oss198 wrote:
Sorry but i don't get your point.
How could this sentence be exaggerated?
You're completely right. Not only does almost every answer choice (all but one wrong answer, D) use 'exaggerated language', but you should
expect to see 'exaggerated language' in the right answer - the stem tells us that 98% of the group have a certain preference, so it is certainly true that 'most people' have that preference. There's nothing wrong about using the word 'most' in this situation.
ronr34 wrote:
I chose E too.
My question to you is, although the question doesn't say anything about the ratio, it asks which could explain, if true.
And... If true, and the first group of taters love vinegar in a disproportionate ratio, this could very well explain why that same group loved the cola with the extra vinegar...
No?
This is not a well-worded question, so it's not really worthwhile thinking too much about what answer is correct. A and C contradict the stem, so cannot be right (in A, if 'most' people prefer secret ingredients, a higher proportion would have preferred cola extra in the first experiment). Answer D appears to be true, but does not explain anything, and the question asks for an explanation.
That leaves us with B and E. It's important now to recognize what the question asks - it asks which answer provides the "
best basis for an explanation" of the results. There are millions of ways to explain the results - perhaps it is a weird statistical fluke, or perhaps the scientists did not correctly tabulate the results, or perhaps the first group was bribed to answer the question a certain way. None of those seem like very good explanations, though, since we conducted an experiment in two different ways, and got wildly different results. The difference in the two experiments very likely had something to do with that, and our answer should account for that. So while E is one possible explanation, there may be a much more compelling explanation, one that takes the difference in experimental methodology into account.
It seems more likely that expectation influences perception - when people know what they're drinking in advance, that will influence their preferences. So I want an answer choice that says that. But unfortunately B does not say that - it says "expectation strongly influences the ability to
accurately distinguish flavors". The experiment has nothing to do with distinguishing flavors - they didn't ask the participants to identify the ingredients in the cola. The experiment is about preferences, and B does nothing to explain why one group actually preferred one cola to the other. So while I prefer B to any other answer choice, I really don't think it's a good answer either.
Real GMAT CR questions are more precisely worded than this one, and the right answer will generally be more 'airtight' than here, so I wouldn't worry about it if you don't completely agree with the OA here.