maddy2u wrote:
Some 70 percent of consumers polled at an upscale supermarket said that they did not care for the taste of Apex toothpaste. Nonetheless, sales of Apex accounted for a full 75 percent of toothpaste sold at that supermarket. The conclusion that at least 75 percent of shoppers buying toothpaste did in fact enjoy the taste of Apex toothpaste relies on the assumption that ___________________.
Which of the following best completes the passage?
(A) most of the shoppers polled did not make any toothpaste purchases that day.
(B) most shoppers who bought Apex did so because of its proven efficacy in fighting tooth decay.
(C) nearly every shopper who bought Apex did so because he or she did not like its taste.
(D) a large number of shoppers polled were dental professionals.
(E) shoppers will not buy a certain brand of toothpaste if they do not care for its taste.
Premises:
70% of polled consumers did not care for the taste.
75% of toothpaste buyers bought Apex.
Conclusion: At least 75% of toothpaste buyers did like the taste of Apex.
What is our assumption? (We are looking for an assumption. The last sentence says "the conclusion .. relies on the assumption that ..."
So, after 'that,' we will have the assumption.)
Because 75%
toothpaste buyers bought Apex, we are saying that at least 75%
toothpaste buyers did like the taste. We are talking about the same group of people here - the toothpaste buyers. So we are assuming that someone who doesn't like the taste, will not buy the toothpaste. We need this to be true to conclude our conclusion.
Hence (E) is correct.
(A) most of the shoppers polled did not make any toothpaste purchases that day.
We do not need this to be true for our conclusion to hold. Note that 'polled shoppers' and 'toothpaste buyers' could be very different groups.
Say 100 people were polled. 70 of them did not like the taste of Apex while 30 did.
Even if out of these 100, most bought a toothpaste, the polled shoppers could be a small sub group of toothpaste buyers. So all of them could lie in the 25% who did not buy Apex, but bought some other toothpaste.
So even if most polled shoppers made toothpaste purchases (we negated option (A)), they could very well be a part of the 25% toothpaste shoppers who did not buy Apex. Our conclusion can still hold.
Hence (A) is not correct.
Kushchokhani(B) most shoppers who bought Apex did so because of its proven efficacy in fighting tooth decay.
We are concluding that 75% liked the taste. For that we don't need to assume that they bought Apex because of its proven efficacy in fighting tooth decay. In fact, we are assuming that liking the taste is necessary to buy a toothpaste.
(C) nearly every shopper who bought Apex did so because he or she did not like its taste.
We are assuming the opposite.
(D) a large number of shoppers polled were dental professionals.
Irrelevant
Answer (E)