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705-805 Level|   Conclusion|            
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Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get 10 May 2016, 20:33
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RatneshS
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Karishma I have a question here with regards to D
Suppose if excerpts are not published--out of 100 books we have sales for only 10
if published--60 are the viewers and among 60, 31 found out a substitute while 29 are still going to buy the book
'so if no excerpt----sales is 10
with excerpt---sales= 10+29=39,which means sales have increased even after undermining A
Show more

When we talk about "number of people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute", we are talking about the people who wanted to read the book initially but after seeing the excerpt, decided that it is sufficient. So we are saying that the reduction in the number of initially interested people should not be more than the the number of newly interested people.

Out of 100, say there are 30 people who would like to read the book.

No excerpt, book published. Sale = 30

Excerpt published before the book published - stimulated 20 more people to buy the book. But what if of the 30 people who wanted to read the book, 25 now feel that the excerpt was sufficient and enough of a substitute for the whole book. Now only 20+5 = 25 people buy the book.
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Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get 25 Sep 2017, 07:52
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Hello Experts,

can you explain the difference between option A and Option D?
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Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get 13 Aug 2019, 21:06
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nightblade354
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Hello Experts,

can you explain the difference between option A and Option D?

Hi pikolo2510,

Let's analyze A and D!

Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get for a new book is to have excerpts of it published in a high-circulation magazine soon before the book is published. The benefits of such excerption include not only a sure increase in sales but also a fee paid by the magazine to the book's publisher.

Which of the following conclusions is best supported by the information above?
-- This is an inference question, meaning the answer HAS to be true.

A) The number of people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book is smaller than the number for whom the excerpt stimulates a desire to read the book. -- More people who see the magazine excerpt buy the book than those who don't, therefore sales go up.

D) The effectiveness of having excerpts of a book published in a magazine, measured in terms of increased sales of a book, is proportional to the circulation of the magazine in which the excerpts are published. -- Your line of thinking is correct, but with a little flaw. This answer talks about proportions. The answer is saying that if the magazine is widely circulated, more will buy the book. If the magazine is less circulated, less will buy the book. The issue,
here, though it may make sense in reality, is that the we cannot say for 100% certainty whether this is correct or not, as the question never compares the rate of distribution to the success of sales. This can't be proven, so it cannot be an inference. If this were an assumption question, this might be a nice choice.

Does this help?
Show more


nightblade354, VeritasKarishma: I do not see any better option than A here, but I doubt even A because of below reasoning

It is not clearly mentioned that magazine excerpts are the only source for getting customers for the book. Let us say some 1000 copies were any ways going to be sold irrespective of whether the excerpt is published or not.
Now an excerpt is published in a magazine whose readership let us say is 1000 . Now whether 200 of these decide to buy the book (which is less than 800- who decide not to buy it) or 600 decide to buy the book (which is greater than 400-who decide not to buy because they found the excerpt to be enough), the book sale increases in either of the cases. In first case from 1000 to 1200 and in second case from 1000 to 1600. So how this can be the conclusion for the argument??

What is the flaw in my reasoning for marking A as wrong here....
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Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get 13 Aug 2019, 22:21
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saukrit
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Hello Experts,

can you explain the difference between option A and Option D?

Hi pikolo2510,

Let's analyze A and D!

Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get for a new book is to have excerpts of it published in a high-circulation magazine soon before the book is published. The benefits of such excerption include not only a sure increase in sales but also a fee paid by the magazine to the book's publisher.

Which of the following conclusions is best supported by the information above?
-- This is an inference question, meaning the answer HAS to be true.

A) The number of people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book is smaller than the number for whom the excerpt stimulates a desire to read the book. -- More people who see the magazine excerpt buy the book than those who don't, therefore sales go up.

D) The effectiveness of having excerpts of a book published in a magazine, measured in terms of increased sales of a book, is proportional to the circulation of the magazine in which the excerpts are published. -- Your line of thinking is correct, but with a little flaw. This answer talks about proportions. The answer is saying that if the magazine is widely circulated, more will buy the book. If the magazine is less circulated, less will buy the book. The issue,
here, though it may make sense in reality, is that the we cannot say for 100% certainty whether this is correct or not, as the question never compares the rate of distribution to the success of sales. This can't be proven, so it cannot be an inference. If this were an assumption question, this might be a nice choice.

Does this help?


nightblade354, VeritasKarishma: I do not see any better option than A here, but I doubt even A because of below reasoning

It is not clearly mentioned that magazine excerpts are the only source for getting customers for the book. Let us say some 1000 copies were any ways going to be sold irrespective of whether the excerpt is published or not.
Now an excerpt is published in a magazine whose readership let us say is 1000 . Now whether 200 of these decide to buy the book (which is less than 800- who decide not to buy it) or 600 decide to buy the book (which is greater than 400-who decide not to buy because they found the excerpt to be enough), the book sale increases in either of the cases. In first case from 1000 to 1200 and in second case from 1000 to 1600. So how this can be the conclusion for the argument??

What is the flaw in my reasoning for marking A as wrong here....
Show more

Well. Just got my doubt clarified by Sayon offline

Let us say some 1000 copies were any ways going to be sold irrespective of whether the excerpt is published or not.

Let,
X = The number of people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book.

Y = The number for whom the excerpt stimulates a desire to read the book.

[The publishers will only have increase in sales if the value of Y is > 0. Value of X has no impact on sales (infact it can reduce sales).]

Now according to A, X < Y.

Saukrit's doubt- even if X > Y there will be a SURE increase in sales.
But that's not the case. It can also mean Y = 0.
Is there a benefit in publishing excerpts in the mag if Y = 0? NO

So, A does make sense.
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Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get 11 Sep 2019, 00:39
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"The number of people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book is smaller than the number for whom the excerpt stimulates a desire to read the book"

I am really unhappy with this answer (although all other answers are wrong, of course) because of the following scenario. Imagine there was no person in a population that had heard of book X. If excerpts are published now and 99% of the people do not buy the book, but for 1% it stimulates a desire to read the book, then sales still increase, but the proportion of people that view the excerpt as a substitute is still 99%.

Any thoughts GMATNinja?
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Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get 02 Oct 2019, 20:42
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I agree with RatneshS. If publishing the excerpt adds just 1 buyer of the book, the book sells more with the publication in the magazine than without it. Even if 99 out of 100 people that read the excerpt do not buy the book, the book still sells more by publishing the excerpt than without publishing the excerpt.
So A should be incorrect :)
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Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get 12 Nov 2019, 16:54
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SchruteDwight
"The number of people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book is smaller than the number for whom the excerpt stimulates a desire to read the book"

I am really unhappy with this answer (although all other answers are wrong, of course) because of the following scenario. Imagine there was no person in a population that had heard of book X. If excerpts are published now and 99% of the people do not buy the book, but for 1% it stimulates a desire to read the book, then sales still increase, but the proportion of people that view the excerpt as a substitute is still 99%.

Any thoughts GMATNinja?
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mview
I agree with RatneshS. If publishing the excerpt adds just 1 buyer of the book, the book sells more with the publication in the magazine than without it. Even if 99 out of 100 people that read the excerpt do not buy the book, the book still sells more by publishing the excerpt than without publishing the excerpt.
So A should be incorrect :)
Show more
These analyses only focus on the number of buyers that are ADDED by the excerpt. What about the number of buyers LOST by the excerpt? Imagine 10 people who are somewhat interested in the book (maybe they know the author), and they read the excerpt before deciding whether to buy the book. After reading the excerpt, nine of those people decide, "Well, that was an adequate substitute for reading the whole book. I don't need to buy it." Only 1 person decides to buy the book after reading the excerpt.

Sure, we've added one potential buyer, but we've lost NINE potential buyers. How many of those 10 would have purchased the book if the excerpt had NOT been published? We have no idea, so there is no point in entertaining these hypothetical situations.

We were asked which of 5 conclusions is best supported by the information in the passage. This is fundamentally different from, "Does choice (A) stand up to every hypothetical counterexample we can think of?" So before evaluating any choice... remember that we're not looking for the conclusion that MUST be true, and we're not eliminating a conclusion because we can't get behind it 100%.

Instead, our job is to pick the choice that is best supported by what we've already read. (A) works because it's logically possible, based on what the passage already tells us:

  • We know that excerption results in a sure increase in sales.
  • That increase could indicate that people who read the excerpt are actually stimulated to buy and read the entire book.
  • We know that excerpting is among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get for a new book, so it's also possible that the number of excerpt readers who are stimulated to buy is greater than the number of excerpt readers who don't buy.

As you know, this is FAR from an ironclad conclusion. But unlike every other answer choice, this fits the purpose of the passage (to explain why excerption is among the most effective kinds of publicity) and follows through on the statements being presented by the author.

Every other conclusion we're offered veers away from the purpose of the passage and cannot be considered a logical conclusion to what we've already read. Instead, these other choices take us in totally different logical directions (B, E) or simply present random and highly specific factoids that are in no way supported by the passage (C, D).

I hope this helps! But I won't say this should make you happy, SchruteDwight, because if the GMAT isn't making us kinda unhappy, then it just wouldn't be the GMAT... ;)
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Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get 09 Sep 2021, 00:26
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This seems like a faulty explanation. Even if lesser number of people's desire increases after reading the excerpt the sales will surely go up only by a lesser factor than before. D seems correct because a sure shot increase in sales has to be proportional to the circulation of the magazine. This doesn't need to be proven because this will always be the case as it is mentioned that sales will surely go up.
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Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get 09 Sep 2021, 23:14
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Experts, please let me know your thoughts on the below query:
In Option A, my understanding is that we are making a jump from desire to actual sales, i.e., we are saying that of "the number for whom the excerpt stimulates a desire to read the book", the number of people who actually buy the book will also be much higher compared to "the number of people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book". Is this an assumption that we can always make that desire to buy something will translate into actually buying that thing or is the actual increase in sales supporting the statement that desire of people is translating into buying action?
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Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get 18 Sep 2021, 08:01
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toothless123
Experts, please let me know your thoughts on the below query:
In Option A, my understanding is that we are making a jump from desire to actual sales, i.e., we are saying that of "the number for whom the excerpt stimulates a desire to read the book", the number of people who actually buy the book will also be much higher compared to "the number of people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book". Is this an assumption that we can always make that desire to buy something will translate into actually buying that thing or is the actual increase in sales supporting the statement that desire of people is translating into buying action?
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While it’s likely that the desire to read a book will translate to buying that book, we can’t assume that desiring to read a book will necessarily translate to purchasing the book. But similarly, we can’t assume that just because someone feels reading the excerpt was an adequate substitute for reading the whole book, that individual won’t purchase the book.

The key here is that the question stem asks for which of the answer choices is best supported -- NOT which of the answer choices must be true. Check out this post for more on that.

tanuj420
This seems like a faulty explanation. Even if lesser number of people's desire increases after reading the excerpt the sales will surely go up only by a lesser factor than before. D seems correct because a sure shot increase in sales has to be proportional to the circulation of the magazine. This doesn't need to be proven because this will always be the case as it is mentioned that sales will surely go up.
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The problem with (D) is that we don’t know that the relationship between the increase in sales and the circulation of the magazine is proportional. Perhaps the two are related, but just because the circulation of the magazine is 90% of the population does not mean the increase in sales must be precisely 90%. The passage does not support that these two items are proportional, so we can eliminate (D).

I hope that helps!
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Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get 23 Sep 2021, 00:32
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VeritasKarishma
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Hi Experts,
Can someone please provide explanation of A vs D.

Help will be appreciated.

Regards,
H

(D) The effectiveness of having excerpts of a book published in a magazine, measured in terms of increased sales of a book, is proportional to the circulation of the magazine in which the excerpts are published.

(D) is certainly not correct because of the word 'proportional'. To an extent, we can infer that the circulation of the magazine will have some effect on the sales of the book but proportional means if the circulation doubles, the sales of the book will double too. We cannot conclude that from anything given in the passage.

(A) The number of people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book is smaller than the number for whom the excerpt stimulates a desire to read the book.

Since excerption increases sales, the no. of people who would have bought the book without excerption but will not after reading the excerpt must be lower than the number of people who will buy the book after reading the excerpt but would not have otherwise. Only then will the sales rise due to excerption.

I would like to point out that there is an assumption here in (A): The assumption is that the people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book would have bought the book had they not read the excerpt. But since no other option comes close to being a conclusion, (A) is the best choice.
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Proportional does not mean " To an extent, we can infer that the circulation of the magazine will have some effect on the sales of the book but proportional means if the circulation doubles, the sales of the book will double too."
Proportion means having a constant ratio. It can vary but in a ratio say for example 1:1 or 1: 2 or 1: 4 etc. or some exponential power like square root, cube root etc...
I think proportional is used only to refer that sale of the book has some sort of direct and positive correlation with the sale of the magazine.

From (A) what benefit do magazine publishers have? Why would the magazine pay to the book publisher?
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Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get 15 Aug 2022, 00:21
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The arguments talks about the effective publicity of new book. For effective publicity the author mentioned "to have excerpts of it/new book published in a high-circulation magazine (where to publish/ location) and soon before the book is published (when to publish/ time)". As a result of effective publicity sales will increase.

Now lets analyse option D: " The effectiveness of having excerpts of a book published in a magazine, measured in terms of increased sales of a book, is proportional to the circulation of the magazine in which the excerpts are published."

The effectiveness of publicity depends on the circulation of the magazine. This option only focus on the high-circulation of magazine i.e., only the location of publicity but not the time.

explanation:
case 1: Excerpts of new book published in a magazine 3 years prior to the date on which book is supposed to publish. The circulation of magazine is very high.

Case 2: Excerpts of new book published in a magazine 3 weeks prior to the date on which book is supposed to publish. The circulation of magazine is not very high.

conclusion: It is possible in case 1, after 3 years when book will be published, high circulation of magazine today may not contribute to the sales as much/proportionately as in case2, where the circulation of magazine is not very high but published 3 weeks prior.

Thanks.
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Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get 10 Sep 2022, 23:23
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Doesn't A assume that people knew about the book before seeing it in the magazine? If they didn't and won't know about it, the excerpt wouldn't have decreased sales from them. I don't think that the magazine readers who decide the excerpt is a good substitute necessarily have to have known about the book beforehand to be able to say it's a substitute. If I see a new book excerpt and read it. I can still decide from that if it's a good substitute, even without having known about the book before.
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Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get 20 Sep 2022, 08:55
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"The number of people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book is smaller than the number for whom the excerpt stimulates a desire to read the book"

I am really unhappy with this answer (although all other answers are wrong, of course) because of the following scenario. Imagine there was no person in a population that had heard of book X. If excerpts are published now and 99% of the people do not buy the book, but for 1% it stimulates a desire to read the book, then sales still increase, but the proportion of people that view the excerpt as a substitute is still 99%.

Any thoughts GMATNinja?
mview
I agree with RatneshS. If publishing the excerpt adds just 1 buyer of the book, the book sells more with the publication in the magazine than without it. Even if 99 out of 100 people that read the excerpt do not buy the book, the book still sells more by publishing the excerpt than without publishing the excerpt.
So A should be incorrect :)
These analyses only focus on the number of buyers that are ADDED by the excerpt. What about the number of buyers LOST by the excerpt? Imagine 10 people who are somewhat interested in the book (maybe they know the author), and they read the excerpt before deciding whether to buy the book. After reading the excerpt, nine of those people decide, "Well, that was an adequate substitute for reading the whole book. I don't need to buy it." Only 1 person decides to buy the book after reading the excerpt.

Sure, we've added one potential buyer, but we've lost NINE potential buyers. How many of those 10 would have purchased the book if the excerpt had NOT been published? We have no idea, so there is no point in entertaining these hypothetical situations.

We were asked which of 5 conclusions is best supported by the information in the passage. This is fundamentally different from, "Does choice (A) stand up to every hypothetical counterexample we can think of?" So before evaluating any choice... remember that we're not looking for the conclusion that MUST be true, and we're not eliminating a conclusion because we can't get behind it 100%.

Instead, our job is to pick the choice that is best supported by what we've already read. (A) works because it's logically possible, based on what the passage already tells us:

  • We know that excerption results in a sure increase in sales.
  • That increase could indicate that people who read the excerpt are actually stimulated to buy and read the entire book.
  • We know that excerpting is among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get for a new book, so it's also possible that the number of excerpt readers who are stimulated to buy is greater than the number of excerpt readers who don't buy.

As you know, this is FAR from an ironclad conclusion. But unlike every other answer choice, this fits the purpose of the passage (to explain why excerption is among the most effective kinds of publicity) and follows through on the statements being presented by the author.

Every other conclusion we're offered veers away from the purpose of the passage and cannot be considered a logical conclusion to what we've already read. Instead, these other choices take us in totally different logical directions (B, E) or simply present random and highly specific factoids that are in no way supported by the passage (C, D).

I hope this helps! But I won't say this should make you happy, SchruteDwight, because if the GMAT isn't making us kinda unhappy, then it just wouldn't be the GMAT... ;)
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Hi Gmatninja, I'm not clear with all the explanations provided to support option A:

Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get for a new book is to have excerpts of it published in a high-circulation magazine soon before the book is published. The benefits of such excerption include not only a sure increase in sales but also a fee paid by the magazine to the book’s publisher.
Which of the following conclusions is best supported by the information above?

(A) The number of people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book is smaller than the number for whom the excerpt stimulates a desire to read the book.

As everyone can see the passage states that such excerption would increase the sales.

Option A says only that the number of people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book is smaller than the other group.

Even if we must pick the best answer, we must also be sure that the answer comply with the logic of the question (that is finding a conclusion that must be true with the given information)

Call group A (people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book)
Call group B (the other group)
A + B = 100

Obviously the publisher sells some copies even without that ad, say 100 copies.
Now, Option A says that A < B (for example A = 25 and B = 75). clearly the number of sold copies increased.
But even if A > B (A = 75 and B =25) the number of copies increased.

Nothing in the passage brings us to conclude what option A states. It's irrelevant.

Regards.
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Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get 02 Oct 2022, 00:17
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KarishmaB GMATNinja MartyTargetTestPrep

The number analysis would be something like this: If 100 people were interested in buying the book initially and then the excerpt was released, 30 of those 100 people were not interested in buying anymore because the excerpt was a good enough substitute for them. But the excerpt has to bring in another '31 or more' people who were not interested initially but are interested now in buying the book. That is when the sales will increase due to the excerpt.

Now, I hope you see that the underlying assumption is clear.


I understood this logic very well but seems like we are making another assumption that these 100 peope who would have bought earlier are the same people who are also gonna read the excerpt.

Let's say The book would have sold 1000 copies, without putting the excerpt in such a magazine. And now the publishers want to attract the pool of potential buyers, so they decide to put the excerpt in a magazine.

Now, 100 people see the excerpt and
30 decide not to buy and 70 decide to buy.

Sale increased by 70 books.


70 decide not to buy and 30 decide to buy

Sales increased by 30 books.

Here, I assumed that 1000 books would have sold anyway without putting the excerpt.
If I don't assume this then how can I measure the "increased sale" of a new book. We can only increase something, if we have some existing number.

Please help
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Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get 07 Oct 2022, 20:21
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monkinaferrari
KarishmaB GMATNinja MartyTargetTestPrep

The number analysis would be something like this: If 100 people were interested in buying the book initially and then the excerpt was released, 30 of those 100 people were not interested in buying anymore because the excerpt was a good enough substitute for them. But the excerpt has to bring in another '31 or more' people who were not interested initially but are interested now in buying the book. That is when the sales will increase due to the excerpt.

Now, I hope you see that the underlying assumption is clear.


I understood this logic very well but seems like we are making another assumption that these 100 peope who would have bought earlier are the same people who are also gonna read the excerpt.

Let's say The book would have sold 1000 copies, without putting the excerpt in such a magazine. And now the publishers want to attract the pool of potential buyers, so they decide to put the excerpt in a magazine.

Now, 100 people see the excerpt and
30 decide not to buy and 70 decide to buy.

Sale increased by 70 books.


70 decide not to buy and 30 decide to buy

Sales increased by 30 books.

Here, I assumed that 1000 books would have sold anyway without putting the excerpt.
If I don't assume this then how can I measure the "increased sale" of a new book. We can only increase something, if we have some existing number.

Please help
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The passage talks about a "sure increase in sales," but doesn't define what these sales are increased from.

Because these are new books that have not yet been published, there are only a couple of options: perhaps people can purchase the book before it's published, and there is an increase in that number. Or, perhaps the passage is talking about an increase in expected sales. We don't need to know which case applies, or what the exact number is, to understand that having an excerpt published increases sales.

If there is a "sure increase in sales," what can we conclude?

Well, we'd know that publishing the excerpt attracted more people than it turned away. That's why (A) is the correct answer.

I hope that helps!
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I may have been approaching the conclusion questions wrong all this while. Isn't the purpose of an option in the conclusion-type questions to provide a logical ending to the argument? Put another way, it should put a cap on the line of reasoning built by the argument. Option A is an underlying assumption, it helps explain the argument. How can it be a fitting conclusion to an argument?
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Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get 17 Oct 2022, 13:36
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toohey
I may have been approaching the conclusion questions wrong all this while. Isn't the purpose of an option in the conclusion-type questions to provide a logical ending to the argument? Put another way, it should put a cap on the line of reasoning built by the argument. Option A is an underlying assumption, it helps explain the argument. How can it be a fitting conclusion to an argument?
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Hi toohey.

The passage does not present an argument with evidence and a conclusion. Rather, the passage is made up entirely of statements of fact. Take another look.

So, no assumptions are made by the author of the passage.

Rather, choice (A) states a conclusion that is supported by the statements in the passage.
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Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get 09 Nov 2023, 20:52
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nightblade354
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Hello Experts,

can you explain the difference between option A and Option D?

Hi pikolo2510,

Let's analyze A and D!

Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get for a new book is to have excerpts of it published in a high-circulation magazine soon before the book is published. The benefits of such excerption include not only a sure increase in sales but also a fee paid by the magazine to the book's publisher.

Which of the following conclusions is best supported by the information above?
-- This is an inference question, meaning the answer HAS to be true.

A) The number of people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book is smaller than the number for whom the excerpt stimulates a desire to read the book. -- More people who see the magazine excerpt buy the book than those who don't, therefore sales go up.

D) The effectiveness of having excerpts of a book published in a magazine, measured in terms of increased sales of a book, is proportional to the circulation of the magazine in which the excerpts are published. -- Your line of thinking is correct, but with a little flaw. This answer talks about proportions. The answer is saying that if the magazine is widely circulated, more will buy the book. If the magazine is less circulated, less will buy the book. The issue,
here, though it may make sense in reality, is that the we cannot say for 100% certainty whether this is correct or not, as the question never compares the rate of distribution to the success of sales. This can't be proven, so it cannot be an inference. If this were an assumption question, this might be a nice choice.

Does this help?
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Lets say, before this effective method, the book publisher was able to sell 100 books by each available method respectively at that time. Now he applies the new stratagem. With the effective method contributing, now the publisher can reach to 100 more people, of whom 50 will buy the book and 50 will not buy the book, yet the total sale increases.
What is wrong in my reasoning!?

Posted from my mobile device
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Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get 19 May 2024, 09:24
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MartyTargetTestPrep

toohey
I may have been approaching the conclusion questions wrong all this while. Isn't the purpose of an option in the conclusion-type questions to provide a logical ending to the argument? Put another way, it should put a cap on the line of reasoning built by the argument. Option A is an underlying assumption, it helps explain the argument. How can it be a fitting conclusion to an argument?
Hi toohey.

The passage does not present an argument with evidence and a conclusion. Rather, the passage is made up entirely of statements of fact. Take another look.

So, no assumptions are made by the author of the passage.

Rather, choice (A) states a conclusion that is supported by the statements in the passage.
Show more
­
MartyTargetTestPrep GMATNinja KarishmaB AjiteshArun

Although it is clear that except (A) none of the otpions come close to the argument, but say

1. People who are gonna buy the book anyway = 100
2. People getting dissuaded by magazine = 100
3. People who are gonna buy after reading the mag = 1
4. Total sale = 101

If above is true why does A say: The number of people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book is smaller than the number for whom the excerpt stimulates a desire to read the book?

I must be misunderstanding something!!­
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