A well-known sports figure found that combining publicity tours with

Question

A well-known sports figure found that combining publicity tours with playing tours led to problems, so she stopped combining the two. She no longer allows bookstore appearances and playing in competition to occur in the same city within the same trip. This week she is traveling to London to play in a major competition, so during her stay in London she will not be making any publicity appearances at any bookstore in London.

Which one of the following most closely parallels the reasoning used in the passage?

(A) Wherever there is an Acme Bugkiller, many wasps are killed. The Z family garden has an Acme Bugkiller, so any wasps remaining in the garden will soon be killed.

(B) The only times that the hospital’s emergency room staff attends to relatively less serious emergencies are times when there is no critical emergency to attend to. On Monday night the emergency room staff attended to a series of fairly minor emergencies, so there must not have been any critical emergencies to take care of at the time.

(C) Tomato plants require hot summers to thrive. Farms in the cool summers of country Y probably do not have thriving tomato plants.

(D) Higher grades lead to better job opportunities, and studying leads to higher grades. Therefore, studying will lead to better job opportunities.

(E) Butter knives are not sharp. Q was not murdered with a sharp blade, so suspect X’s butter knife may have been the murder weapon.

KapTeacherEli · Accepted Answer

What's the source on this question? Parallelism questions like this, though common on the LSAT, are very rare on the GMAT.

That being said, the key is understanding the question type. With parallelism questions, we usually can focus on one part of the argument, and that will eliminate several wrong answers, if not all of them.

This argument builds it conclusion through a chain of minor sub-conclusions; we should focus at the end. In this case, the final step leading to the ultimate conclusion can be paraphrased as "she's playing, so she's not going to a bookstore"; or, more abstractly, "X, therefore not Y."

Let's look at the conclusions:

(A) Using bugkiller, therefore wasps die ---> X, therefore Y. Not parallel
(B) Minor emergencies, therefore no major emergencies ---> X, therefore not Y. Could be.
(C) Probably not growing in cool weather ---> Not X, therefore probably not Y. Not parallel
(D) Studying, therefore jobs ---> X, therefore Y. Not parallel
(E) Not a sharp blade, therefore might be X's knife ---> Not X, therefore possibly Y. Not parallel.

We don't even need to consider the initial premises to eliminate four inconsistent answers, and realize that (B) is correct.

crick20002002 · Answer

+1 for B. Good explanation vikas... A subtle comment : Many can even mean 40/100

.. Many is different from most. Many just means sizeable (may not be majority). Most means majority. Crick

sidhu09 · Answer

The logic in the arguement is as follows:

If X then not Y
If Not X then Y

Only Option B shows such relation.

Thank you so much for such a great question.

tuanquang269 · Answer

Great explanation from Eli,

Can you give us some tricks and tips to reach the answer of this question.

KapTeacherEli · Answer

I could go into more depht...but I'm not sure how helpful it would be.

The basic strategy for this type of problem is to pick one piece (usually the conclusion) of the argument, rule out answer choices that don't match it in structure and logic, then if necessary pick a different part of the argument to kill the rest of the remaining wrong answers. The detailed strategy? Well, if you were studying for the LSAT, I'd go into a lot more depth, but this question type is so rare on the GMAT (I counted *0* on a quick scan of the first 100 OG CR questions) that I would feel guilty for distracting you from common, relevant question types if I spent any more word count!

ScottWalsh · Answer

The sports figure does two things (competition and publicity) and they must be kept separate. So we are looking for another example of things that must be kept separate.

(A) Wherever there is an Acme Bugkiller, many wasps are killed. The Z family garden has an Acme Bugkiller, so any wasps remaining in the garden will soon be killed. Nope. If Bugkiller is present, then both items are present. This is the most popular wrong answer but it is the opposite of what we are looking for.

(B) The only times that the hospital’s emergency room staff attends to relatively less serious emergencies are times when there is no critical emergency to attend to. On Monday
night the emergency room staff attended to a series of fairly minor emergencies, so there must not have been any critical emergencies to take care of at the time. Yes! Critial emergencies and minor emergencies must be separate.

(C) Tomato plants require hot summers to thrive. Farms in the cool summers of country Y probably do not have thriving tomato plants. No. Though tomato plants and hot summers are usually kept separate, that may not always be the case.

(D) Higher grades lead to better job opportunities, and studying leads to higher grades. Therefore, studying will lead to better job opportunities. No. For on thing, this is about two things that are together, not separate. For another, though studying and better job opportunities are correlated, they aren't always together. Maybe you get a great job opportunity because you are from a rich family.

(E) Butter knives are not sharp. Q was not murdered with a sharp blade, so suspect X’s butter knife may have been the murder weapon. No. Just all kinds of wrong.

saurabhSuman · Answer

Experts Please help!!
I don't think B is the correct answer instead A seems more plausible to me.
The premise sets some set outcome for a given condition. " She no longer allows bookstore appearances and playing in competition to occur in the same city within the same trip."
Now when those conditions"This week she is traveling to London to play in a major competition, " are met we expect some set outcome "so during her stay in London she will not be making any publicity appearances at any bookstore in London"

coming to answer choices
in (B) "On Monday
night the emergency room staff attended to a series of fairly minor emergencies, so there must not have been any critical emergencies to take care of at the time." we are trying to backtrack the cause after looking at the outcome.
Whereas in (A) " The Z family garden has an Acme Bugkiller, so any wasps remaining in the garden will soon be killed.
" We have conditions met in the form of Acme Bugkiller and thus we expect certain outcome in the Future.

Chef · Answer

I would like to take/give a shot at it.

What is the reasoning behind this question?
Your understanding: Some condition happened > Some outcome 
Take some time to understand what you have labeled as Condition and Outcome. What is inside those " " will provide you the reasoning. You can also think this way:
When something is happening, some other thing is not happening (instead of a condition > outcome). 
Correct Understanding: Two things cannot happen together (because it is creating a problem). So only one thing at a time can happen.

Now perhaps you can explain each option to yourself.

If you still do not agree, tag the experts.

auradediligodo · Answer

A well-known sports figure found that combining publicity tours with playing tours led to problems, so she stopped combining the two. She no longer allows bookstore appearances and playing in competition to occur in the same city within the same trip. This week she is traveling to London to play in a major competition, so during her stay in London she will not be making any publicity appearances at any bookstore in London.

Which one of the following most closely parallels the reasoning used in the passage?
 
  Analogous reasoning question

Pre-thinking:

Basically the author presents a scenario in which a person does not want to do 2 things in the same time frame because performing 2 tasks in the same time frame appears to have bad consequences.

Conclusion:  That person is performing one task, so that person won't perform the other task.

POE

(A) Wherever there is an Acme Bugkiller, many wasps are killed. The Z family garden has an Acme Bugkiller, so any wasps remaining in the garden will soon be killed.
 Here the element of "performing one task but not the other" is absent. OUT

(B)   The only times that the hospital’s emergency room staff attends to relatively less serious emergencies are times when there is no critical emergency to attend to. On Monday night the emergency room staff attended to a series of fairly minor emergencies, so there must not have been any critical emergencies to take care of at the time.
 Here the author's reasoning and this choice reasoning seem to match: In fact when the staff is involved with non-critical emergencies, the staff is not involved the same time with critical emergencies

(C) Tomato plants require hot summers to thrive. Farms in the cool summers of country Y probably do not have thriving tomato plants.
 Here the element of "performing one task but not the other" is absent. OUT

(D) Higher grades lead to better job opportunities, and studying leads to higher grades. Therefore, studying will lead to better job opportunities.
 Here the element of "performing one task but not the other" is absent. OUT

(E) Butter knives are not sharp. Q was not murdered with a sharp blade, so suspect X’s butter knife may have been the murder weapon.
 Here the element of "performing one task but not the other" is absent. OUT

VerbalBot · Answer

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