We should recognize this as a must be true question, as it asks: If the statements above are true, which one of the following must also be true of trees in the Centerville Botanical Gardens?
This is a stimulus full of comparisons and conditionals. The first sentence gives us a conditional indicated by all, which tells us that if you are tulip trees, then you are older than all the maples. Next, we learn that most, but not all, of the sycamores are also older than all the maples. The last sentence gives us our final conditional that if you are a maple, then you are older than all the dogwoods. Interesting! I think it can be helpful to use some of our sequencing game skills here, and remember that if A is before B, and B is before C, then A is before C. In this case, we are getting a lot of comparison of tree ages, and should think about how they can chain together; I’d expect that the correct answer will be an inference from chaining together these comparisons. Specifically we can form a chain (T AND (most)S → older than M → older than D) from which we can infer that all the tulip trees and most of the sycamores are older than all the dogwoods. Let’s see if this ends up being useful in the answer choices.
Answer Choice (A) This must be false, as we’ve been told all tulips are older than all maples which are older than all dogwoods.
Answer Choice (B) This could be false, as we’ve only been told about the age of the majority of sycamores.
Answer Choice (C) Same as C, we don’t know enough for this to be a certain inference
Answer Choice (D) This could be false as, although we know that some sycamores and all tulips are both older than all maples, we don’t know how the ages of these two groups compare.
Correct Answer Choice (E) Since we’ve been told that not all sycamores are older than all maples, but all tulip trees are, then there must be some sycamores that are younger than all tulip trees.
We have a must be true question here, as the stem demands: If the statements above are true, which one of the following must on the basis of them be true of woolly monkeys in colonies?
This is a very short, straightforward stimulus. Our first sentence begins with the conditional indicator every. If we translate this first conditional, we should see that just being an adult male woolly monkey is enough to be larger than all female woolly monkeys. Our second sentence adds on to this information with another conditional, indicated by the sufficiency indicator any. From this we learn that an adult male woolly monkey is capable of dominating all females. Ok, so the adult males are always larger than and capable of dominating the females, got it. Since this is a must be true question and all our stimulus gives us is two conditionals which cannot be chained, we should expect the inference will either involve a contrapositive or a simple triggering of one of the conditionals leading to its necessary condition. Let’s see what we get.
Answer Choice (A) This answer might be appealing because there seems to be a strong correlation between the men being all larger than the females and all capable of dominating them, but this inference requires that we assume this correlation entails that size is the primary determinant, and there aren’t any other possible determinants which we just haven’t heard about. A must be true inference will never require an assumption.
Answer Choice (B) Our rules have only been about adult males, we can’t infer anything about the adolescents with certainty.
Answer Choice (C) Again we have to read carefully here; we only know about specifically adult males, so we can’t infer this general rule about all males. What if some adolescent males are larger than females but won’t dominate them yet.
Correct Answer Choice (D) This is just the contrapositive of our second rule. If a male doesn’t dominate a female, then the male must not be an adult male.
Answer Choice (E) This must be false, as we’ve been told any adult male will dominate any female; this answer choice would entail that adult males won’t dominate some females.
This is a must be true question, indicated by the question stem: Which one of the following conclusions can be validly drawn from the passage?
Our stimulus opens with the conditional indicator only, which indicates necessity. We learn that for someone to understand Patrick’s irrational behavior it’s required that they be an expert in some branch of psychology. Unfortunately for Patrick, the next sentence, beginning with the conditional indicator no, informs us that if you’re an expert, then you won’t be certain of your ability to solve someone else’s problem. So the only people who will understand Patrick’s problem will be people who won’t be certain about their ability to solve it, right? Wrong. An important inference we should make is that a key detail in that second conditional is that it only applies to someone else’s problem. We need to remember that for all we know Patrick himself could be an expert in some branch of psychology, in which case it would be entirely possible that he understand his own behavioral issues and is certain that he can solve them. Our final sentence tells us that Patrick wants to solve his problems; interesting, but want doesn’t tell us much beyond Patrick’s desire. And that’s all we get! This is a 5 star question, and it is easy to see why. Let’s take a look at the answers:
Answer Choice (A) As always on a must be true question, we should be judging answer choices based on whether they could be false. As noted in our breakdown of the stimulus, we don’t know whether Patrick is an expert in some branch of psychology, so this answer could be false.
Answer Choice (B) Same issue as A but more explicit; we have been given no information about Patrick except that he (i) has a behavioral problem, and (ii) wants to solve it.
Answer Choice (C) Answers A to C all depend on you failing to recognize that we don’t know whether Patrick is an expert. But even if he was, our experts being uncertain rule only applies with reference to someone else, so this still could be false.
Answer Choice (D) We have been told that you need to be an expert in psychology to understand behavioral problems, but we haven’t been told this understanding is required to offer solutions.
Correct Answer Choice (E) Since we know that experts are never certain about solving other’s problems, the only way Charles could be certain is if he wasn’t an expert and therefore couldn’t understand Patrick’s problems.
This is a Method of Reasoning question, and we know this because of the question stem: “The advertisement employs which one of the following argumentative strategies?”
This is an argument by analogy. The ad puts forward the relationship between exercise of physical organs and better performance of muscles and physical organs. The ad then says that because your brain is a physical organ, taking action it could improve its performance. From that, the ad concludes that we should subscribe to Stimulus and take action by reading. This isn’t a great argument, but our job is to describe what’s happening, not access its strength or validity.
Answer Choice (A) The ad beings with “anyone who exercises knows...” That’s not experimental evidence.
Answer Choice (B) The ad does not ridicule; it’s trying to incentivize people.
Answer Choice (C) This is describing the last part of the last sentence: Stimulus will exercise the brain. However, we’re not describing a sentence in the argument, we have to describe the whole argument.
Answer Choice (D) “Careful analysis” is certainly not what this ad is doing when it comes to exploring what exercise is.
Correct Answer Choice (E) This is perfectly describing what an argument by analogy is: A and B are similar in one way; therefore they are both similar in another way.
This is a sufficient assumption question, as the question stem asks: Which one of the following is an assumption that would permit the conclusion above to be properly drawn?
We’re told that every photo must in some ways be true - that stuff in between the commas is science stuff that basically means that because the light of what we capture hits the film. The next sentence begins with a “but” which indicates a potential pivot; the argument goes on to say because of things like Photoshop or angles/posing (cue social media) it doesn’t show the whole trust and is false. Our conclusion comes in and says nothing can ever be proven with photos. First, “nothing” is very strong. Second, being false and proving something are two different, albeit related, ideas. What if you can prove something to be false with an altered photograph by comparing it to what’s actually the case? Let’s link these ideas up with a rule: “If a photograph can be altered to prevent showing the whole truth and is therefore false, then nothing can be proven with it.”
Correct Answer Choice (A) This is correct because it links up our premises with the conclusion and forced our conclusion to be true. While it’s not a perfect paraphrase of our rule, it conveys the same thing.
Answer Choice (B) We’re told that photographs cannot express the whole truth. What does knowing the whole truth have to do with our argument? With our premises and this answer, we cannot force the conclusion.
Answer Choice (C) Being able to figure out whether or not a photograph is truthful does not help push out our conclusion; we still won’t know what is true or false, and this answer choice does not bridge the gap between something being false and figuring out what is not provable.
Answer Choice (D) This does not help justify that nothing can be proven with a photograph. The answer choice adds more information about finding out the truth of the scene of the photograph and then determining what we can use to photograph as evidence. This is more information unrelated to justifying our conclusion.
Answer Choice (E) This would weaken our argument - this is out.