ha ha.. I do not agree with first Macfauz prep OA.. I would pick D as the answer. trainer was able to justify his conclusion on the basis that
Arnold started weight training at the age of 16 and he is considered tall. Therefore he assumed that 16 is young age.
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Haha.. Thanks for your reply Vips.... But I thought that that would be a concern. That is why I added "young age" of 16 in the question. I thought if I stated it explicitly in the question statement, then it cannot be taken as an assumption. Does it not work that way??
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Thanks Practicegmat.... One concept I thought was valid in finding assumptions questions was that "If something is explicitly mentioned in the argument, then it cannot be taken as an assumption." That is the same reason for me to think D is wrong as well. According to the argument, the fitness trainer does not assume the facts given in statements A & D. According to him, those are facts. That is he knows for sure (whether it may be true or not) that people more than 6 feet tall are considered tall and that people 16 yrs old are considered young. It was on this basis that I framed the answer choices. You can correct me if I'm wrong.

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With my score, I no longer qualify to give my opinion still...

If the fact that 16 is young age was explicitly stated, or used as premise then it would have been alright to conclude that it's not an assumption.

However, since young age of 16 is used as part of conclusion , it is no longer a fact or premise.

Nevertheless great attempt Mcfauz prep
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Haha.. Vips.. I agree.. 720 does not do you justice... But I still think it is a score a lot of ppl would happily accept...
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Just a few thoughts on this.

First of all, while the GMAT will make verifiable factual statements about real people, usually dead historical people, in the SC, notice that real people never appear in the CR. Once you open this can of worms ---- arguing about real world people --- that brings a whole bunch of other things into play --- outside knowledge, people's opinions, etc. The GMAT NEVER touches a living person, most certainly not a celebrity/politician about whom folks might have very strong opinions. The whole point of everything the GMAT does is to avoid material that will engender strong opinions in and of itself --- they strive to stay as clinically neutral as possible.

Again, the prompt is very short, and considers a paucity of factors. The answer choices here are a little more engaging.

I would say --- when the GMAT asks for an assumption, that assumption is NEVER stated explicitly. Here, the text explicitly says 16 is "young", and it explicitly says "6 ft ... considered tall by the general public" , so that eliminates (D) and (A) respectively. In general, answer choices for assumptions questions never re-state something stated explicitly in the prompt. I was actually drawn to (C) as the answer.

I would say there is something profoundly flawed about designing a question and not having a clear idea about what the answer should be. That shows a very limited understanding of what is involved in question design. For example, when we at Magoosh write a question, we are always 100% clear about which answer we intend to be the OA, and we add subtle word changes to ensure that there's something clearly and objectively wrong about each of the other four answer choices. Any question in which the OA is debatable, any question in which the OA is not 100% unambiguous from the start, is a poor question.

The debate you see happening in this and other forums is characteristic of how folks wrestle with questions ---- and indeed, some of the CR questions debated extensively in these forums are in fact bad questions. That debate, though, is not at all characteristic of the question production process. At its best, this process is precise and unambiguous, creating something that will force test-takers to think and analyze carefully, but which always contains the clear unmistakable clues to what must be the answer.

Does all this make sense?

Mike
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Mike McGarry
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