Ask Economist GMAT Tutor a question!

Hi there

Fair enough questions!

Let's start by saying that the two quesitons are of a basic nature for now and are certainly not considered advanced by any means. No worries - you will get plenty of advanced CR quesitons, perhaps more than you know what to do with So I would not worry even a bit. First you need to make sure you get these questions right. And you are only at 12% - you have barely started and even at 12% you have seen quite a bit. We will continue to feed you Inference questions even later so the fact that you did the lesson and did some practice questions does not mean that's it; you will get plenty more on all the topics. That is one of the points of a fully adaptive and integrated program.

Let's start with this question. It is an Inference question. What do we do with such questions?

We break them down into the premises as there is no conclusion in such arguments and WE try to draw a conclusion. We cannot draw assumptions and any steps that the answer choices make from the premises must be SMALL steps and accord in tone (positive, negative, etc). You must be careful of conclusions that go too far and of choosing answers that are premises; we want a conclusion....

You must also look for the BEST answer....

Let's look at the answer choices (did you read the explanations to the other answers?):

A contradicts the last premise because we KNOW from premise C that more exercise means more air inhaled so exercising near a motor vehicle just invites more of that air into our system

C is too much like a new premise- nothing is mentioned about damages to the respiratory system.

D does the same thing as C! New info suddenly about developments in emission free vehicles? No thanks.

E goes way beyond what is needed. All vehicles emit harmful gases? All vehicles are harmful in general to humans?

Answer B is the only one that makes sense BASED ON the premises you have there, namely that by doing exercise outdoors you already inhale a large amount of gases but by doing so at peak hours when there are even MORE vehicles, that would mean more pollution and more inhaled.

No worries. You will get it as long as you do not stray too far. Remember: Do not assume too much.



As for your first one which is even less GMATy because it is just testing a basic concept here. Plenty of GMAT like questions quite soon but you need to solidify yourself on such questions first. There is a reason for this: As an analogy, it would not make sense to study higher level SC Clauses and Fragments before you do not know what the basic Subject Verb Agreement construct is, as one is a stepping stone to the other and not visa versa.

Again an Inference question here:

A goes too far as nothing is assured in terms of number of hours studied (again look at the Premise 2)

B goes too far as we have no idea about what the number of hours are needed are that can ensure this.

C corresponds quite neatly with Premise B - this really is not a big jump! What does the premise say? That if you want to have a chance at passing you should study for at least 10 hours. I would say this is spot on in terms of NOT taking a big jump.

D mentions passing THE COURSE. Did you pay attention? Do we know that passing or failing the test means passing or failing the course?? Please please be more attentive.

E we can discount fairly easily.


That's it!

Lesson? With Inference questions we are looking for only smaller steps from the premises not large conclusions and assumptions. In addition, it is crucial to pay attention to details.

By the way - always a good idea to use the ask a tutor system on the course for further clarification or talk to an instructor. We are always happy to help!

OK...I obviously missed the word "course" when the passage is talking about the "test". My bad, I should not have missed that.

The car question though....hmmmmmm

Anyways, cheers for the response. I'm starting to use the Ask a Tutor function in the app and you guys respond pretty quickly, so that's good.

Does x = y ?
(1) | x | = | y |
(2) X^2=Y^2

This is a Yes/No type Data Sufficiency question about absolute value and even powers. The missing piece of information is the value of the variables x and y. Here, as with most DS format questions, it's a good idea to proceed by using Plugging-In.

Stat.(1) allows us to use a Plug-In of x = 5, y = 5 and this leads to an answer of Yes in the question stem. Now, we need to see if we can find a pair of x and y that can lead to the other answer, i.e. No. So, we need to find a pair of values for x and y where |x|= |y| but x is not equal to y. We can achieve this by having x and y with different signs, for example x = 5 and y = -5. This gives an answer of No to our question stem. So, Stat.(1) leads to more than one answer and is Insufficient. We can eliminate answer choices A and D and consider B, C and E.

If we look at Stat.(2) we can see that the same two pairs of Plug-Ins will work for this statement also, because when x and y are equal, their squares are also equal and when x = 5 and y = -5 both x-squared and y-squared are equal to 25. So, we can still get a Yes and a No answer, so Stat.(2) is also Insufficient, we can eliminate answer choice B and consider C and E.

As we were able to use the same Plug-Ins with both statements alone, this pair of Plug-Ins will also work with Stat.(1) and Stat.(2) together, so the statements together are also Insufficient and the correct answer is E.

Please help me to understand following question

On a scale that measures the intensity of a certain
phenomenon, a reading of n + 1 corresponds to an
intensity that is 10 times the intensity corresponding
to a reading of n. On that scale, the intensity
corresponding to a reading of 8 is how many times
as great as the intensity corresponding to a reading
of 3 ?