If you draw a diagram for this as you are reading the stimulus, it's a lot easier to see what's going on without getting entangled in the per planted, per agricultural acreage mumbo jumbo.
Draw two big boxes representing Brazil and Canada's agricultural acreage (agricultural acreage is bound to be bigger than planted acreage). Inside the Brazil box, draw five smaller boxes representing planted acres and write 68 (representing crops yielded) on each of them. Similarly, draw three smaller boxes inside Canada's big box and write 100 (crops yielded) on each. this is what the stimulus is saying. that per planted acre, brazil yields only 68% of canada's per planted yield. but in terms of the bigger box or agricultural acreage, brazil yields more than canada. so what is the question saying? there is just more planted acres in brazil than in canada. if u look at per planted acre, u see that canada yields more, but if u look at the total crops produced, brazil wins by virtue of it having more planted acres.
Armed with this understanding, you can attack the choices.
A. this is in line with our understanding. definitely a contender if not THE answer.
B. a majority of canadian.... majority? this is not descriptive enough. FAIL.
C. more total acres were unplanted in Can than Bra. close but total acres? it's trying to be tricky. we are talking about planted and agricultural acres and now total acres just brings the whole of the land mass into picture. Vague, beyond, irrelevant, whatever. FAIL.
D. Sounds reasonable but the second part of this choice- canada has more unplanted than planted- is saying too much and also it says "acres" doesn't specify agricultural or planted. FAIL.
E. This sounds reasonable but the stimulus talks in terms of percentage- that brazil yields 68% less per PA but 115% more per AA. but the numbers that form the base for those percentages are unclear. this becomes that data sufficiency question where both statement 1 and 2 are together insufficient.
Hence A.
Hope this helps.
GyanOne wrote:
The answer is (A).
Lets set up the answer first, before we evaluate the possible answer choices. Yield is the amount of crop grown on a piece of land. When compared on a per planted acre basis, crops in Brazil have much lower yield (68%) when compared by crops in Canada. However, when compared on a per agricultural acre basis, Brazilian crops have a higher (115%) yield than Canadian crops.
Now lets evaluate the answer choices.
(A): CORRECT. If Brazilian crops have a lower planted yield than Canadian crops, then the only way for Brazilian crops to have a greater agricultural yield is if a greater portion of every agricultural acre is planted in Brazil than it is in Canada. Imagine this: if both Brazilian crops and Canadian crops had the same planted yield, and Brazil had a greater agricultural yield, we would conclude that this must be because a greater proportion of every acre is planted in Brazil than in Canada. Since the Brazilian planted yield is less than the Canadian yield, this must certainly be true.
(B): This is the wrong inference. It is possible that a majority of acreage in Canada is planted - the only truth, as we saw, is that on a per agricultural acre basis, Canada has a lesser percentage of its acreage planted than Brazil does. It is possible that Canada has 80% of its acreage planted while Brazil has 95% of its acreage planted. Would you call 80% less than a majority? No.
(C): This cannot be inferred. The question discusses yields on a per agricultural acre basis. There is no mention of the total acres of unplanted acreage in Canada or Brazil. It is possible that Canada has a greater number of total planted acres than Brazil does - only they are more sparsely planted than the Brazilian ones. Incorrect.
(D): This is the wrong inference following the logic in option (C) above. Incorrect.
(E): This cannot be inferred - it is possible that Canada produced more crops, even if by using its land less efficiently. Incorrect.
close
38% (02:16) correct
