Below is an excerpt from a letter that was sent by the chairman of a

This is a good question and adheres to a good gmat-like question but is not a complete the passage question. It is a must be true question or conclusion

A number of charges have been raised against me, some serious, some trivial. Individuals seeking to control the corporation for their own purposes have demanded my resignation.

In other words: someone tray to discredit someonelse. Untill now eveything is fine.

Remember that no court of law in any state has found me guilty of any criminal offense whatsoever. In the American tradition, as you know, an individual is considered innocent until proven guilty.

If I'm guilty then I am not innocent and viceversa. Ok

Furthermore, as the corporation’s unbroken six-year record of growth will show, my conduct of my official duties as chairman has only helped enhance the success of the corporation, and so benefited every stockholder.

The firm went well (maybe as never before) so my conduct was blameless

Which of the following can be properly inferred from the excerpt?

A must true question is always something that is unstated in the stimulus and that you can deduce from the passage

(A) The chairman believes that all those who have demanded his resignation are motivated by desire to control the corporation for their own purposes.

Stated in the passage. We already know. Wrong

(B) Any misdeeds that the chairman may have committed were motivated by his desire to enhance the success of the corporation.

True and not. W have not sufficient information from the passage. If you read carefully it , you can see that this is not completely true

(C) The chairman is innocent of any criminal offense.

We do not know, for sure

(D) The corporation has expanded steadily over the past six years.

This is what we know for SURE. we can infer this from the third sentence or part of the passage, above

(E) Any legal proceedings against the chairman have resulted in his acquittal.

An answer that I call filler, fluff.....wrong


D must be the answer. kudos for your good question

This is a conclusion/inference question. The correct answer would be something already given in the passage or something you can infer without a doubt.
Let's look at each option:

(A) The chairman believes that all those who have demanded his resignation are motivated by desire to control the corporation for their own purposes.

The chairman only says, "Individuals seeking to control the corporation for their own purposes have demanded my resignation."
It is possible that A, B and C are three individuals who are seeking to control the corporation and have demanded his resignation. That makes his statement correct. In addition, there could be others who are not seeking to control the corporation but have demanded his resignation. This will make option (A) incorrect. So we cannot say that the chairman's statement implies that EVERYONE who demanded his resignation is motivated by desire to control the corporation. Note that the chairman's statement only gives you partial information - there is at least one person who wishes to control the corp and has demanded his resignation. The chairman doesn't talk about everyone who wants his resignation.

(B) Any misdeeds that the chairman may have committed were motivated by his desire to enhance the success of the corporation.
Not mentioned. His misdeeds and his success as the chairman are two different things.

(C) The chairman is innocent of any criminal offense.
We cannot infer that. All we can say is that he hasn't been found guilty yet and he will be considered innocent (as of now at least) in the American tradition. Whether he actually is innocent, we can't say.

(D) The corporation has expanded steadily over the past six years.
The corporation has an unbroken six year record of growth. So we can say that the corporation has been expanding for the past six years. Here, I would doubt the 'steadily' part since we don't know whether the growth has been steady (let's say same rate of growth) but considering that no other option comes close to being an inference, I would have to overlook it.

(E) Any legal proceedings against the chairman have resulted in his acquittal.
We don't know that. All we know is that no court has found him guilty yet. Perhaps, some cases are still pending and the verdict is not out yet. We cannot say that he has been acquitted in every case.

Answer (D)

Look at what is given in the argument:
"no court of law in any state has found me guilty of any criminal offense whatsoever. In the American tradition, as you know, an individual is considered innocent until proven guilty."

The point is that in the American tradition, an individual is CONSIDERED innocent until proven guilty. Since no court has found him guilty, at best we can say that 'he is CONSIDERED innocent in American tradition.'
Is he actually innocent? We don't know. He is only considered innocent and that too only in American tradition. The French may consider him guilty even if their court doesn't find him guilty. He may actually be guilty even if he is not considered guilty in the American tradition just because the court could not establish his guilt. We cannot deduce that he actually is innocent.
'He is considered innocent until ....' and 'He is innocent' are different things.

For a non-business person, 'corporation has unbroken six-year record of growth' is the same as 'corporation has unbroken six-year record of expansion'. Growth can be in terms of many other things but it would be specifically mentioned in that case. Only the word 'growth' implies the most common meaning 'development in size' which is the most common meaning of the word 'expansion' too. As I mentioned in my response above, I am not exactly satisfied with option (D) either but it is certainly the best of the lot.

Yes, the word 'all' is a problem.
The chairman only says, "Individuals seeking to control the corporation for their own purposes have demanded my resignation."
It is possible that A, B and C are three individuals who are seeking to control the corporation and have demanded his resignation. That makes his statement correct. In addition, there could be others who are not seeking to control the corporation but have demanded his resignation. This will make option (A) incorrect. So we cannot say that the chairman's statement implies that EVERYONE who demanded his resignation is motivated by desire to control the corporation. Note that the chairman's statement only gives you partial information - there is at least one person who wishes to control the corp and has demanded his resignation. The chairman doesn't talk about everyone who wants his resignation.

Another problem I have with (A) is that it says that 'the chairman believes ....' Point is, we don't know what he believes. We only know what he says and we only have to take that to be true. We know that he said .... We don't know whether he actually believes in what he said.

Dear Fame

First of all, as for (C) ---- consider OJ Simpson. Until a couple years ago, OJ Simpson had not been convicted in court, much like this CEO in this prompt. How many people actually think that OJ Simpson was innocent? I would argue many people thought that he was guilty of the murder of his wife. The justice system in the United States is stacked to prevent, as much as possible, sentencing an innocent man to prison, but the consequence of that slant is that a lot of guilty folks with blood on their hands walk free, just as OJ did. This CEO was not convicted. It is an incredibly naive leap to assume, therefore, he is truly innocent. Rather, whatever criminal act he committed, he got away with them. He beat the rap! (C) is a temping answer for folks who have absolutely no idea how the criminal justice system works.

Here's a related blog you may find helpful.
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/beyond-any ... -the-gmat/

As for (D) --- the prompt indeed says --- "the corporation’s unbroken six-year record of growth" --- the ordinary common-sense way of describing that would be "steady growth". For GMAT purposes, no one is going to use the term "steady growth" and expect us to assume this means the mathematically identical growth rate over the given period. That is reading way too much into the phrase. Fame, in order to succeed on the GMAT CR, you need to understand how phrases and arguments are used in a real world context. What would "steady growth" mean in a WSJ article? in an articles in the Economist magazine? At this point, I think it would help you to read a new article, in one of those sources, for each new CR question you do. If you get caught in a place of inventing your own private meanings for phrases like "steady growth", you will hoodwink yourself out of one CR question after another.

Here a link in which I talk about the value of reading the Economist:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/reading-fo ... economist/

Mike

Unfortunately, the questions which generate the most discussion are often the questions least worth studying. Some questions generate discussion because they don't really have any good answer.

I gather D is the 'OA' here, but for D to be right, you have to think that "steady" means something different from what it really means ('unbroken' and 'steady' are not even close to being synonyms), and that "growth" and "expansion" mean the same thing (they don't). So D just is not a good answer here.

I think you can read the stem a certain way that makes A seem true, but if this were a real GMAT question (which it's not) then the use of 'all' in A would be problematic.

The bigger problem with both A and D is that neither is any kind of inference. They just restate information in the stem.

E might be right, depending on what you think they mean by 'legal proceedings' and 'acquittal'. The stem tells us "no court of law ... has found me guilty of any criminal offense", but there are legal proceedings that are not criminal, and other outcomes of legal proceedings besides a guilty finding and an acquittal.

B finds no support at all in the passage.

C is the most interesting option, because the stem itself redefines the meaning of the word "innocent": "an individual is considered innocent until proven guilty". That is not what "innocent" actually means, but if we forget the real meaning of the word, and accept that as the definition of "innocent", then C is right, and it has the added benefit of being a genuine inference.
No real GMAT question will ever invent a new definition for a common word and ask you to draw an inference on the basis of that definition, so this is also a very strange answer.

That's a long way of saying: this is a question with no good answer, so is not worth reviewing in any detail.

But option A says "the chairman believes...".

As per my reasoning, it can be inferred that chairman believes (his belief may be correct or incorrect) that such people are motivated by their desire to control...

The term "steadily" in D cannot be inferred.

This question has been long troubling me. A would be incorrect but for the use of the term "the chairman believes". But in the correct state, A seems correct to me.

(A) The chairman believes that all those who have demanded his resignation are motivated by desire to control the corporation for their own purposes.
"all" is worng
(B) Any misdeeds that the chairman may have committed were motivated by his desire to enhance the success of the corporation.
not stated
(C) The chairman is innocent of any criminal offense.
no court of law in any state has found him guilty yet.....maybe later lol
(D) The corporation has expanded steadily over the past six years.
corporation’s unbroken six-year record of growth
(E) Any legal proceedings against the chairman have resulted in his acquittal.
not stated

A fragment in the paragraph states ’the corporation’s unbroken six-year record of growth’. Thus it can be properly inferred that ’the corporation has expanded steadily over the past six years’.Hence (d).

I Disagree with OA and call this a poor question. Its an inference question which means what can be inferred shouldn't be directly stated in the premise.
Option D is directly stated and hence can't be INFERRED. So incorrect.

I wonder whether you can say that "unbroken growth" is the same thing as "expanded steadily"? Isn't growth based on revenues and market shares, sales, profits, numbers of employees, and similar quantitative factors?

Expansion on the other side, is more related to qualitative factors: "Different forms of business expansion include opening in another location, adding sales employees, increased marketing, adding franchisees, forming an alliance, offering new products or services, entering new markets, merging with or acquiring another business, expanding globally and expanding through the internet." (Quoted from CIO wiki.)

They are closely related but I wouldnt say growth equals expansion. They are different sides of the same coin.

Answered my question before I could even ask it.

Process of Elimination will get us to D, but the word “steadily” is bothersome.



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