Every day the mailboxes of America are filled with solicitations provi

1.

(С)This "strengthen the argument" question requires that we first understand how the author explains the "seeming contradiction" in paragraph 3. He argues that Americans respond to direct marketing because of its conveniences, even though Americans don't like the annoyance or the invasion of privacy. This evidence assumes that Americans are willing to maintain certain shopping habits despite the drawbacks associated with them.
Choice (C) bolsters this assumption and therefore strengthens the argument. If consumers don't perceive a connection between their shopping behaviors and infringements on their rights, they are more likely to react as the author says they do: to continue shopping by mail despite its disadvantages.
(A), (B) These choices focus on one portion of the author's argument but do not help strengthen it as a whole. The fact that awareness of infringement is high, choice (A), would strengthen only one part of the author's claim: that people don't like direct mail. It doesn't bolster the full argument that direct mail marketing is successful despite these infringements due to the fact that Americans like to shop by mail. Similarly, with (B), the increased number of people on multiple mailing lists does not necessarily strengthen the argument that people use direct mail despite its drawbacks because they like its conveniences. These individuals may be on multiple lists simply because their names were sold to direct mail companies.
(D) This choice can be seen as contradicting the author's explanation of why direct mail marketing is successful.
(D) states that direct marketing may eventually benefit consumers—its success will filter down to consumers over time. But the author tells us that people respond to direct mail marketing because they like its advantages—in other words, they benefit from it now, as they are using it. That's why they put up with its annoyance and invasion of privacy. If (D) is true, perhaps there's more to the story than the author perceives, but that's not your problem.
(E) The only thing that (E) may strengthen (and it's tenuous at best) is the notion that the "seeming contradiction" that the author describes exists. Even that's a stretch. Either way, the implications of the opinion polls in (E) have no bearing whatsoever on our author's explanation for the discrepancy at hand.
An 800 test taker understands that just like in Critical Reasoning, strengtheners and weakeners in Reading Comp often work by bolstering or damaging the assumptions in an author's argument.

2.

(B) Ouch. We're asked to identify the criticism that most closely approximates the logic of the author's concern over the use of computer matching programs. Well, why is the author concerned about these? The line reference brings us right to the crux of the matter: "Sophisticated computer matching programs can produce intrusive personal profiles from information which, standing alone, does not threaten individual privacy." Extracting the general logical structure of this, we have a situation in which harmless individual elements, when combined, become harmful in some way. That's the situation we need to find among the choices, and (B) best approximates this situation: the species alone aren't dangerous to the ecosystem, but put them together and look out! The mechanism at work in (B) mirrors the mechanism the author describes in paragraph 1— namely, the way that computer matching systems can combine non-intrusive independent bits of information into a profile that threatens individual privacy. It's helpful to restate exactly what we're looking for in order to eliminate the wrong choices: the logic of the original example in the passage states that things (bits of information) that individually don't have a certain effect (i.e., threaten privacy) DO have that effect when put together.
(A) Here, we have species that individually don't harm the ecosystem (so far so good), but when put together may harm each other. Not the same thing.
(C), like all of the wrong choices, starts out okay with individual species that by themselves don't harm the ecosystem, so we have to look to the end of the choice to see where it goes awry. In this case, the ecologist is chastised for objecting to the joint introduction of all three species into the ecosystem on the grounds that doing so may not allow other species to join later. This result would not necessarily cause damage to the ecosystem, which is the result that we're looking for in order for this critique to match the logic of the passage's computer matching example.
(D) This time the ecologist's assertion is based on the grounds that the species in question may be happier somewhere else. Again, the "overlooked possibility" is not one that necessarily causes harm: The ecosystem might not be an optimal environment for the species, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the ecosystem itself will be damaged.
(E) Their previous ecosystems? What does that have to do with putting them together here in the ecosystem in question? This is far from the logic underlying the example in the passage. An 800 test taker is able to apply what she learns in the passage to other issues in different contexts.

3.

(A)The mention of expenditures from 1980-1990 brings us squarely to paragraph 2, where the author informs us that expenditures rose significantly during that stretch, and that "companies would not have made these efforts without prospects of success." Inference questions are not great candidates for prephrasing, so you probably moved directly to the choices. Hopefully you saw that (A) is a reasonable inference based on this information. It stands to reason that companies spent more money on advertising because they expected to benefit from it (in accordance with the "laws of the market"). Therefore, the rise in direct marketing expenditures can reasonably be said to reflect their expectations regarding success.
(В), (C), and (D) The passage implies that companies benefited from direct marketing—meaning, they made greater profits—but we have no idea how much they benefited. Thus, a specific claim like (B)'s assertion that they made "more than double" the profit at the end than at the beginning of the period is not warranted. Similarly, we are told that expenditures rose from 1980 to 1990, but we don't know how much they rose in any given year. In fact, we can't be sure that expenditures rose every single year—we're told only that the 1990 figure was greater than the 1980 figure. For all we know, expenditures could have decreased in 1981, thus making this the lowest expenditure year. So we don't have enough information to infer choice (C). The same is true of choice (D). We're told only that expenditures rose from 1980-90. We cannot infer anything about what companies might expect expenditures to be in the future.
(E) distorts information in the passage. The author tells us that "the laws of the market dictate" that companies would not have invested in direct marketing unless they expected it to be successful. But to say that the rise in expenditures "parallels" the laws of the market is a distortion of this concept. The rise in expenditures may be explained with reference to the laws of the economic market, but that's about it. (E)'s manner of combining these two elements of the passage is unwarranted.

4

. (B) This Inference question requires us to determine which statement could most likely be attributed to the author, based on the information presented in the passage. Again, our grasp of the author's purpose in writing the passage comes into play. This passage looks at the difference between Americans' attitudes about direct mail and their behaviors in response to it. Evidence for the public's attitudes is provided through opinion surveys, which suggests that the author believes that the attitudes revealed in surveys can help us understand public behavior—choice (B). Think of it this way: If the author didn't agree with (B), then there would be no contradiction to resolve, because the data from the opinion polls would be meaningless. The passage as is can exist only if the author believes that polls can provide insight as stated in choice (B).
(A) exaggerates the author's conclusion. We are told that Americans respond to direct mail because they perceive its benefits, but it would be going too far to conclude from this that the author believes that direct mail has "an overall positive effect on American society."
(C) presents an unwarranted comparison that in no way can be attributed to the author. Nuisance and privacy invasion are two categories of responses from the poll of paragraph 2, with the former outranking the latter in the public's mind, but we can't infer from this that the author believes that presenting a nuisance is a greater offense than invading privacy when it comes to direct marketing, no less in the context of "commercial enterprises" as a whole. An 800 test taker zeroes in on comparisons presented in choices to determine whether they are warranted or unwarranted.
(D) switches the terms of the second-to-last sentence of the passage, which reads "Even those who believe that the direct mailing industry has a generally negative societal impact probably would prefer to remain on some mailing lists." Not only does (D) get this backwards, but it also fails to take into account the qualified nature of the author's assertion indicated by the word probably.
(E) Again, we are not given enough information to draw this inference. The author does not discuss the future growth of direct marketing, so it's too much of a stretch to infer how the author thinks the industry might increase or decrease. In addition, the passage states that the direct marketing industry has grown despite people's negative attitudes about it. Growth in the industry does not therefore seem directly proportional to negative attitudes, which is another reason why it is unwarranted to ascribe the belief in (E) to the author. So far, so good? For your information, this first passage was a full 300 words, pretty much as long as they get. Now that you're warmed up, see what you can make of the rest of the Reading Comp questions.