krndatta wrote:
AndrewN,
Why can't option E be the answer?
if lets say 60% were fired or convicted on charges stemming from corruption. Then it is best to maintain the act.
But if only 10 or 15 % are fired, then what is the point of maintaining the act. Throw it away.
What do you feel?
Thanks
Hello,
krndatta. This is one of those questions in which I am forced to consider
what I think the question-writer may have been going for, and that will
not happen with an official question. Without reading other responses, I would say that answer choice (E) addresses
corruption in some way but does not even touch on
competence. If I were to think of antonyms of these two words, I would not include the other in either one.
corrupt (adj.)—ANT. pure, unalloyed, honest (just the first three words that came to mind)
competent (adj.)—ANT. inept, clumsy, unskilled
This is to say that
corruption and
competence are not mutually exclusive, at least in my view, and that is a serious problem with (E). We cannot assume that if, say, 5 percent of office-holders had been convicted of corruption between 1883 and 1983, the other 95 percent were adjudged to have been competent. The
percentage that lies at the heart of the answer choice is a red herring.
I will admit that I selected (C) after about two and a half minutes, based on little more than a hunch that that was the answer the question-writer had in mind, and that it was the only option that included both competence and corruption. The 1950 date is off-putting, though, not to mention that I have no idea what to make of
the levels of competence. That seems a purely subjective measure to me, but I may be bringing too much real-world knowledge to the table.
My advice: Stick to official questions so that you can build skills that are pertinent to the test at hand. This question seems off-kilter to me. Even so, thank you for thinking to ask.
- Andrew