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Re: All of the best comedians have had unhappy childhoods. Yet, many peopl [#permalink]
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p2bhokie wrote:
Can a Verbal expert please come for the rescue....This question is confusing...plus I am not sure how could the correct ans be A? IMO it should be 'D'...please help!


Hello p2bhokie

We have:

Fact #1: All of the best comedians have had unhappy childhoods.
Fact #2: Many people who have had happy childhoods are good comedians,
Fact #3: Some good comedians who have had miserably unhappy childhoods are happy adults.

If the statements in the passage are true, which one of the following CANNOT be true?

(A) The proportion of good comedians who had unhappy childhoods is greater than the proportion of the best comedians who did.
Correct.
Fact #1 says "ALL the best comedians have had unhappy childhoods" ==> The proportion = 100% (because of "all").
Fact #2 says "Many comedians have had happy childhoods" --> There are still some comedians have had unhappy childhoods. Two sets combined make up 100% ==> The sub set MUST be < 100%
Thus, A CAN'T be correct.

(B) Some good comedians have had unhappy childhoods and are unhappy adults.
Wrong. Yes, B can be true. Fact #3 says "some good comedians who have had unhappy childhoods are happy adults" ==> Absolutely, there are still some comedians who have had unhappy childhoods are unhappy adults.

(C) Most of the best comedians are happy adults.
Wrong. Yes, C can be true. It is possible that a group of best comedians is the sub set of a group of good comedians. Deduce from fact #3, C can be true.

(D) More good comedians have had unhappy childhoods than have had happy childhoods.
Wrong. From fact #2, because we don't know how many "some" is, we can assume that we have 100 good comedians, 60 have had unhappy childhoods, 40 have had happy childhoods. D can be true.

(E) The proportion of comedians who are happy adults is higher than the proportions who are unhappy adults.
Wrong. From fact #3, because we don't know how many "some" is, we can assume that we have 100 comedians, 60 are happy adults, 40 are unhappy adults. Clearly, E can be true.

Hope it helps.
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Re: All of the best comedians have had unhappy childhoods. Yet, many peopl [#permalink]
All of the best comedians have had unhappy childhoods. Yet, many people who have had happy childhoods are good comedians, and some good comedians who have had miserably unhappy childhoods are happy adults.

If the statements in the passage are true, which one of the following CANNOT be true?

Cannot be true question

Pre-thinking

Let's evaluate the options

POE:

(A) The proportion of good comedians who had unhappy childhoods is greater than the proportion of the best comedians who did.
As per the argument we know that many good comedians had an unhappy childhood (<100%) and that all best comedians had an unhappy childhood (100%). This statement cannot be true as it suggests the opposite

(B) Some good comedians have had unhappy childhoods and are unhappy adults.
Could be

(C) Most of the best comedians are happy adults.
Could be

(D) More good comedians have had unhappy childhoods than have had happy childhoods.
Could be

(E) The proportion of comedians who are happy adults is higher than the proportions who are unhappy adults.
Could be

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Re: All of the best comedians have had unhappy childhoods. Yet, many peopl [#permalink]
Hello from the GMAT Club VerbalBot!

Thanks to another GMAT Club member, I have just discovered this valuable topic, yet it had no discussion for over a year. I am now bumping it up - doing my job. I think you may find it valuable (esp those replies with Kudos).

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Re: All of the best comedians have had unhappy childhoods. Yet, many peopl [#permalink]
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