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.
This is a must be true question, as it asks: If the statements above are all true, which one of the following must also be true on the basis of them?
We learn that Jennifer, an employee of three years, is entitled to four weeks of paid vacation and plans to spend all of it on vacation with her family. Good for Jennifer! The next sentence tells us that anyone who has worked between one and four years is automatically entitled to three weeks paid vacation a year but can apply up to half of any vacation time leftover in a year to the next year’s vacation. This must apply to Jennifer, so three weeks of her four weeks vacation time must be because she has worked between one and four years. An important word in this stimulus is exactly. From this we can infer that this three weeks is all the entitled vacation time workers get excepting from applying leftover time, and therefore if Jennifer has four weeks, it must because she had leftover vacation time from last year. And that’s all the information we get! On to the answers:
Correct Answer Choice (A) This is exactly what we identified in our stimulus reading. If she has more than three weeks, it must be from applying half of last’s years unsaved time, which must have been two weeks.
Answer Choice (B) Next year Jennifer will be beginning her fifth year, and we are only told about the vacation time of employees of between one and four years.
Answer Choice (C) We haven’t been told anything about what employees other than Jennifer are doing.
Answer Choice (D) Then we would expect her to have four and a half weeks this year
Answer Choice (E) We have no justification to assume this must be true.
We can identify this question as Method of Reasoning because of the question stem: “Myrna responds to Roland by…”
When dealing with a Method of Reasoning question, we know we are looking for an answer choice that correctly describes the structure of our entire argument. Our correct answer is going to fit the argument exactly. Our wrong answer choices likely explain argument structures we are familiar with, but that simply don’t apply to the specific question we are looking at. Knowing what the right and wrong answers are going to do, we can jump into the stimulus.
Immediately we should make note of the two speakers at play. This means we could possibly be dealing with two different conclusions with different levels of support. Our first speaker, Myrna, begins the discussion by introducing a claim; people’s calorie breakdown should consist of 30% or less of fat compared to the 37% that makes up a person’s diet in this country on average.
Roland responds to this claim with a hypothetical. The second speaker explains if everyone were to follow this recommendation, a very small percent of people would live a tiny bit longer than they would otherwise. Ronald concludes that such a sacrifice is not worthwhile as a result. Here, Ronald makes an assumption. By telling us that a possible 3 month extension is not worthwhile, Roland has assumed there are no possible worthwhile benefits aside from living for another 3 months.
Myrna points out this assumption in their reply. The speaker tells us a low-fat diet not only has the potential to extend life expectancy, but also it has the ability to reduce the recurrence of diseases that are impacting people on a daily basis. Myrna weakens Roland’s position by pointing out there are other benefits that may not be directly related to life expectancy. Having broken down the arguments of our speakers, we can proceed into answer choice elimination.
Answer Choice (A) If Mryna were disputing the correctness of the facts we would expect them to introduce some information that misaligned with Roland’s argument. Because of this we can eliminate answer choice A.
Correct Answer Choice (B) This is exactly what we are looking for! This is the only answer choice that highlights Myrna’s method to have Roland consider benefits outside of life expectancy.
Answer Choice (C) Similar to answer choice A, this answer accuses Myrna of disputing the factual correctness of Roland’s statistics. Because Myrna introduces a completely new topic of consideration we can eliminate this answer choice.
Answer Choice (D) We do not see Mryna refer to the sources used to create Roland’s argument. We can eliminate answer choice D because of this.
Answer Choice (E) This answer choice accuses Myrna of engaging in circular reasoning - where we use the conclusion as the evidence for our conclusion. Without some sort of circular train of thought (we should follow the diet because we should follow the diet) we can eliminate this answer choice from contention.
We can identify this question as Method of Reasoning because of the question stem: “Maria responds to Lucien’s argument by…”
When dealing with a Method of Reasoning question, we know we are looking for an answer choice that correctly describes the structure of our entire argument. Our correct answer is going to fit the argument exactly. Our wrong answer choices likely explain argument structures we are familiar with, but that simply don’t apply to the specific question we are looking at. Knowing what the right and wrong answers are going to do, we can jump into the stimulus.
Immediately we should make note of the two speakers at play. This means we could possibly be dealing with two different conclusions with different levels of support. Lucien begins the discussion by summarizing the position of the public housing advocates; more low-income housing apartments are needed due to the large number of unhoused people in the city. Lucien concludes this argument is absurd. The first speaker tells us plenty of apartments are vacant in their apartment building, so homelessness must be the result of a lack of desire to work instead of a lack of housing.
Lucien is presenting quite a silly argument. Clearly, the number of vacancies in their and their college's apartments has no indication on the direness of homelessness across the entire city. It could be the case that there are thousands of unoccupied luxury apartment buildings that are unattainable for the unhoused even if they are employed.
Our second speaker points this out exactly. Maria explains that many homeless people actively hold regular jobs. In doing so, Maria undermines the evidence Lucien is using to prop up their argument. Once we have a prediction we can proceed into answer choice elimination.
Answer Choice (A) This is not descriptively accurate. Maria is not questioning Lucien’s personal experiences or suggesting there are not vacancies at Lucien’s apartment building. Because of this we can eliminate answer choice A.
Correct Answer Choice (B) This is exactly what we are looking for. An easy answer to accidentally eliminate, this is the only option that points out how Maria attacks a specific piece of evidence provided for Lucien’s position. Whether or not there is a more specific way we could describe the stimulus, that does not change the stimulus factually aligns with answer choice B.
Answer Choice (C) This answer choice suggests Maria attacks the motives of the first speaker. We can eliminate this answer choice since Maria’s explanation rests on the number of homeless people maintaining jobs rather than the qualities of the first speaker.
Answer Choice (D) For this answer choice to be correct, Maria would need to present a conclusion different from Lucien’s. But all Maria presents us is evidence that weakens Lucien’s evidence. For this reason we can eliminate answer choice D.
Answer Choice (E) Rather than providing a different explanation for a set of facts, Maria provides new information to weaken Lucien’s argument. The introduction of new information is why we can eliminate this answer choice.
We can identify this question as Method of Reasoning because of the question stem: “The argument in the passage proceeds by…”
When dealing with a Method of Reasoning question, we know we are looking for an answer choice that correctly describes the structure of our entire argument. Our correct answer is going to fit the argument exactly. Our wrong answer choices likely explain argument structures we are familiar with, but that simply don’t apply to the specific question we are looking at. Knowing what the right and wrong answers are going to do, we can jump into the stimulus.
The speaker begins by telling us about a fossil discovery. We learn these fossils cast doubt on the theory that dinosaurs are more closely related to reptiles than non-reptile animals. We can identify our first sentence as the conclusion because of the support that follows. After making this claim about the doubt created, the author follows with a series of examples describing how dinosaurs are different from present day reptiles and similar to present day non-reptiles.
Knowing our stimulus lists off the reasons for the author’s main conclusion, we can proceed into answer choice elimination.
Answer Choice (A) We can eliminate this answer choice due to the language “erroneous information.” Our speaker bases their conclusion on reasons for their position rather than accusing the opposition of having bad information.
Answer Choice (B) This answer choice is incorrect due to the suggested ordering of events in our stimulus. This answer accuses the argument of establishing a general principle followed by a conclusion. Knowing our stimulus begins with a conclusion and follows with explanation, we can eliminate this answer choice.
Answer Choice (C) For this answer to be correct, our argument needs to make a conclusion about the premises. We can eliminate this option because our conclusion surrounds the relationships of dinosaurs (definitely not a modern-day subject) to other animals.
Answer Choice (D) This answer choice goes beyond what our argument concludes. While this answer choice asserts the speaker draws a conclusion about all things with some quality belonging in a category. But our conclusion is specific to what we know about dinosaurs. We can eliminate this answer because it goes far beyond the content we can confirm from the stimulus.
Correct Answer Choice (E) This is exactly what we are looking for. This is the only answer choice that accurately describes how the author concludes how a past phenomena (dinosaurs) is related to one one rather than the other possible group.
This is a Sufficient Assumption (SA) question and we know this because of the question stem: “… an assumption that would make the conclusion in the passage a logical one?”
Sufficient assumption questions tend to be very formal. We’re looking for a rule that would validate (not just strengthen) the conclusion, specifically by bridging the premise and conclusion through the rule. Not only are we extrapolating the rule from our argument, but we’re also using that rule to render the argument “valid.” The way to prephrase our answer choice is by tying our premises and conclusion together into a rule: “If [premise] à then [conclusion].”
Our first sentence is describing how some accountants use adding machines while some use computers. I can’t give examples of the two, but it doesn’t matter. If it did, the stimulus would specify. What is important about the difference between the two is given in the next sentence: complex computers are faster than adding machines: they’re efficient compared to adding machines as we can do more in less time. So far, this makes sense.
The next sentence begins with a conclusion indicator. I haven’t seen anything that looks like a conclusion, but let’s read the whole sentence before we put labels on anything. The author explicitly assumes that the costs of the two machines are equal and then claims that accountants who use complex computers earn more per hour than accountants who use adding machines.
Hang on a minute – there’s a huge gap here between doing more calculations per hour and earning more per hour. These two things aren’t necessarily related. What if they work on salary and their bonuses do not depend on how much work they do? What if they only get a fixed number of clients and finishing work sooner rather than later has no bearing on how much they will earn?
If order to bridge this gap in our prephrase, we can simply say something like “the more calculations accountants are able to do, the more they can earn.”
Answer Choice (A) This is incorrect. Our rule doesn’t care about the number of accountants that are using the complex machine. The rule wants to address the gap between using the machine and how it affects earnings.
Answer Choice (B) This is close, but it’s wrong. Earnings are affected by the number of calculations one can perform, it’s not about the number of hours. If it was about the number of hours, it would be better to use a slower calculator as it would take more time to do the job.
Correct Answer Choice (C) It’s a paraphrase of our prephrase.
Answer Choice (D) This is not correct because this would weaken the conclusion: they’d be able to charge more using the adding machine and, assuming the price charged is proportional to earnings, they would be able to earn more.
Answer Choice (E) This answer choice establishes a vague relationship between earning and money. It’s not enough. We need a positive relationship between the two.