bkpolymers1617 wrote:
mikemcgarry: Can you please clear the confusion between Choice C and D? Thanks
Dear
bkpolymers1617,
I'm happy to respond.
To be honest, my friend, I am not a huge fan of this question. Among other things, it seems to take for granted some American cultural background knowledge, and it's also woefully out of date. This question had to be written 20+ years ago. I don't even know how many current GMAT student have even
seen a VCR tape!
Here's what I'll say about (C) & (D).
C) Only a very small number of the movies the store sells are available on DVD.So, Movie Tapes has only a small number of movies on DVD. It has many more on tapes, including some that competitors have on DVD, and on these particular movies, Movie Tapes outsells its competitors. Is this also a small number of movies, the specific movies that Movie Tapes has on VCR and competitors have on DVDs? We don't know. Did those competitors have those movies just on DVD, or did the competitors also have the VCR versions of those movies? We don't know. Is there a preference in that town for VCR? If people there have a choice, do they go out of their way to get a copy of a movie on a VCR, rather than on a DVD? That's possible, and that certainly would weaken the answer, but this is tenuous at best. (C) is not logically tight as an OA--it could work, but it's not a clear winner.
(D) A month before the campaign began, the public library started buying videocassettes to lend.OK, great. Where are they buying the VCR tapes? Is the library buying them from Movie Tapes, or it is buying them from, I don't know, some Library Supply House that provides materials to libraries at cheaper costs? In American culture, it would be highly unusual for a public library to buy books or other materials from businesses in town hoping to sell these materials at a profit. Libraries tend to get their supplies from state agencies or non-profit sources. Of course, there is no way the GMAT would expect non-Americans to have this kind of detailed knowledge of how American public libraries function. This answer is incorrect because the place of purchase is not specified, but this would be far more obvious to someone who grew up in America.
As someone who writes questions professionally, I would give this question a grade of an
F. The premise is interesting, although a little out of date, but the question is poorly designed, and there's no rigorous right answer. Sometimes, the questions that generate endless discussion and debate on GMAT Club are the poorly written questions--there's a lot to debate, precisely because the question is fundamentally unclear.
Here's a high quality CR practice question:
The element ytterbium increasesDoes all this make sense?
Mike
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Mike McGarry
Magoosh Test PrepEducation is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. — William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)