krndatta wrote:
AndrewN,
I did read his post before posting a query to you. Actually I didn't get that explanation.
We have to weaken the claim that number of citations is not a reasonable yardstick. Am I right in this?
So option A does this by saying that publishing is difficult. Hence, citations are not a reasonable yardstick.
I guess I have understood the question wrong or my understanding of passage is incorrect.
Can you give a shot at this please?
That is fair,
krndatta. Yes, question 4 is asking us to find an answer choice that would most
weaken the author’s claim about what constitutes a reasonable yardstick for measuring patent quality. And again, the pertinent line is found closer to the end of the passage:
Quote:
Though patent quality is a difficult notion to measure, the number of times a patent is cited in the technical literature is a reasonable yardstick
I think that what you are missing in answer choice (A) is that the comparison does not allow us to judge what to make of the pertinent information. For reference:
Quote:
(A) It is more difficult to have an article accepted for publication in the technical literature of the semiconductor industry than it is in the technical literature of most other industries.
Specifically,
more difficult runs into less meaningful territory, because we have no idea just how difficult it may for an article to be published in any other industry. For the sake of argument, assume that 95 percent of articles are published in the
technical literature of, say, the fashion industry, while 75 percent of articles are published in the technical literature of the semiconductor industry. We have gone from 1 in 20 rejections to 1 to 4, so we can say with certainty that
it is more difficult, in our hypothetical scenario, for someone to publish in the literature of the semiconductor industry. But what does that fact indicate about
patent quality within the semiconductor industry, or about
the number of patent citations in the literature, which are not discussed? How does the comparison shed light on the point the author was making? I cannot see any connection.
Your assumption that
option A [weakens the claim] by saying that publishing is difficult is a step removed from what the answer choice actually says:
more difficult should not necessarily be interpreted to mean
difficult. And, of course, if a claim about quality is based on citations, then you should look for information centered on citations to weaken that claim, not on publications (the content of which we are not made aware in answer choice (A)). That is GMAT™ straight-arrow logic at its best, and if you look at answer choice (E) again, you might see it in a different light.
Thank you for following up.
- Andrew
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