Self-study
There are about 75 brands of microwave popcorn on the market; Support altogether, they account for a little over half of the money from sales of microwave food products. ██ █████ █████ ███████ ██ ███ ████ ██ ███ ██████████ ████████ ██ █████ ███████ ██ ███ ████ ███████████████ ███ ██ ███████ █████████ ███████ █████████ █████ ████ ████ █████ ██ ████ ██ ████████████ ████████ ███████ ██ ███ ██████████ ██ █████████ ████████ ████ ██████ ███ ███████ ██ ███ █ ████ █████ ███ ████ █ ██████ ██████████ ████████████
Argument Breakdown
The stimulus starts by mentioning how the 75 brands of microwave popcorn on the market are together responsible for more than half the revenue from sales of microwave food products. The stimulus then points out that the time it takes to pop corn in the microwave is three minutes, versus the seven minutes it takes to pop corn conventionally, yet microwave popcorn costs five times as much by weight as conventional popcorn. The stimulus concludes from these premises that, given the popularity of microwave popcorn, "many people are willing to pay a high price for just a little additional convenience."
23.
If the statements in the ███████ ███ █████ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ ████ ████ ██ █████
a
No single brand ██ █████████ ███████ ████████ ███ █ █████ █████ ██ █████████ ████ ███████ ██████
This doesn't have to be true. We know that the 75 brands of microwave popcorn altogether account for over half of microwave food product sales. This doesn't mean that they each have an equal share of the sales. It's possible one brand of microwave popcorn alone accounts for 49% of microwave food product sales, and the remaining 74 make up only 2%. So this answer choice doesn't have to be true.
b
There are more ██████ ██ █████████ ███████ ██ ███ ██████ ████ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████ █████████ ████ ████████
This doesn't have to be true. Just because all other microwave food products make up less than half of the revenue from sales doesn't mean there are fewer brands of other products than there are of microwave popcorn. In theory, there could be more than 75 brands of every other microwave product: each brand would just have to account for a very small proportion of revenue. Nothing in the stimulus tells us anything about how many brands of other microwave products there are, so we can't say this answer choice must be true.
c
By volume, more █████████ ███████ ██ ████ ████ ██ ████████████ ████████
You might be drawn to this answer choice if you think the "high price" mentioned in the conclusion implies that more microwave popcorn is sold than conventional popcorn. But remember that, since we know the price of microwave popcorn by weight is five times higher than the price of conventional popcorn, people would still be paying five times more money for microwave popcorn even if they bought the same volume as conventional popcorn.
In fact, because the stimulus doesn't actually tell us anything about how much conventional popcorn is sold, we can't say this comparison must be true.
d
More money is █████ ██ █████████ ████ ████████ ████ ████ █████ ███████ ██ ████ ██ ████ ████ ██ █████████ ████ ████████ ████ ████ ██████ ██ █████
This is a very tricky answer choice — I eliminated it the first time I read through the answer choices. The temptation is to assume that, because we don't know all the microwave food products that take three minutes or less to cook, we can't infer this answer choice from the passage.
But it's important to see that the stimulus does tell us about one subgroup of microwave food products that take three minutes or less to cook — microwave popcorn — and that subgroup on its own already accounts for more than half the sales of microwave food products: i.e., the majority of the money people are spending on microwave food products.
So even if all other microwave food products take longer than three minutes to cook, the sales from those products would still account for less than 50% of total microwave food product sales. Thus, people would be spending more money on microwave products that take three minutes or less to cook (i.e., microwave popcorn alone) than on products that take longer. In other words, this answer choice would be true just because of microwave popcorn, even if all other food products took longer than three minutes to cook.
If there are other microwave food products take three minutes or less to cook, that would just mean that even more money is spent on such products, besides the majority already spent on microwave popcorn. But even without this additional information, the truth of this statement is already guaranteed by the statements in the stimulus.
e
Of the total ██████ ██ █████████ ████ ████████ ██ ███ ███████ ████ ███ █████████ ███████ █████████
Where (B) talked about the number of brands for any given microwave food product, this answer choice is talking about the number of products overall (though it's not clear how these answer choices differentiate between a "brand" and a "product"). Either way, the same logic applies. Just because microwave popcorn products account for a majority of revenue from microwave food product sales doesn't mean those products form a numerical majority of the total number of microwave food products. Besides microwave popcorn products, there could be a thousand other microwave food products on the market, each of which just happens to account for a very small share of total sales revenue. So this answer choice doesn't have to be true.