SECTION IV
Time-35 minutes
25 Questions
Directions: The questions in this section are based on the reasoning contained in brief statements or passages. For some questions, More than one of the choices could conceivably answer the question. However, You are to choose the best answer; that is the response that most accurately and completely answers the questions. You should not make assumptions that are by commonsense standards implausible, superfluous. or incompatible with the passage. After you have chosen the best answer; blacken the corresponding space on your answer sheet.
1. In 1974 the speed limit on highways in the United States was reduced to 55 miles per hour in order to save fuel. In the first 12 months after the change, the rate of highway fatalities dropped 15 percent, the sharpest one-year drop in history. Over the next 10 years, the fatality rate declined by another 25 percent. It follows that the 1974 reduction in the speed limit saved many lives.
Which of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument?
(A) The 1974 fuel shortage cut driving sharply for more than a year.
(B) There was no decline in the rate of highway fatalities during the twelfth year following the reduction in the speed limit.
(C) Since 1974 automobile manufacturers have been required by law to install lifesaving equipment, such as seat belts, in all new cars.
(D) The fatality rate in highway accidents involving motorists driving faster than 55 miles per hour in much higher than in highway accidents that do not involve motorists driving at such speeds.
(E) Motorists are more likely to avoid accidents by matching their speed to that of the surrounding highway traffic than by driving at faster or slower speeds.
2. Some legislators refuse to commit public funds for new scientific research if they cannot be assured that the research will contribute to the public welfare. Such a position ignores the lessons of experience. Many important contributions to the public welfare that resulted from scientific research were never predicted as potential outcomes of that research. Suppose that a scientist in the early twentieth century had applied for public funds to study molds: who would have predicted that such research would lead to the discovery of antibiotics ?one of the greatest contributions ever made to the public welfare?
Which one of the following most accurately expresses the main point of the argument?
(A) The committal of public funds for new scientific research will ensure that the public welfare will be enhanced.
(B) If it were possible to predict the general outcome of a new scientific research effort, then legislators would not refuse to commit public funds for that effort.
(C) Scientific discoveries that have contributed to the public welfare would have occurred sooner if public funds had been committed to the research that generated those discoveries.
(D) In order to ensure that scientific research is directed toward contributing to the public welfare, legislators must commit public funds to new scientific research.
(E) Lack of guarantees that new scientific research will contribute to the public welfare is not sufficient reason for legislators to refuse to commit public funds to new scientific research.
3. When workers do not find their assignments challenging, they become bored and so achieve less than their abilities would allow. On the other hand, when workers find their assignments too difficult, they give up and so again achieve less than what they are capable of achieving. It is, therefore, clear that no worker抯 full potential will ever be realized.
Which one of the following is an error of reasoning contained in the argument?
(A) mistakenly equating what is actual and what is merely possible
(B) assuming without warrant that a situation allows only two possibilities
(C) relying on subjective rather than objective evidence
(D) confusing the coincidence of two events with a causal relation between the two
(E) depending on the ambiguous use of a key term
4. Our tomato soup provides good nutrition: for instance, a warm bowl of it contains more units of vitamin C than does a serving of apricots or fresh carrots!
The advertisement is misleading if which one of the following is true?
(A) Few people depend exclusively on apricots and carrots to supply vitamin C to their diets.
(B) A liquid can lose vitamins if it stands in contact with the air for a protracted period of time.
(C) Tomato soup contains important nutrients other than vitamin C.
(D) The amount of vitamin C provided by a serving of the advertised soup is less than the amount furnished by a serving of fresh strawberries.
(E) Apricots and fresh carrots are widely known to
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be nutritious, but their contribution consists primarily in providing a large amount of vitamin A, not a large amount of vitamin C.
Questions 5-6
The government provides insurance for individuals? band deposits, but requires the banks to pay the premiums for the insurance. Since it is depositors who primarily benefit from the security this insurance provides, the government should take steps to ensure that depositors who want this security bear the cost of it and thus should make depositors pay the premiums for insuring their own accounts.
5. Which one of the following principles, if established, would do most to justify drawing the conclusion of the argument on the basis of the reasons offered in its support?
(A) The people who stand to benefit from an economic service should always be made to bear the costs of that service.
(B) Any rational system of insurance must base the size of premiums on the degree of risk involved.
(C) Government-backed security for investors, such as bank depositors, should be provided only when it does not reduce incentives for investors to make responsible investments.
(D) The choice of not accepting and offered service should always be available, even if there is no charge for the service.
(E) The government should avoid any actions that might alter the behavior of corporations and individuals in the market.
6. Which of the following is assumed by the argument?
(A) Banks are not insured by the government against default on the loans the banks make.
(B) Private insurance companies do not have the resources to provide banks or individual with deposit insurance.
(C) Banks do not always cover the cost of the deposit-insurance premiums by paying depositors lower interest rates on insured deposits than the banks would on uninsured deposits.
(D) The government limits the insurance protection it provides by insuring accounts up to a certain legally defined amount only.
(E) The government does not allow banks to offer some kinds of accounts in which deposits are not insured.
7. When individual students are all treated equally in that they have identical exposure to curriculum material, the rate, quality, and quantity of learning will vary from student to student. If all students are to master a given curriculum, some of them need different types of help than others, as any experienced teacher knows.
If the statements above are both true, which one of the following conclusions can be drawn on the basis of them?
(A) Unequal treatment, in a sense, of individual students is required in order to ensure equality with respect to the educational tasks they master.
(B) The rate and quality of learning, with learning understood as the acquiring of the ability to solve problems within a given curriculum area, depend on the quality of teaching an individual student receives in any given curriculum.
(C) The more experienced the teacher is, the more the students will learn.
(D) All students should have identical exposure to learn the material being taught in any given curriculum.
(E) Teachers should help each of their students to learn as much as possible.
8. George: Some scientists say that global warming will occur because people are releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning trees and fossil fuels. We can see, though, that the predicted warming is occurring already. In the middle of last winter, we had a month of springlike weather in our area, and this fall, because of unusually mild temperatures, the leaves on our town抯 trees were three weeks late in turning color.
Which one of the following would it be most relevant to investigate in evaluating the conclusion of George抯 argument?
(A) whether carbon dioxide is the only cause of global warming
(B) when leaves on the trees in the town usually change color
(C) what proportion of global emissions of carbon dioxide is due to the burning of trees by humans
(D) whether air pollution is causing some trees in the are to lose their leaves
(E) whether unusually warm weather is occurring elsewhere on the globe more frequently than before
9. Student representative: Our university, in expelling a student who verbally harassed his roommate, has erred by penalizing the student for doing what he surely has a right to do: speak his mind!
Dean of students: but what you' re saying is that our university should endorse verbal harassment. Yet surely if we did that, we would threaten the free flow of ideas that is the essence of university life.
Which one of the following is a questionable technique that the dean of students uses in attempting to refute the student representative?
(A) challenging the student representative抯 knowledge of the process by which the student was expelled
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(B) invoking a fallacious distinction between speech and other sorts of behavior
(C) misdescribing the student representative' s position, thereby making it easier to challenge
(D) questioning the motives of the student representative rather than offering reasons for the conclusion defended
(E) relying on a position of power to silence the opposing viewpoint with a threat
10. Famous personalities found guilty of many types of crimes in well-publicized trials are increasingly sentenced to the performance of community service, though unknown defendants convicted of similar crimes almost always serve prison sentences. However, the principle of equality before the law rules out using fame and publicity as relevant considerations in the sentencing of convicted criminals.
The statements above, if true, most strongly support which one of the following conclusions?
(A) The principle of equality before the law if rigorously applied in only a few types of criminal trials.
(B) The number of convicted celebrities sentenced to community service should equal the number of convicted unknown defendants sentenced to community service.
(C) The principle of equality before the law can properly be overridden by other principles in some cases.
(D) The sentencing of celebrities to community service instead of prison constitutes a violation of the principle of equality before the law in many cases.
(E) The principle of equality before the law does not allow for leniency in sentencing.
11. Scientific research at a certain university was supported in part by an annual grant from a major foundation. When the university' s physics department embarked on weapons-related research, the foundation, which has a purely humanitarian mission, threatened to cancel its grant. The university then promised that none of the foundation' s money would be used for the weapons research, whereupon the foundation withdrew its threat, concluding that the weapons research would not benefit from the foundation' s grants.
Which one of the following describes a flaw in the reasoning underlying the foundation's conclusion?
(A) It overlooks the possibility that the availability of the foundation's money for humanitarian uses will allow the university to redirect other funds from humanitarian uses to weapons research.
(B) It overlooks the possibility that the physics department' s weapons research is not he only one of the university's research activities with other than purely humanitarian purposes.
(C) It overlooks the possibility that the university made its promise specifically in order to induce the foundation to withdraw its threat.
(D) It confuses the intention of not using a sum of money for a particular purpose with the intention of not using that sum of money at all.
(E) It assumes that if the means to achieve an objective are humanitarian in character, then the objective is also humanitarian in character.
12. To suit the needs of corporate clients, advertising agencies have successfully modified a strategy originally developed for political campaigns. This strategy aims to provide clients with free publicity and air time by designing an advertising campaign that is controversial, thus drawing prime-time media coverage and evoking public comment by officials.
The Statements above, if true, most seriously undermine which one of the following assertions?
(A) The usefulness of an advertising campaign is based solely on the degree to which the campaign抯 advertisements persuade their audiences.
(B) Only a small percentage of eligible voters admit to being influenced by advertising campaigns in deciding how to vote.
(C) Campaign managers have transformed political campaigns by making increasing use of strategies borrowed from corporate advertising campaigns.
(D) Corporations are typically more concerned with maintaining public recognition of the corporate name than with enhancing goodwill toward the corporation.
(E) Advertising agencies that specialize in campaigns for corporate clients are not usually chosen for political campaigns.
13. The National Association of Fire Fighters says that 45 percent of homes now have smoke detectors, whereas only 30 percent of homes had them 10 years ago. This makes early detection of house fires no more likely, however, because over half of the domestic smoke detectors are either without batteries or else inoperative for some other reason.
In order for the conclusion above to be properly drawn, which one of the following assumptions would have to be made?
(A) Fifteen percent of domestic smoke detectors were installed less than 10 years ago.
(B) The number of fires per year in homes with smoke detectors has increased.
(C) Not all of the smoke detectors in homes are battery operated.
(
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D) The proportion of domestic smoke detectors that are inoperative has increased in the past ten years.
(E) Unlike automatic water sprinklers, a properly functioning smoke detector cannot by itself increase fire safety in a home.
14. Advertisement: HomeGlo Paints, Inc., has won the prestigious Golden Paintbrush Award ?given to the one paint manufacturer in the country that has increased the environmental safety of its product most over the past three years ?for HomeGlo Exterior Enamel. The Golden Paintbrush is awarded only on the basis of thorough tests by independent testing laboratories. So when you choose HomeGlo Exterior Enamel, you will know that you have chosen the most environmentally safe brand of paint manufactured in this country today.
The flawed reasoning in the advertisement most closely parallels that in which one of the following?
(A) The ZXC audio system received the overall top ranking for looks, performance, durability, and value in Listeners? Report magazine' s ratings of currently produced systems. Therefore, the ZXC must have better sound quality than any other currently produced sound system.
(B) Morning Sunshine breakfast cereal contains, ounce for ounce, more of the nutrients needed for a healthy diet than any other breakfast cereal on the market today. Thus, when you eat Morning Sunshine, you will know you are eating the most nutritious food now on the market.
(C) The number of consumer visits increased more at Countryside Market last year than at any other market in the region. Therefore, Countryside' s profits must also have increased more last year than those of any other market in the region.
(D) Jerrold's teachers recognize him as the student who has shown more academic improvement than any other student in the junior class this year. Therefore, if Jerrold and his classmates are ranked according to their current academic performance, Jerrold must hold the highest ranking.
(E) Margaret Durring' s short story "The Power Lunch" won three separate awards for best short fiction of the year. Therefore, any of Margaret Durring' s earlier stories certainly has enough literary merit to be included in an anthology of the best recent short fiction.
15. The consistency of ice cream is adversely affected by even slight temperature changes in the freezer. To counteract his problem, manufacturers add stabilizers to ice cream. Unfortunately, stabilizers, though inexpensive, adversely affect flavor. Stabilizers are less needed if storage temperatures are very low. However, since energy costs are constantly going up, those costs constitute a strong incentive in favor of relatively high storage temperatures.
Which one of the following can be properly inferred from the passage?
(A) Even slight deviations from the proper consistency for ice cream sharply impair its flavor.
(B) Cost considerations favor sacrificing consistency over sacrificing flavor.
(C) It would not be cost effective to develop a new device to maintain the constancy of freezer temperatures.
(D) Stabilizers function well only at very low freezer temperatures.
(E) Very low, stable freezer temperatures allow for the best possible consistency and flavor of ice cream.
16. Edwina: True appreciation of Mozart's music demands that you hear it exactly as he intended it to be heard; that is, exactly as he heard it. Since he heard it on eighteenth-century instruments, it follows that so should we.
Alberto: But what makes you think that Mozart ever heard his music played as he had intended it to be played? After all, Mozart was writing at a time when the performer was expected, as a matter of course, not just to interpret but to modify the written score.
Alberto adopts which one of the following strategies in criticizing Edwina' s position?
(A) He appeals to an academic authority in order to challenge the factual basis of her conclusion.
(B) He attacks her judgment by suggesting that she does not recognize the importance of the performer's creativity to the audience's appreciation of a musical composition.
(C) He defends a competing view of musical authenticity.
(D) He attacks the logic of her argument by suggesting that the conclusion she draws does not follow from the premises she sets forth.
(E) He offers a reason to believe that one of the premises of her argument is false.
17. Since the introduction of the Impanian National Health Scheme, Impanians (or their private insurance companies) have had to pay only for the more unusual and sophisticated medical procedures. When the scheme was introduced, it was hoped that private insurance to pay for these procedures would be available at modest cost, since the insurers would no longer be paying for the bulk of health care costs, as they had done previously. Paradoxically, however, the cost of private healt
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h insurance did not decrease but has instead increased dramatically in the years since the scheme抯 introduction.
Which one of the following, if true, does most to explain the apparently paradoxical outcome?
(A) The National Health scheme has greatly reduced the number of medical claims handled annually by Impania's private insurers, enabling these firms to reduce overhead costs substantially.
(B) Before the National Health scheme was introduced, more than 80 percent of all Impanian medical costs were associated with procedures that are now covered by the scheme.
(C) Impanians who previously were unable to afford regular medical treatment now use the National Health scheme, but the number of Impanians with private health insurance has not increased.
(D) Impanians now buy private medical insurance only at times when they expect that they will need care of kinds not available in the National Health scheme.
(E) The proportion of total expenditures within Impania that is spent on health care has declined since the introduction of the National Health scheme.
18. In clinical trials of new medicines, half of the subjects receive the drug being tested and half receive a physiologically inert substance ?a placebo. Trials are designed with the intention that neither subjects nor experimenters will find out which subjects are actually being given the drug being tested. However, this intention is frequently frustrated because ____.
Which one of the following, if true, most appropriately completes the explanation?
(A) often the subjects who receive the drug being tested develop symptoms that the experimenters recognize as side effects of the physiologically active drug
(B) subjects who believe they are receiving the drug being tested often display improvements in their conditions regardless of whether what is administered to them is physiologically active or not
(C) in general, when the trial is intended to establish the experimental drug's safety rather than its effectiveness, all of the subjects are healthy
(D) when a trial runs a long time, few of the experimenters will work on it from inception to conclusion
(E) the people who are subjects for clinical trials must, by law, be volunteers and must be informed of the possibility that they will receive a placebo
19. It takes 365.25 days for the Earth to make one complete revolution around the sun. Long ?standing convention makes a year 365 days long, with an extra day added every fourth year, and the year is divided into 52 seven-day weeks. But since 52 times 7 is only 364, anniversaries do not fall on the same day of the week each year. Many scheduling problems could be avoided if the last day of each year and an additional day every fourth year belonged to no week, so that January 1 would be a Sunday every year.
The proposal above, once put into effect, would be most likely to result in continued scheduling conflicts for which one of the following groups?
(A) people who have birthdays or other anniversaries on December 30 or 31
(B) employed people whose strict religious observances require that they refrain from working every seventh day
(C) school systems that require students to attend classes a specific number of days each year
(D) employed people who have three-day breaks from work when holidays are celebrated on Mondays or Fridays
(E) people who have to plan events several years before those events occur
20. Graphologists claim that it is possible to detect permanent character traits by examining people's handwriting. For example, a strong cross on the "t" is supposed to denote enthusiasm. Obviously, however, with practice and perseverance people can alter their handwriting to include this feature. So it seems that graphologists must hold that permanent character traits can be changed.
The argument against graphology proceeds by
(A) citing apparently incontestable evidence that leads to absurd consequences when conjoined with the view in question
(B) demonstrating that an apparently controversial and interesting claim is really just a platitude
(C) arguing that a particular technique of analysis can never be effective when the people analyzed know that it is being used
(D) showing that proponents of the view have no theoretical justification for the view
(E) attacking a technique by arguing that what the technique is supposed to detect can be detected quite readily without it
Question 21 -22
Historian: There is no direct evidence that timber was traded between the ancient nations of Poran and Nayal, but the fact that a law setting tariffs on timber imports from Poran was enacted during the third Nayalese dynasty does suggest that during that period a timber trade was co9nducted.
Critic: Your reasoning is flawed. During its third
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dynasty, Nayal may well have imported timber from Poran, but certainly on today's statute books there remain many laws regulating activities that were once common but in which people no longer engage.
21. The critic's response to the historian's reasoning does which one of the following?
(A) It implies an analogy between the present and the past.
(B) It identifies a general principle that the historian's reasoning violates.
(C) It distinguishes between what has been established as a certainty and what has been established as a possibility.
(D) It establishes explicit criteria that must be used in evaluating indirect evidence.
(E) It points out the dissimilar roles that law plays in societies that are distinct from one another.
22. The critic抯 response to the historian is flawed because it
(A) produces evidence that is consistent with there not having been any timber trade between Poran and Nayal during the third Nayalese dynasty
(B) cites current laws without indicating whether the laws cited are relevant to the timber trade
(C) fails to recognize that the historian's conclusion was based on indirect evidence rather than direct evidence
(D) takes no account of the difference between a law's enactment at a particular time and a law's existence as part of a legal code at a particular time
(E) accepts without question that assumption about the purpose of laws that underlies the historian's argument
23. The workers at Bell Manufacturing will shortly go on strike unless the management increases their wages. As Bell's president is well aware, however, in order to increase the worker's wages, Bell would have to sell off some of its subsidiaries. So, some of Bell's subsidiaries will be sold.
The conclusion above is properly drawn if which one of the following is assumed?
(A) Bell Manufacturing will begin to suffer increased losses.
(B) Bell's management will refuse to increase its worker's wages.
(C) The workers at Bell Manufacturing will not be going on strike.
(D) Bell's president has the authority to offer the workers their desired wage increase.
(E) Bell's workers will not accept a package of improved benefits in place of their desired wage increase.
24. One sure way you can tell how quickly a new idea ?for example, the idea of "privatization" is taking hold among the population is to monitor how fast the word or words expressing that particular idea are passing into common usage. Professional opinions of whether or not words can indeed be said to have passed into common usage are available from dictionary editors, who are vitally concerned with this question.
The method described above for determining how quickly a new idea is taking hold relies on which one of the following assumptions?
(A) Dictionary editors are not professionally interested in words that are only rarely used.
(B) Dictionary editors have exact numerical criteria for telling when a word has passed into common usage.
(C) For a new idea to take hold, dictionary editors have to include the relevant word or words in their dictionaries.
(D) As a word passes into common usages, its meaning does not undergo any severe distortions in the process.
(E) Words denoting new ideas tend to be used before the ideas denoted are understood.
25. Because migrant workers are typically not hired by any one employer for longer than a single season, migrant workers can legally be paid less than the minimum hourly wage that the government requires employers to pay all their permanent employees. Yet most migrant workers work long hours each day for eleven or twelve months a year and thus are as much full-time workers as are people hired on a year-round basis. Therefore, the law should require that migrant workers be paid the same minimum hourly wage that other full-time workers must be paid.
The pattern of reasoning displayed above most closely parallels that displayed in which one of the following arguments?
(A) Because day-care facilities are now regulated at the local level, the quality of care available to children in two different cities can differ widely. Since such differences in treatment clearly are unfair, day care should be federally rather than locally regulated.
(B) Because many rural areas have few restrictions on development, housing estates in such areas have been built where no adequate supply of safe drinking water could be ensured. Thus, rural areas should adopt building codes more like those large cities have.
(C) Because some countries regulate gun sales more strictly than do other countries, some people can readily purchase a gun, whereas others cannot. Therefore, all countries should cooperate in developing a uniform international policy regarding gun sales.
(D) Because it is a democ
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ratic principle that laws should have the consent of those affected by them, liquor5 laws should be formulated not by politicians but by club and restaurant owners, since such laws directly affect the profitability of their businesses.
(E) Because food additives are not considered drugs, they have not had to meet the safety standards the government applies to drugs. But food additives can be as dangerous as drugs. Therefore, food additives should also be subject to safety regulations as stringent as those covering drugs.
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