Commercial shark fishing and shark hunting will resume in Diamond Bay

Dear adithyayaganti,
I'm happy to respond. Incidentally, my name is Mike McGarry----you seem to be a bit confused about my fine Irish surname.

So, my friend, in a GMAT CR it's true that the Main Conclusion is the author's conclusion, but we rarely hear the author of a CR prompt say, "I think you should believe X." There are typically no direct statements about the author's own beliefs. We have to infer the author's conclusion from how the author presents the material.

In this prompt, think about the choices the author made. The authors first cites the conclusion of the citizens, but then, when more facts are provided, the citizen's position doesn't look too good. By contrast, the ecologists are presented as the ones that have the most complete set of facts about the situation, so they are set up to look like the experts that we should believe. We can infer that the author's conclusion IS the ecologist's conclusion.

This is very common in GMAT CR. Yes, it's the author's conclusion that is the Main Conclusion, but if some person or group of people in the prompt is depicted as having the most facts or the most logical argument, then the author is choosing to frame the prompt in order to support the conclusion of that person or group of people, and we can infer that author's conclusion is identical to the conclusion of the person/group that the author valorizes. Thus, it's perfectly valid to say that the ecologist's conclusion is the main conclusion: this reflects precisely how the author organized the prompt.

My friend, don't be too rule-based in the way you think about GMAT CR. The GMAT CR demands flexible thinking that can adapt to what is unique about each situation. That's exactly the kind of intelligence you will need for success in the business world. Good rule followers don't necessarily make good leaders!

Here's a blog that I think you find helpful.
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2014/gmat-criti ... knowledge/

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Mr. Mike Mcgarry,

Your explanation fails to justify the answer choice B as:

1. After the recent court rulings, commercial shark fishing and shark hunting will resume in Diamond Bay.

The first bold face is decision or judgement or outcome. it will never be evidence.

2. Ecologists, though, disagree, pointing out that a decrease in sharks will lead to a surge in Sea Lions, which are the principal predator of the Green-Gilled Silverfish.

The second bold face is the opinion/judgement or conclusion of ecologist.

With the above second bold face, it denies the possible advantages claimed by citizens

Dear sun01,
I'm happy to respond. First of all, my friend, do you notice the tone of your post? You have never met me, but you are accusing me of a "failure." This is a very harsh accusation. Now, with regard to an objective action, I may do something or fail to do something. Education, though, is a special case. If a teacher teaches something, and the student does not learn it, is it a failure on the part of the teacher or the student? I would say, this depends greatly on the specific context: sometimes the teacher is very much to blame, other times the student is very much to blame, and still other times, both are to blame. I cannot say which it is in this particular instance. I simply want to point out, when your opening comments in any interaction contain a statement of blame, which usually implies a lack of self-responsibility, then you are not always going to meet with the best response from others. Sometimes, in the business world, if person #1 opens an interaction with person #2 by blaming person #2 for something, whether justified or not, person #2 will refuse to give any help to person #1 and may even seek to undercut him. Folks who ask questions from a place of humility and who are always willing to accept responsibility on themselves are the folks who spontaneously elicit support in all context. Humility and self-responsibility also catalyze deep learning.

As to this question. In the first sentence, if we talked to the court, they would say, "We think commercial shark fishing and shark hunting should resume in Diamond Bay" That would be a decision or judgment. Now, this is a funny thing about the judicial system. If you or I make a decision or have an opinion, that's just a personal opinion. When a court officially reaches an decision, that becomes the law, and it objectively influences behavior. The text of the boldface section, very specifically, was:
commercial shark fishing and shark hunting will resume in Diamond Bay
The verb "will resume" denotes a definitive fact about the future. There is no doubt about this, because the courts have established the law. After this court ruling, there would likely be all kinds of renewed economic activity: all the business that depend on shark hunting can expect a resurgence of activity in Diamond Bay. In other words, those businesses can rely on the resumption of sharking hunting as a fact. It is purely factual, and in that sense, it is evidence.

You are perfectly right that the second boldface statement is the conclusion of the ecologist. Because the narrator organized the entire paragraph to expose the logical flaw of the citizens' reasoning and to valorize the conclusion of the ecologist, we easily can infer that the second boldface is also the narrator's conclusion, i.e. the conclusion of the argument.

Does all this make sense?
Mike McGarry

Hi mike,

As BF1 is an evidence and all the options except B do not show any evidence, can we directly rejects other options? And directly choose the option B?

regards,
Vikash

Dear Vikash,
I'm happy to respond. Choice (B) is the OA, and it's true that it is the only one that mentions the first BF as "evidence." In this particular question, this logic works, but remember that on the GMAT CR, there are many different ways to state the same thing. That first BF could have been described as
1) evidence that has been taken as supporting a conclusion
2) evidence that seems to contradict the main conclusion
3) a circumstance seems to contradict the main conclusion
4) a circumstance that the conclusion qualifies
The GMAT has several different ways to word things, so we can't get too attached to an individual word. The GMAT Verbal sections punishes people who are too literal in their readings.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Hi, Mike.

Yes, I will make sure I should check all the answers choices and then mark the correct option.
Thank you for replying me; I highly appreciate for your response to many questions, a work that helps us a lot.

Regards,
Vikash

Hi mikemcgarry ,
Thanks for the awesome explanation. I have encountered this question for the mock Magoosh test before.
My problem is , I am not able to understand 'what is what'. ie. I am not able to understand what the argument is ?what the conclusion is?or what the main conclusion/how to identify evidence/facts etc.
I know this is a very broad question, but can you help with some shortcuts so that I can identify them easily.
Thanks again Mike.
John.

Dear John,
I'm happy to respond. Unfortunately, what you are requesting is something that is virtually impossible. There are no shortcuts, especially because the GMAT is so varied in how it presents arguments.

Here's what I will advise. You need to get a great deal of practice in reading real-world arguments. See this blog article:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2014/how-to-imp ... bal-score/
In particular, read news sources --- the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek. You will have to be familiar with all this once you have your MBA and are working as an executive somewhere, so it's best to get acquainted with these sources now. News sources run articles about people from politics or the business world who are full of arguments for or against something. Sometimes those arguments are quite obvious. The person writing the article often has an agenda as well, and often that is considerably more subtle and understated. If you can read real world arguments and understand with these --- "what is the argument?", "what is the conclusion?", "who agrees or disagrees with whom?", etc. --- then GMAT CR will be much easier. If you have trouble with this on your own, you might find it helpful to form a study group with friends and read through these articles together. When you and your friends discuss and even argue about what the main argument was in an article, you will understand it much more thoroughly.

Ultimately, what you have to learn is flexible critical thinking. There is no shortcut for this. This is a quality of mind that the GMAT CR tests precisely because it is invaluable in the business world. A business person who is not good a critical thinking will be swindled time and time again. It's very important to understand: this is not merely about doing well on a test---this is about your life!

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Hi Mike,

It's great to see you answering questions about this post.

I have one quick question: you said that, "the first BF, by itself, is simply factual, simply evidence. It might support some conclusion, but it is not a conclusion in itself. (D) and (E) are out", but how does E say that the first BF is a conclusion? E says, "the first supports an action as beneficial". I agree in retrospect that B is a better answer choice, but I am confused about how I would have eliminated E, with more certainty, during my first attempt.

Thanks in advance!

Dear pate13,
I'm happy to respond. I see that I probably should have been a little more precise in my wording in that part. Here's the first BF part:
... commercial shark fishing and shark hunting will resume in Diamond Bay.
Completely boring and factual. No value judgment at all: this is neutral in the most clinical way.

This is a piece of evidence, and as evidence, somebody else might use it to support some kind of value statement (as the citizens in the prompt do). In other words, someone could come along and say, OK, because this dull value-less thing is true, that means that this really good thing or really bad thing is going to happen. In this way, evidence is used for support, it provides support, it can be taken to give support

By itself, it is not a conclusion, and it is not a value-statement that can directly support or oppose anything. It doesn't point to anything else. It doesn't imply anything else. It just sits there as a thing-in-itself lump, unquestionable and unquestioning, as any pure fact does.

Here, the first BF does not "support an action as beneficial" because it is entirely plain and value-neutral.

Admittedly, the differential use of the word "support" is very subtle here, a level of subtlety beyond what the GMAT would demand. We can also eliminate (E) on the basis of what it says about the second BF statement.

Does this make sense?
Mike

If person #1 opens an interaction with person #2 by blaming person #2 for something, whether justified or not, person #2 will refuse to give any help to person #1 and may even seek to undercut him.

It was even better not to respond such a person.

Dear Mahmud6,

My thoughtful friend, I am happy to respond.

It's true that in the business world, sometimes it's the case that blame is met with counter blame or simply a closed door. One thing I'll say is that I am a teacher, an educator: even though I work in a business now, I have more of the sensibilities of a teacher. As long as there is a possibility of teaching I student, I am still going to reach out to that student. That's a very different ethic.

Even in the business world, there is a valuable slogan "the customer is always right." If a customer insults a business, it's not necessarily in the best interest of the business to ignore that customer or counterattack. The best of all possibilities, in fact, would be to win over that customer and occupy his good graces again. The entire business world is about relationships, and part of the success of any business person is skill in cultivating, managing, and preserving relationships.

I am deeply suspicious of the easy route of ignoring. We only become more human through connection with one another. I think there's tremendous wisdom in the words of the song: "For well you know it's the fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder."

Mahmud6, you are obviously an intelligent and perceptive individual. I welcome any reflections you have, my friend.

Mike

Hi Mike,

Thanks for posting such questions. I really like Magoosh-but I believe this question could have been of higher quality.

Here are the reasons I can't get to B as the answer-would appreciate your thoughts

The first BF is not an evidence but more like a judgement. Evidence is something that is a fact or number , statistic etc.
Also, if you see in B, the second BF is not a contrary conclusion, the contrary conclusion is that the ecologist disagree, and the second BF only supports this-so it is more of a contrary premise. So, of the 5 options, A looks the best .

Dear Mike,

It always be an honor to have compliments from a prodigenius like you. Your esoteric philosophy of teaching is highly commendable.

You are really great.

Proud of you, my friend.

Dear KS15,

I'm happy to respond.

My friend, with all due respect, you are are still learning some of the basics, so you are not really in a position to pronoun proper judgment about the quality of GMAT practice CR question. One really ought to have years of experience in writing, explaining, and assessing practice questions before one is at the level necessary to appreciate what is involved in crafting a good question. It will considerably enhance your ability to learn right now if you approach everything that seems off to you with questions rather than with conclusions, with curiosity and humility rather than with judgments.

Your understanding of what the word "evidence" means is far too narrow. For GMAT CR purposes, evidence is any factual statement---anything that is not a statement of believe or opinion or the perspective of only one party.
1st BF = [b]commercial shark fishing and shark hunting will resume in Diamond Bay[/b]
That is 100% factual. Everyone else we meet in the argument, citizens and ecologists, agree on this fact. It is 100% beyond dispute. This is clearly evidence.

Also, I believe you are confused on what the main conclusion of the argument is. The roles of the characters advocating each position is a hint.
Many citizens of the communities around the bay have hailed this move, believing that a decrease in sharks will lead to an increase in all smaller fish, including the endangered Green-Gilled Silverfish, whose only ecosystem is within Diamond Bay.
Let's call that conclusion #1. This is put forth by citizens, that is, non-specialists and non-experts, and this is what they "believe" (not the strongest word).

Then we get this:
Ecologists, though, disagree, pointing out that a decrease in sharks will lead to a surge in Sea Lions, which are the principal predator of the Green-Gilled Silverfish.
Let's call this conclusion #2. Notice the speakers now are "ecologists," that is, trained Ph.D. scientists. Unlike the citizens, these folks are the experts. Notice also that this conclusion essentially disproves and discredits conclusion #1.

Thus, conclusion #1 cannot be the author's main conclusion. No author finishes his argument by disproving and discrediting what we wants to demonstrate! The reason conclusion #2 comes last and occupies a firmer position is that this, not #1, is the author's main conclusion.

Conclusion #1 was a preliminary and incorrect conclusion. Since it was the direct opposite of conclusion #2, the author's main conclusion, we can call conclusion #1 a "contrary conclusion." In fact, each conclusion is contrary to the other, but #1 is wrong and #2 is right.

Choice (A) is not right, because the first BF provides support for conclusion #1, which is NOT the main conclusion.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Hello Mike. Could you please elaborate on Answer Choice "E" more? Both BF1 and BF2 makes sense- For instance, BF2 raises questions on the citizen's conclusions, by providing some more insight. Why is this wrong?

Dear bhavikagoyal2009,

I'm happy to respond.

My friend, I would suggest comparing the language in (B) to the language in (E).
(B) The first describes evidence that has been taken as supporting a conclusion; the second states a contrary conclusion that is the main conclusion of the argument.

(E) The first supports an action as a beneficial; the second calls that evaluation into question.

Now, think about BF#1:
. . . commercial shark fishing and shark hunting will resume in Diamond Bay.
This is a purely factual statement and the "citizens of the communities around the bay" think it's a good thing. In other words, they draw a conclusion about this. Thus, it makes perfect sense to say that this BF#1 is "evidence that has been taken as supporting a conclusion."
Could we say that BF#1 "supports an action as a beneficial"? Well, the citizens hear about this BF, and then have beliefs about it, but they don't actually do anything! All these citizens are just sitting there having beliefs. Beliefs are not actions. Nothing is actually done.
Insofar as BF#1 was a court ruling, we could say that the BF#1 was an action. It was an action that later was judged as "beneficial," at least by these citizens. Arguably, it was an action, but it didn't support another action.

That's the problem with (E).

Does this make sense?
Mike