Can any one help me to explain what is the deference between " Claim vs Evidence vs fact vs conclusion ?????? "
i am always confused when i try to answer questions about ( analyze the argument structure ) or what is the role of the boldface part ?

Dear shagalo,
I'm happy to respond.

Evidence & facts are more or less the same thing. The word "fact" just means some objective truth in the real world upon which all sane and reasonable people would agree. Any numerical data about a company's business is factual. What makes a fact a piece of evidence is that someone cites the fact to support an argument. Basically, every "fact" appearing in a GMAT CR problem is a piece of evidence, because it's there to support an argument.

There's not a tremendous difference between claim and conclusion. Both are arguments that someone is making, with which we may agree or disagree. We are no longer on purely objective ground here. Arguments (at least the interesting ones, on the GMAT) are on the grounds of opinion, conjecture, and interpretation of the facts. The only difference between a claim and a conclusion is that the "conclusion" is the "last word", the summary point a speaker is making, whereas a "claim" can be any argument in any part of the prompt. Every conclusion is a claim, but not every claim is a conclusion, because some claims are secondary points on the way to a main conclusion.

Here's a blog article about boldface structure questions:
http://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/gmat-criti ... questions/
Here's a blog article about dialogue structure questions:
http://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/gmat-cr-di ... questions/

Does all this make sense?
Mike
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Thank you so much. that was really helpful .
Can i ask another question ….
what is the meaning of these words when they appear on the Boldface role question "Position" and "Judgment" ??? for example how to know that the statement is Position or Judgment ?

Dear shagalo,
The words position and claim mean, for GMAT CR purposes, exactly the same thing. Anything that is based on opinion or conjecture, and certainly any prediction about the future, is a position or claim. Here are some positions or claims I could make
GMAT Club is the best way to prepare for the GMAT.
Humphrey Bogart was the greatest Hollywood actor.
Hillary Clinton will be elected President in 2016.
Shares of COKE will go over $100 before the end of 2014.
The New York Mets will win the 2014 World Series.
Each one is a position or a claim. They are not factual statements: an intelligent and reasonable person might disagree with any one of these statements. The first two are value statements --- I am assigning a value to something in the present or the past. Someone with different opinions or with access to difference evidence might assign a different value. The last three are predictions, and of course, other people may not agree with my predictions. (Unfortunately, extremely few people will agree with the last prediction! )

The first kind of claim or position, when I am assigning value to something --- that is definitely a judgment. A judgment could be a prediction, but it definitely is one way of assigning value to something (saying something is the best or the worst or the most or the least or ...)

Notice that the GMAT will NOT ask you to decide the difference between a position and judgment, or between a claim and judgment. It often will expect you to know the difference between an argument/claim/position/judgment and a piece of evidence. The former, whatever the name, is someone's opinion or is based on someone's perspective, and reasonable people can disagree. The latter is something factual and indisputable.

Does all this make sense?
Mike
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Mike - what is the difference between a claim (or position) vs. a conclusion ?

Dear jabhatta@umail.iu.edu,

I'm happy to respond.

As above, in terms of the GMAT, there's not a big difference. Any argument, anything that is not factual evidence, can be called a "claim." Any statement in the prompt that is not evidence is a claim. We always call the author's most important claim his "conclusion"; most typically, this most important claim comes at the end of the prompt passage, although sometimes it can come in other places in the prompt passage. Sometimes, if there's claim #1 in the middle of the argument, and then claim #2, the most important claim, comes at the end, we might call claim #1 something such as a "preliminary conclusion" or a "secondary conclusion that supports the main conclusion," whereas claim #2 would be the "main conclusion;" thus, it's possible to have two conclusion in a GMAT argument.

Both words have a verb form. The verb "to conclude" means that decide something, I come to a judgment about something. For example, I see A, B, and C, so I conclude P. In real life, that can be a private action: I could conclude something inside my own head and not tell anyone. By contrast, the verb "claim" explicitly means for me to tell other people about what I think. I see A, B, and C, and then I claim to my friend that P is true. If the idea is never spoken, then I have never claimed it. The two verbs differ as descriptions of real human action. Nevertheless, in the GMAT prompt passage, the passage is telling us everything, so that negates any real difference between a claim and a conclusion.

Does this make sense?
Mike
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Thanks Mike this helps !

One follow up ...the difference between a claim and a premise ?

Can i say the

-- Claim that is not evidence towards a conclusion : a claim

-- Claim that is evidence towards a conclusion : a premise

Dear jabhatta@umail.iu.edu

I'm happy to help.

My friend, I would explain the difference between a "premise" and a "claim."

A "premise" is a starting point in an argument. It's the place I start my argument because I expect that my listeners will already agree with this. Often, it's entirely factual. In a GMAT CR argument, the premises are the starting points that we are supposed to assume is true. In real life, someone may start an argument by saying, "Look, we agree that X is Y, so . . . " The part of his argument where he expect you already to agree is the premise.

A "claim" is a conclusion. You may not agree with my claim initially, but I hope that if I construct a persuasive argument, you will come to believe it. It is the part of the argument that the person making the argument believes, the person hearing the argument probably didn't start out believing, but the person making the arguments wants his listen to believe as a result of the argument. For GMAT CR purposes, there's not really a difference between a "claim" and "conclusion," and a "claim" could be either the main conclusion or any secondary conclusion.

Does all this make sense?
Mike
_________________

Can i explain it this way....

A claim does not have a premise supporting it

whereas

A conclusion will always have a premise supporting it