This is an resolve, reconcile, explain question, indicated by: Which one of the following, if true, most helps to explain why the company has not taken available legal measures?
The first thing we learn is that the company producing XYZ, a spreadsheet program, believes that millions of illegal copies of its product are being used. Those copies were not paid for, and if they had been the company would have earned millions of dollars more. Makes senses so far! But here is where it gets weird. Although the company is currently trying to boost its sales, the company is not taking any legal action against those who copied the program illegally! You’d expect they’d be trying to clamp down on piracy, so what we are looking for in this question is an answer which explain the company’s decision in a way that is compatible with their overall goal of boosting sales. Let’s take a look at our answers:
Answer Choice (A) Ok, but we’ve been told that it has been copied millions of times, and our whole question is why the company is not going after those who did it.
Answer Choice (B) This just makes things even weirder; legal measures have been an option from the start and the company has not taken them.
Correct Answer Choice (C) If we’re all being honest I’m sure some of you can relate to this, and have pirated a service or abused a free trial policy before you ended up actually purchasing the product. This explains why the company isn’t cracking down; the pirated copies get people to try the service and therefore actually drive sales.
Answer Choice (D) Another answer choice that just makes the discrepancy weirder; if this is the case than that seems like a really significant share of business the company is losing out on by not pursuing legal measures!
Answer Choice (E) We aren’t told whether this has harmed ABC’s sales, so all we really learn is that it is possible to go after illegal copies and in fact the main competition is doing so. The question remains of why XYZ isn’t doing the same.
We should recognize this as a resolve, reconcile, explain question, as it demands: Which one of the following, if true, most helps to resolve the apparently conflicting findings?
The stimulus begins with a long-term health study which monitored a group of 35 year-olds in 1950, and discovered that those whose weight increased by one pound per year after 35 tended to live longer than those who kept a consistent weight. So for example the person who was 190 lbs at 35 and 200lbs at 45 was on average likely to live longer than a person who just stayed 190lbs. This finding is at variance (here’s our conflict) with other studies that correlated weigh gain with health problems which tend to lower life expectancy. We need something that will explain why the weight gain people lived longer that is consistent with weight gain being generally associated with health problems. Let’s see what we get:
Answer Choice (A) To make up a smaller proportion means the subset (muscle and bone tissue) represented a smaller fraction of the superset (bodyweight as a whole). This could be because the superset is growing (maybe they are gaining fat) or the subset is shrinking (they are just losing muscle and bone tissue). Regardless, this wouldn’t explain the studies findings because it wouldn’t change that the superset is growing for the weight gain people and this superset growth is itself associated with health problems.
Answer Choice (B) But our study group didn’t lose weight and yet lived longer despite weight gain being associated with health issues.
Correct Answer Choice (C) Bingo! If smoking correlates with both shorter life span and less weight, then maybe although weight gain also correlates with health issues, the weight gain group still lived longer than the no weight gain group, as the latter would include all smokers.
Answer Choice (D) This associates a health benefit with less calories, which would do nothing to explain how those ostensibly consuming a large caloric surplus (the people gaining weight) are living longer.
Answer Choice (E) This just associates more unhealthy stuff with weight gain and makes the weight gain group outliving the no weight gain group even weirder!
Here we have a most strongly supported question, indicated by: The statements above provide the most support for which one of the following conclusions?
Our stimulus begins by telling us that most regular coffee is made from arabica beans because the great majority of consumers prefer its flavor to that of robusta beans. Interesting! However, the trend completely reverses when coffee drinkers switch to decaffeinated coffee because robusta beans don’t lose that much flavor when decaffeinated compared to arabica beans. So arabica is more popular caffeinated, and robusta is more popular decaffeinated; got it! Our final sentence tells us that depending on the type of bean involved, decaffeination removes various substances. Most of these substances have no impact on flavor, but one contributes to the richness of the coffee’s flavor. Since we’ve been given two coffee beans, and then we’re told one of them has its flavor affected more when decaffeinated, and now we’ve been told that depending on the type of bean involved decaffeination can remove or reduce a substance that contributes to the coffee’s richness of flavor; the natural inference is that in robusta this substance is not affected during decaffeination, but it is in arabica. Let’s see if that ends up relating to the correct answer:
Answer Choice (A) This is a wild inference for which we have zero support; we’ve been told nothing about the supply of arabica beans, just that there is a lot of demand for them! Always avoid answers that demand you make a large assumption.
Answer Choice (B) Again, we have been told nothing about the comparative caffeine levels of the two beans. Just because one tastes better decaffeinated doesn’t necessarily mean it has less caffeine in the first place.
Answer Choice (C) We know nothing about how the various subsets of coffee drinkers compare. We were only told that (I) coffee drinkers prefer arabica, and (II) coffee drinkers who switch to decaf prefer robusta. We have no information about those who almost exclusively drink decaf.
Correct Answer Choice (D) This is exactly the inference we should have recognized in our reading of the stimulus. It seems there is a change in flavor when arabica is decaffeinated, and we’re directly told that decaffeination can affect a flavor contributing substance that is associated with richness (exactly the quality arabica is praised for), and that this depends on the type of bean, which would explain why robusta is less affected.
Answer Choice (E) Another bad inference, we have no explicit information relating to the pricing of the two beans.