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In the past decade, a decreasing percentage of money spent [#permalink]
10 Jan 2004, 13:18
Question Stats:
0% (00:00) correct
100% (02:41) wrong based on 0 sessions
In the past decade, a decreasing percentage of money spent on treating disease X went to pay for standard methods of treatment, which are known to be effective though they are expensive and painful. An increasing percentage is being spent on non-standard treatments, which cause little discomfort. Unfortunately, the nonstandard treatments have proved to be ineffective. Obviousy, less money is being spent now on effective treatment than treating disease X than was spent ten years ago. Which of the following, if assumed, allows the conclusion above to be properly drawn 1. Varieties of disease X requiring expensive special treatment have become less common during the past decade 2. Nonstandard methods of treating disease X are most expensively now than they were a decade ago. 3. Of total medical expenditures, the percentage that is due treatment of disease X increased during the past decade 4.Most of the money spent on treating disease X during the last decade went to pay for nonstandard treatment 5. The total amount of money spent on treating disease X declined during the past decade
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I think 5 is the answer, and I would categorize the question as middle of the road (If I'm wrong, then I call it "difficult").
However, this smells like an LSAT question rather than a GMAT question! I'd be happy to give you some more difficulty opinions if you asked some GMAT CR questions.
Do you have the OG?
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5 ??
my case: I take it for granted that a conclusion based question is never easy. need to consider couple of scenarios.
If, I am right, then this one is of medium difficulty... if, I am wrong, then I am a flyer
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GMAT Club Legend
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Hmmm, somehow I came up with 2 as answer and I find this question difficult to very difficult. I will try to come up with my explanation in a moment
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Best Regards,
Paul
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GMAT Club Legend
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Wow, took me a while to figure out that only 5 would work. I'm on a streak of bad answers today.
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Best Regards,
Paul
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I was debating between 2 and 5.
Case for choice 2:
If a treatment is ineffective then more money is being spent may be because of lengthy duration of treatement or may be patients are treated more often. Also it has become very expensive.
Case for Choice 5:
if % money spent on standard treatment is decreasing and % money spent on non standard treatment is increasing then one possible scenario would be reduction in the spending. If absolute money spent on NS treatment remained same and money spent on S treament went down then that means total money spent went down. Relatively % for NS treatment increased.
Again choice 5 also depends on certain assumption. One can also argue that reduction in S treatment may be compensated by increase in NS treatment. Even then the conclusion holds good. Choice 5 would have been perfect if it said money spent on treating disease X remained unchanged over past decade. Then it will be 5.
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I initally thought 4, but after reading the posts I think that 5 is it. This is a hard question.
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I think answer is 4. And IMO this is a difficult question.
If 5 were true then the conclusion would be true, but 5 is not needed in order for the conclusion to be properly drawn.
If by any chance the answer is 4 I'll gladly explain more.
Martin
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I am happy to see that none of you said that the question was easy otherwise......................
Th ecorrect answer is 5 and stoolfi as you guessed it's an LSAT question
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Re: CR-I need an honest opinion [#permalink]
04 Feb 2004, 04:04
higmat wrote: I need an honest opinion. Please after answering this question, categorize it as very easy, easy, medium, hard, and very hard. CR is my weakest point and I would like to know how I stand compared to others.Thanks in advance
In the past decade, a decreasing percentage of money spent on treating disease X went to pay for standard methods of treatment, which are known to be effective though they are expensive and painful. An increasing percentage is being spent on non-standard treatments, which cause little discomfort. Unfortunately, the nonstandard treatments have proved to be ineffective. Obviousy, less money is being spent now on effective treatment than treating disease X than was spent ten years ago.
Which of the following, if assumed, allows the conclusion above to be properly drawn
1. Varieties of disease X requiring expensive special treatment have become less common during the past decade
2. Nonstandard methods of treating disease X are most expensively now than they were a decade ago.
3. Of total medical expenditures, the percentage that is due treatment of disease X increased during the past decade
4.Most of the money spent on treating disease X during the last decade went to pay for nonstandard treatment
5. The total amount of money spent on treating disease X declined during the past decade
IMO, this is an easy question. Why? Because this type of question pattern is typical:
Premise: There is a decrease in the percentage of something.
Conclusion: These is a decrease in the absolute amount of something.
The only way the conclusion can be justified is if you know that the "something" did not grow faster than the decrease in the percentage.
Whenever one sees percentage decrease implying absolute decrease, the first thing one should check is the change in size of the whole.
Since E says that the whole pie got smaller, only then we can conclude for SURE that a smaller percentage of the pie equates to a smaller piece.
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Best,
AkamaiBrah Former Senior Instructor, Manhattan GMAT and VeritasPrep Vice President, Midtown NYC Investment Bank, Structured Finance IT MFE, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, Class of 2005 MBA, Anderson School of Management, UCLA, Class of 1993
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good explanantion!!
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