choice (E) This requires a lot of assumptions as we know very little about the airport’s users.
As we should be able to tell, this is a most strongly supported question: If under the circumstances described above cars continue to meet emission standards, which one of the following is the most strongly supported inference?
The stimulus tells us about “chlorofluorocarbons”, solvents that are really useful for cleaning electronic sensors in cars. I don’t know about you, but I have no idea what a “chlorofluorocarbon” is, so I’m just going to abbreviate them as CFs. The second sentence begins with the referential phrase these solvents and tells us that CFs have contributed significantly to automaker’s being able to meet emission standards. Unfortunately, for some reason CFs need to be phased out, and of all times right when emission standards are tightening! If we read our question stem carefully, we know we are supposed to add one more premise into this concoction; the cars are going to continue to meet emission standards.
You should always treat a MSS question as being given a set of premises in the stimulus, and your job is to select the conclusion in the answer choices that requires the least amount of assumptions to follow. Let’s see what we end up with:
Answer Choice (A) We need to assume a lot about automakers for this to follow. For all we know they all despise each other and will never cooperate.
Answer Choice (B) This would be sufficient to compensate for the loss of CFs, but it certainly isn’t necessary to do so. For this conclusion to follow from the stimulus, we would have to assume that no other possible solutions are in play. That’s a big assumption.
Answer Choice (C) Similar to B, you can see how this might help meet more stringent emission standards without CFs, but to say that it will happen requires a lot of assumptions. What about all the other ways automakers might meet emission standards?
Answer Choice (D) We’ve been told nothing about whether CFs will be replaced, only that they will be phased out. Maybe they will be phased in favor of a cleaning method that doesn’t involve solvents?
Correct Answer Choice (E) Since emission standards are stricter, and CFs are no longer an option, but cars will continue to meet emission standards, it is safe to assume that something else will make up for the loss of CFs. This answer is essentially the same as B but with way less assumptions since it is much more general; rather than tunneling in on one possible solution, it merely infers that there will be something which does what is needed to replace CFs.
We should know this is a weakening question, since it asks us: Which one of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?
This is a 5 star question, and the stimulus throws a lot of stuff to remember at us. The first sentence tells us about a “catch per unit effort” (CPUE) that is used to monitor shark populations in local waters. We are then given a definition of what the CPUE is: it is the number of an individual species of shark that shark-fishing boats catch per hour for each kilometer of net in the water. We’re only two sentences in and we’ve already been given an information overload; South Australia, sharks, catch per unit effort, commercial shark-fishing boats, per hour per km of net. Similar to how low-res summaries are helpful on RC, on dense LR passages it’s helpful to try and translate what’s going on into your own words. Something like “Shark population changes are monitored by how many of a species are caught considering the time and size of net used.”
All of this information so far has just been context on what a CPUE is. Now we are told that there a species of shark whose CPUE has remained constant since 1973. From this the author concludes that the population of the shark species has remained constant since 1973. The major assumption of this argument is that the CPUE of a shark species is an accurate and consistent measure of its actual population changes. While there is always a lot of different ways to weaken an argument, we should expect that this assumption might play a role. An answer that undermines the CPUE’s accuracy and consistency will be a good answer for this question. Let’s see what the answer choices have in store for us:
Answer Choice (A) Always stay anchored in the conclusion. The conclusion we want to weaken specifically specifies that we are interested in the population of the species in the waters around South Australia. Whether or not it is found in other parts of the world is irrelevant.
Answer Choice (B) This might be an appealing answer if your eyes light up at seeing profitable, and you infer that this answer undermines the CPUE because people will only hunt where there are profitable sharks, and maybe the shark species isn’t profitable. The problem is that we don’t know if the species is profitable, and even if it wasn’t profitable we only know that profitable sharks tend to stay in the same spots. Maybe our species isn’t profitable but it is widely dispersed so that it gets caught in the profitable hunting areas. We just don’t have enough information for this answer to weaken the argument.
Answer Choice (C) Interesting! But this answer does nothing to undermine the argument that the CPUE is an accurate indicator of the species real population changes. Even if these nets kill lots of sharks, they still catch them so that we can compare how many are being caught per hour for each kilometer of net.
Answer Choice (D) Again, we just don’t get any information here that can weaken our CPUE is accurate argument. You might want to infer that this would encourage shark-fishers to catch higher numbers of smaller sharks, but that doesn’t affect the CPUE’s accuracy as an indicator of population changes.
Correct Answer Choice (E) What this answer does is give us a reason to believe shark-fishers should be catching a larger portion of shark populations than they did in 1973. If a new device is introduced that should mean higher rates of capture, but the CPUE stays the same, it suggests that the actual population has declined without the CPUE recognizing it. If the population was 20 before but the hunting technology only allowed 1 out of every 10 to be caught, and the population next year declined to 10 but the new device increased the capture rate to 2 out of every 10, the CPUE would stay the same while the population fell by 50%!
This is a Necessary Assumption question. We know because the question stem is asking for an assumption the argument depends on.
The amaryllis plant goes dormant when its soil dries up. That seems like a handy trick and is probably an important adaptation. So, what about it? Oh. It looks like we’re jumping straight into a conclusion. If we’re keeping these as house plants and want them to really thrive, we should withhold water to mimic its natural habitat by creating a dry season for it. Well, I create dry seasons for my house plants sometimes, but they don’t particularly thrive from it. It might actually be nice to have a plant that has an evolutionary adaptation to negligent house plant owners.
This is a really common argument type. It’s the simplest argument structure there is: Premise, therefore, conclusion. A therefore B. It is never valid because there is absolutely nothing which links the premise to the conclusion. The premise and conclusion can be intuitively related, and these arguments can sometimes even seem reasonable on the surface. But a formal analysis shows us what a disaster this sort of argument always is. You can’t say “A therefore B” without establishing any relationship between A and B. Our answer will almost certainly be something that establishes some connection between our premise and conclusion.
So our premise is about the amaryllis’s natural habitat and our conclusion is about what we should do for our house plant amaryllis to thrive. We need something which links the plant’s well-being to its conditions in its natural habitat.
Answer Choice (A) No. We could not care less about what other plants do. The argument in the stimulus does not stray from the amaryllis.
Answer Choice (B) Well, first of all, this doesn’t sound true at all. Something that can handle a bit of drought sounds like an ideal house plant to me. But that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to be true. We don’t know if these plants are hard or easy to care for and we don’t care. Whether they’re harder or easier to keep than other plants has no bearing on our job in helping them thrive.
Answer Choice (C) No, though I can see why this might be attractive. If we’re trying to mimic its natural habitat, wouldn’t this be best? Well, yes. But are we trying to mimic its natural habitat? Not necessarily. We are trying to create conditions in which it will thrive. This answer requires the further assumption that its natural habitat is optimal for it to thrive. We do not know this. Life may find a way, but that doesn’t mean it’s thriving.
Answer Choice (D) Tricky. If it doesn’t thrive then it probably wasn’t dormant long enough. No, this doesn’t need to be true. There could be many other conditions required for this thing to do well, any one of which may explain why a plant might be struggling. Maybe it got too little or too much sun. We just don’t know. This does create some relationship between the premise and the conclusion, though, so it might be tempting.
Correct Answer Choice (E) This looks good, though the test writers do make some effort to disguise it since they never explicitly talk about thriving. But it’s there. It establishes that the plant’s dormancy benefits it beyond merely preventing it from dying. If its dormancy period only prevents death and there is no further benefit, then there is no reason to intentionally subject it to drought conditions. There’s a lot of room between not-dying and thriving. This answer provides us with something more than simply not dying. There is some benefit to dormancy other than just not dying. Now, we may help it thrive by withholding water because we are providing whatever this benefit might be. If this is not true, however, then drought provides no benefit whatsoever and, thus, cannot help us to thrive.
Here we have a Method of Reasoning question, which we know from the question stem: “The argument proceeds by…”
After correctly identifying the question type we can use structural analysis to describe the Method of Reasoning used by our speaker. The stimulus begins by telling us the overall opinion - that organic foods should not be the only natural foods. The support for this is that plants will turn non-natural and natural molecules into compounds. The author says that because all compounds are part of nature, they are equally natural.
In connecting evidence about natural molecules to the label of natural foods, our argument is making an assumption. The speaker assumes that because something occurs naturally in nature, it must be able to be defined as a natural food. But we don’t know what the label “natural food” requires. It could require that all inputs into the growing process come naturally from the soil. Knowing that our speaker assumes that something in nature translates to the label of natural food, we can jump into answer choice elimination.
Correct Answer Choice (A) This is exactly what we are looking for. Our stimulus is changing the use of the term “natural” to fit their opinion. Because this is the only answer choice referencing the changing of terminology, we know this is the correct answer.
Answer Choice (B) This answer choice claims the conclusion of the stimulus focuses on what would be beneficial. But we know the conclusion concerns the restriction of the term natural foods to organic products. Because the conclusion of our stimulus doesn’t match the conclusion of this answer choice, we can eliminate it.
Answer Choice (C) If our argument were appealing to some sort of authority, we would expect a reference to some respected professional or publication that relates to the topic of natural foods. Without any of these references in the stimulus, we can eliminate this answer choice.
Answer Choice (D) Saying that our argument shows a necessary condition is not satisfied indicates the speaker uses conditional reasoning to come to their conclusion. Instead of showing the failure of something to occur our author gives the occurrence of plants in nature to widen the scope of the “natural food” definition. Because of this, we can eliminate the answer choice.
Answer Choice (E) Rather than reject evidence to support the conclusion, our stimulus introduces their own scientific backings to prove the validity of their position. In order for our stimulus to be reinterpreting something, we would have to have an original contrasting interpretation.