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TEST 7
SECTION I
Time 35 minutes 25 Questions
Directions: The questions in this section are based on the reasoning contained in brief statements or passages...
1. Before the printing press, books could be purchased only in expensive manuscript copies. The printing press produced books that were significantly less expensive than the manuscript editions. The public’s demand for printed books in the first years after the invention of the printing press was many times greater than demand had been for manuscript copies. This increase demonstrates that there was a dramatic jump in the number of people who learned how to read in the years after publishers first started producing books on the printing press.
Which one of the following statements, if true, casts doubt on the argument?
(A) During the first years after the invention of the printing press, letter writing by people who wrote without the assistance of scribes or clerks exhibited a dramatic increase.
(B) Books produced on the printing press are often found with written comments in the margins in the handwriting of the people who owned the books.
(C) In the first years after the printing press was invented, printed books were purchased primarily by people who had always bought and read expensive manuscripts but could afford a greater number of printed books for the same money.
(D) Books that were printed on the printing press in the first years after its invention often circulated among friends in informal reading clubs or libraries.（C）
(E) The first printed books published after the invention of the printing press would have been useless to illiterate people, since the books had virtually no illustrations.
2. Bevex, an artificial sweetener used only in soft drinks, is carcinogenic for mice, but only when it is consumed in very large quantities. To ingest an amount of Bevex equivalent to the amount fed to the mice in the relevant studies, a person would have to drink 25 cans of Bevex-sweetened soft drinks per day. For that reason, Bevex is in fact safe for people.
In order for the conclusion that Bevex is safe for people to be properly drawn, which of the following must be true?
(A) Cancer from carcinogenic substances develops more slowly in mice than it does in people.
(B) If all food additives that are currently used in foods were tested, some would be found to be carcinogenic for mice.
(C) People drink fewer than 25 cans of Bevex-sweetened soda per day.
(D) People can obtain important health benefits by controlling their weight through the use of artificially sweetened soft drinks.（C）
(E) Some of the studies done on Bevex were not relevant to the question of whether or not Bevex is carcinogenic for people.
3. Harry: Airlines have made it possible for anyone to travel around the world in much less time than was formerly possible.
Judith: That is not true. Many flights are too expensive for all but the rich.
Judith’s response shows that she interprets Harry’s statement to imply that
(A) the majority of people are rich
(B) everyone has an equal right to experience world travel
(C) world travel is only possible via routes serviced by airlines
(D) most forms of world travel are not affordable for most people（E）
(E) anyone can afford to travel long distances by air
4. Nutritionists have recommended that people eat more fiber. Advertisements for a new fiber-supplement pill state only that it contains “44 percent fiber”.
The advertising claim is misleading in its selection of information on which to focus if which one of the following is true?
(A) There are other products on the market that are advertised as providing fiber as a dietary supplement.
(B) Nutritionists base their recommendation on medical findings that dietary fiber protects against some kinds of cancer.
(C) It is possible to become addicted to some kinds of advertised pills, such as sleeping pills and painkillers.
(D) The label of the advertised product recommends taking 3 pills every day.（E）
(E) The recommended daily intake of fiber is 20 to 30 grams, and the pill contains one-third gram.
5. Many environmentalists have urged environmental awareness on consumers, saying that if we accept moral responsibility for our effects on the environment, then products that directly or indirectly harm the environment ought to be avoided. Unfortunately it is usually impossible for consumers to assess the environmental impact of a product, and thus impossible for them to consciously restrict their purchases to environmentally benign products. Because of this impossibility there can be no moral duty to choose products in the way these environmentalists urge, since______
Which one of the following principles provides the most appropriate completion for the argument?
(A) a moral duty to perform an action is never based solely on the effects the action will have on other people
(B) a person cannot possibly have a moral duty to do what he or she is unable to do
(C) moral considerations should not be the sole determinants of what products are made available to consumers
(D) the morally right action is always the one whose effects produce the least total harm（B）
(E) where a moral duty exists, it supersedes any legal duty and any other kind of duty
6. Advertisement: Anyone who exercises knows from firsthand experience that exercise leads to better performance of such physical organs as the heart and lungs, as well as to improvement in muscle tone. And since your brain is a physical organ, your actions can improve its performance, too. Act now. Subscribe to Stimulus: read the magazine that exercises your brain.
The Advertisement employs which one of the following argumentative strategies?
(A) It cites experimental evidence that subscribing to the product being advertised has desirable consequences.
(B) It ridicules people who do not subscribe to Stimulus by suggesting that they do not believe that exercise will improve brain capacity.
(C) It explains the process by which the product being advertised brings about the result claimed for its use.
(D) It supports its recommendation by a careful analysis of the concept of exercise.（E）
(E) It implies that brains and muscle are similar in one respect because they are similar in another respect.
Questions 7- 8
Coherent solutions for the problem of reducing health-care costs cannot be found within the current piecemeal (done, made, or accomplished piece by piece or in a fragmentary way *piecemeal reforms in the system*) system of paying these costs. The reason is that this system gives health-care providers and insurers every incentive to shift, wherever possible, the costs of treating illness onto each other or any other party, including the patient. That clearly is the lesson of the various reforms of the 1980s: push in on one part of this pliable spending balloon and an equally expensive bulge pops up elsewhere. For example, when the government health-care insurance program for the poor cut costs by disallowing payments for some visits to physicians, patients with advanced illness later presented themselves at hospital emergency rooms in increased numbers.
7. The argument proceeds by
(A) showing that shifting costs onto the patient contradicts the premise of health-care reimbursement
(B) attributing without justification fraudulent intent to people
(C) employing an analogy to characterize interrelationships
(D) denying the possibility of a solution by disparaging each possible alternative system（C）
(E) demonstrating that cooperation is feasible by citing an instance
8. The argument provides the most support for which one of the following?
(A) Under the conditions in which the current system operates, the overall volume of health-care costs could be shrunk, if at all, only by a comprehensive approach.
(B) Relative to the resources available for health-care funding, the income of the higher-paid health-care professionals is too high.
(C) Health-care costs are expanding to meet additional funds that have been made available for them.
(D) Advances in medical technology have raised the expected standards of medical care but have proved expensive.（A）
(E) Since unfilled hospital beds contribute to overhead charges on each patient’s bill, it would be unwise to hold unused hospital capacity in reserve for large-scale emergencies.
9. The commercial news media emphasize exceptional events such as airplane crashes at the expense of those such as automobile accidents, which occur far more frequently and represent a far greater risk to the public. Yet the public tends to interpret the degree of emphasis the news media give to these occurrences as indicating the degree of risk they represent.
If the statements above are true, which one of the following conclusions is more strongly supported by them?
(A) Print media, such as newspapers and magazines, are a better source of information than are broadcast media.
(B) The emphasis given in the commercial news media to major catastrophes is dictated by the public’s taste for the extraordinary.
(C) Events over which people feel they have no control are generally perceived as more dangerous than those which people feel they can avert or avoid.
(D) Where commercial news media constitute the dominant source of information, public perception of risk does not reflect actual risk.（D）
(E) A massive outbreak of cholera will be covered more extensively by the news media than will the occurrence of a rarer but less serious disease.
10. A large group of hyperactive children whose regular diets included food containing large amounts of additives was observed by researchers trained to assess the presence or absence of behavior problems. The children were then placed on a low-additive diet for several weeks, after which they were observed again. Originally nearly 60 percent of the children exhibited behavior problems; after the change in diet, only 30 percent did so. On the basis of these data, it can be concluded that food additives can contribute to behavior problems in hyperactive children.
The evidence cited fails to establish the conclusion because
(A) there is no evidence that the reduction in behavior problems was proportionate to the reduction in food-additive intake
(B) there is no way to know what changes would have occurred without the change of diet, since only children who changed to a low-additive diet were studied
(C) exactly how many children exhibited behavior problems after the change in diet cannot be determined, since the size of the group studied is not precisely given
(D) there is no evidence that the behavior of some of the children was unaffected by additives（B）
(E) the evidence is consistent with the claim that some children exhibit more frequent behavior problems after being on the low-additive diet than they had exhibited when first observed
11. In 1990 major engine repairs were performed on 10 percent of the cars that had been built by the National Motor Company in the 1970s and that were still registered. However, the corresponding figure for the cars that the National Motor Company had manufactured in the 1960s was only five percent.
Which of the following, if true, most helps to explain the discrepancy?
(A) Government motor vehicle regulations generally require all cars, whether old or new, to be inspected for emission levels prior to registration.
(B) Owners of new cars tend to drive their cars more carefully than do owners of old cars.
(C) The older a car is, the more likely it is to be discarded for scrap rather than repaired when major engine work is needed to keep the car in operation.
(D) The cars that the National Motor Company built in the 1970s incorporated simplified engine designs that made the engines less complicated than those of earlier models.（C）
(E) Many of the repairs that were performed on the cars that the National Motor Company built in the 1960s could have been avoided if periodic routine maintenance had been performed.
12. No mathematician today would flatly refuse to accept the results of an enormous computation as an adequate demonstration of the truth of a theorem. In 1976, however, this was not the case. Some mathematicians at that time refused to accept the results of a complex computer demonstration of a very simple mapping theorem. Although some mathematicians still hold a strong belief that a simple theorem ought to have a short, simple proof, in fact, some simple theorems have required enormous proofs.
If all of the statements in the passage are true, which one of the following must also be true?
(A) Today, some mathematicians who believe that a simple theorem ought to have a simple proof would consider accepting the results of an enormous computation as a demonstration of the truth of a theorem.
(B) Some individuals who believe that a simple theorem ought to have a simple proof are not mathematicians.
(C) Today, some individuals who refuse to accept the results of an enormous computation as a demonstration of the truth of a theorem believe that a simple theorem ought to have a simple proof.
(D) Some individuals who do not believe that a simple theorem ought to have a simple proof would not be willing to accept the results of an enormous computation as proof of a complex theorem.（A）
(E) Some nonmathematicians do not believe that a simple theorem ought to have a simple proof.
13. If you climb mountains, you will not live to a ripe old age. But you will be bored unless you climb mountains. Therefore, if you live to a ripe old age you will have been bored.
Which of the following most closely parallels the reasoning in the arguments above?
(A) If you do not try to swim, you will not learn how to swim. But you will not be safe in boats if you do not learn how to swim. Therefore, you must try to swim.
(B) If you do not play golf, you will not enjoy the weekend. But you will be tired next week unless you relax during the weekend. Therefore, to enjoy the weekend, you will have to relax by playing golf.
(C) If you work for your candidate, you will not improve your guitar playing. But you will neglect your civic duty unless you work for your candidate. Therefore, if you improve your guitar playing, you will have neglected your civic duty.
(D) If you do not train, you will not be a good athlete. But you will become exhausted easily unless you train. Therefore, if you train, you will not have become exhausted easily.（C）
(E) If you spend all of your money, you will not become wealthy. But you will become hungry unless you spend all of your money. Therefore, if you become wealthy, you will not become hungry.
14. Marine biologists had hypothesized that lobsters kept together in lobster traps eat one another in response to hunger. Periodic checking of lobster traps, however, has revealed instances of lobsters sharing traps together for weeks. Eight lobsters even shared one trap together for two months without eating one another. The marine biologists’ hypothesis, therefore, is clearly wrong.
The argument against the marine biologists’ hypothesis is based on which one of the following assumptions?
(A) Lobsters not caught in lobster traps have been observed eating one another.
(B) Two months is the longest known period during which eight or more lobsters have been trapped together.
(C) It is unusual to find as many as eight lobsters caught together in one single trap.
(D) Members of other marine species sometimes eat their own kind when no other food sources are available.（E）
(E) Any food that the eight lobsters in the trap might have obtained was not enough to ward off hunger.
15. Eight years ago hunting was banned in Greenfield County on the grounds that hunting endangers public safety. Now the deer population in the county is six times what it was before the ban. Deer are invading residential areas, damaging property and causing motor vehicle accidents that result in serious injury to motorists. Since there were never any hunting-related injuries in the county, clearly the ban was not only unnecessary but has created a danger to public safety that would not otherwise exist.
Which one of the following, if true, provides the strongest additional support for the conclusion above?
(A) In surrounding counties, where hunting is permitted, the size of the deer population has not increased in the last eight years.
(B) Motor vehicle accidents involving deer often result in damage to the vehicle, injury to the motorist, or both.
(C) When deer populations increase beyond optimal size, disease and malnutrition become more widespread among the deer herds.
(D) In residential areas in the county, many residents provide food and salt for deer.（A）
(E) Deer can cause extensive damage to ornamental shrubs and trees by chewing on twigs and saplings.
16. Comets do not give off their own light but reflect light from other sources, such as the Sun. Scientists estimate the mass of comets by their brightness: the greater a comet’s mass, the more light that comet will reflect. A satellite probe, however, has revealed that the material of which Halley’s comet is composed reflects 60 times less light per unit of mass than had been previously thought.
The statements above, if true, give the most support to which one of the following?
(A) Some comets are composed of material that reflects 60 times more light per unit of mass than the material of which Halley’s comet is composed.
(B) Previous estimates of the mass of Halley’s comet which were base on its brightness were too low.
(C) The total amount of light reflected from Halley’s comet is less than scientists had previously thought.
(D) The reflective properties of the material of which comets are composed vary considerably from comet to comet.（B）
(E) Scientists need more information before they can make a good estimate of the mass of Halley’s comet.
17. Office manager: I will not order recycled paper for this office. Our letters to clients must make a good impression, so we cannot print them on inferior paper.
Stationery supplier: recycled paper is not necessarily inferior. In fact, from the beginning, the finest paper has been made of recycled material. It was only in the 1850s that paper began to be made from wood fiber, and then only because there were no longer enough rags to meet the demand for paper.
In which of the following ways does the stationer’s response fail to address the office manager’s objection to recycled paper?
(A) It does not recognize that the office manager’s prejudice against recycled paper stems from ignorance.
(B) It uses irrelevant facts to justify a claim about the quality of the disputed product.
(C) It assumes that the office manager is concerned about environmental issues.
(D) It presupposes that the office manager understands the basic technology of paper manufacturing.（B）
(E) It ignores the office manager’s legitimate concern about quality.
Question 18-19
When Alicia Green borrowed a neighbor’s car without permission, the police merely gave her a warning. However, when Peter Foster did the same thing, he was charged with automobile theft. Peter came to the attention of the police because the car he was driving was hit by a speeding taxi. Alicia was stopped because the car she was driving had defective taillights. It is true that the car Peter took got damaged and the car Alicia took did not, but since it was the taxi that caused the damage this difference was not due to any difference in the blameworthiness of their behavior. Therefore, Alicia should also have been charged with automobile theft.
18. The statement that the car Peter took got damaged and the car Alicia took did not plays which one of the following roles in the argument?
(A) It presents a reason that directly supports the conclusion.
(B) It justifies the difference in the actual outcome in the two cases.
(C) It demonstrates awareness of a fact on which a possible objection might be based.
(D) It illustrates a general principle on which the argument relies.（C）
(E) It summarizes a position against which the argument is directed.
19. If all of the claims offered in support of the conclusion are accurate, each of the following could be true EXCEPT:
(A) The interests of justice would have been better served if the police had released Peter Foster with a warning.
(B) Alicia Green had never before driven a car belonging to someone else without first securing the owner’s permission.
(C) Peter Foster was hit by the taxi while he was running a red light, whereas Alicia Green drove with extra care to avoid drawing the attention of the police to the car she had taken.
(D) Alicia Green barely missed hitting a pedestrian when she sped through a red light ten minutes before she was stopped by the police for driving a car that had defective taillights.（C）
(E) Peter Foster had been cited for speeding twice in the preceding month, whereas Alicia Green had never been cited for a traffic violation.
20. According to sources who can be expected to know, Dr. Maria Esposito is going to run in the mayoral election. But if Dr. Esposito runs, Jerome Krasman will certainly not run against her. Therefore Dr. Esposito will be the only candidate in the election.
The flawed reasoning in the argument above most closely parallels that in which one of the following?
(A) According to its management, Brown’s Stores will move next year. Without Brown’s being present, no new large store can be attracted to the downtown area. Therefore the downtown area will no longer be viable as a shopping district.
(B) The press release says that the rock group Rollercoaster is playing a concert on Saturday. It won’t be playing on Friday if it plays on Saturday. So Saturday will be the only day this week on which Rollercoaster will perform.
(C) Joshua says the interviewing panel was impressed by Marilyn. But if they were impressed by Marilyn, they probably thought less of Sven. Joshua is probably right, and so Sven will probably not get the job.
(D) An informant says that Rustimann was involved in the bank robbery, If Rustimann was involved, Jones was certainly not involved. Since these two are the only people who could have been involved. Rustimann is the only person the police need to arrest.（B）
(E) The review said that this book is the best one for beginners at programming. If this book is the best, that other one can’t be as good. So this one is the book we should buy.
21. The initial causes of serious accidents at nuclear power plants have not so far been flaws in the advanced-technology portion of the plants. Rather, the initial causes have been attributed to human error, as when a worker at the Browns Mills reactor in the United States dropped a candle and started a fire, or to flaws in the plumbing, exemplified in a recent incident in Japan. Such everyday events cannot be thought unlikely to occur over the long run.
Which of the following is most strongly supported by the statements above?
(A) Now that nuclear power generation has become a part of everyday life, an ever-increasing yearly incidence of serious accidents at plants can be expected.
(B) If nuclear power plants continue in operation, a serious accident at such a plant is not improbable.
(C) The likelihood of human error at the operating consoles of nuclear power generators cannot be lessened by thoughtful design of dials, switches, and displays.
(D) The design of nuclear power plants attempts to compensate for possible failures of the materials used in their construction.（B）
(E) No serious accident will be caused in the future by some flaw in the advanced-technology portion of a nuclear power plant.
22. There is a widespread belief that people can predict impending earthquakes from unusual animal behavior. Skeptics claim that this belief is based on selective coincidence: people whose dogs behaved oddly just before an earthquake will be especially likely to remember that fact. At any given time, the skeptics say, some of the world’s dogs will be behaving oddly.
Clarification of which one of the following issues would be most important to an evaluation of the skeptics’ position?
(A) Which is larger, the number of skeptics or the number of people who believe that animal behavior can foreshadow earthquakes?
(B) Are there means other than the observation of animal behavior that nonscientists can use to predict earthquakes?
(C) Are there animals about whose behavior people know too little to be able to distinguish unusual from everyday behavior?
(D) Are the sorts of behavior supposedly predictive of earthquakes as pronounced in dogs as they are in other animals?（E）
(E) Is the animal behavior supposedly predictive of earthquakes specific to impending earthquakes or can it be any kind of unusual behavior?
23. Defendants who can afford expensive private defense lawyers have a lower conviction rate than those who rely on court-appointed public defenders. This explains why criminals who commit lucrative crimes like embezzlement or insider trading are more successful at avoiding conviction than are street criminals.
The explanation offered above would be more persuasive if which one of the following were true?
(A) Many street crimes, such as drug dealing, are extremely lucrative and those committing them can afford expensive private lawyers.
(B) Most prosecutors are not competent to handle cases involving highly technical financial evidence and have more success in prosecuting cases of robbery or simple assault.
(C) The number of criminals convicted of street crimes is far greater than the number of criminals convicted of embezzlement or insider trading.
(D) The percentage of defendants who actually committed the crimes of which they are accused is no greater for publicly defended than for privately defended defendants.（D）
(E) Juries, out of sympathy for the victims of crimes, are much more likely to convict defendants accused of violent crimes than they are to convict defendants accused of “victimless” crimes or crimes against property.
24. Many major scientific discoveries of the past were the product of serendipity, the chances discovery of valuable findings that investigators had not purposely sought. Now, however, scientific research tends to be so costly that investigators are heavily dependent on large grants to fund their research. Because such grants require investigators to provide the grant sponsors with clear projections of the outcome of the proposed research, investigators ignore anything that does not directly bear on the funded research. Therefore, under the prevailing circumstances, serendipity can no longer play a role in scientific discovery.
Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
(A) Only findings that an investigator purposely seeks can directly bear on that investigator’s research.
(B) In the past few scientific investigators attempted to make clear predictions of the outcome of their research.
(C) Dependence on large grants is preventing investigators from conducting the type of scientific research that those investigators would personally prefer.
(D) All scientific investigators who provide grant sponsors with clear projections of the outcome of their research receive at least some of the grants for which they apply.（A）
(E) In general the most valuable scientific discoveries are the product of serendipity.
25. Police statistics have shown that automobile antitheft devices reduce the risk of car theft, but a statistical study of automobile theft by the automobile insurance industry claims that cars equipped with antitheft devices are, paradoxically, more likely to be stolen than cars that are not so equipped.
Which one of the following, if true, does the most to resolve the apparent paradox?
(A) Owners of stolen cars almost invariably report the theft immediately to the police but tend to delay notifying their insurance company, in the hope that the vehicle will be recovered.
(B) Most cars that are stolen are not equipped with antitheft devices, and most cars that are equipped with antitheft devices are not stolen.
(C) The most common automobile antitheft devices are audible alarms, which typically produce ten false alarms for every actual attempted theft.
(D) Automobile owners who have particularly theft-prone cars and live in areas of greatest incidence of car theft are those who are most likely to have antitheft devices installed.（D）
(E) Most automobile thefts are the work of professional thieves against whose efforts antitheft devices offer scant protection.
SECTION IV
Time 35 minutes 25 Questions
Directions: The questions in this section are based on the reasoning contained in brief statements or passages...
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 is much higher than in highway accidents that do not involve motorists driving at such speeds.（D）
(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）
(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’s 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（B）
(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）
(E) Apricots and fresh carrots are widely known to 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’ bank 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 an offered service should always be available, even if there is no charge for the service.（A）
(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.（C）
(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.（A）
(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’s 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’s 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）
(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’s knowledge of the process by which the student was expelled
(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（C）
(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 is 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.（D）
(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 the 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.（A）
(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’s 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.（A）
(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.
(D) The proportion of domestic smoke detectors that are inoperative has increased in the past ten years.（D）
(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.（D）
(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 this 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）
(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）
(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 health insurance did not decrease but has instead increased dramatically in the years since the scheme’s 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.（D）
(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（A）
(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（B）
(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（A）
(E) attacking a technique by arguing that what the technique is supposed to detect can be detected quite readily without it
Questions 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 conducted.
Critic: Your reasoning is flawed. During its third 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.（A）
(E) It points out the dissimilar roles that law plays in societies that are distinct from one another.
22. The critic’s 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（D）
(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.（C）
(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.（D）
(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 democratic principle that laws should have the consent of those affected by them, liquor laws should be formulated not by politicians but by club and restaurant owners, since such laws directly affect the profitability of their businesses.（E）
(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.
TEST 7
SECTION I
|
1. C |
2. C |
3. E |
4. E |
5. B |
|
6. E |
7. C |
8. A |
9. D |
10. B |
|
11. C |
12. A |
13. C |
14. E |
15. A |
|
16. B |
17. B |
18. C |
19. C |
20. B |
|
21. B |
22. E |
23. D |
24. A |
25. D |
SECTION IV
|
1. D |
2. E |
3. B |
4. E |
5. A |
|
6. C |
7. A |
8. E |
9. C |
10. D |
|
11. A |
12. A |
13. D |
14. D |
15. E |
|
16. E |
17. D |
18. A |
19. B |
20. A |
|
21. A |
22. D |
23. C |
24. D |
25. E |
Where's My Stuff? |
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