In the 1960s, surveys of Florida's alligator population indicated that

You are right. The increase in the human population doesn’t necessarily mean an increase in the number of golf club people. The number of such people on courses and lawns might have remained the same or even decreased. But these people are not the all people who saw the alligators. In other words, not only golf club people can see alligators on golf lawns. There can be many people who walk around or near those lawns. There can be many buildings near the golf clubs and people in those buildings can see alligators from afar. Most golf lawns border with rivers and alligators actually live in these rivers. So, many people sailing in these rivers can also be the witnesses. So forth and so on.

Do not make the assumption that ONLY people in golf courses and lawns can see the alligators.

Hi, Request your clarification as to why this question is different from the another official question.
The answer to this question is in line with option E here.

https://gmatclub.com/forum/farmer-sever ... 94365.html

GMATNinja VeritasKarishma

Hello, Karthik740. I know your query was not addressed to me, and I myself would love to hear what either of the Experts you mentioned have to say on the matter, but I have addressed both questions in response to the same query way back on page one, in this post. I hope it helps to dispel your concerns.

Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew

Thank you Andrew. I went through your solution and understand better the solution.
To be honest, I feel that Option A is a very poorly worded weakener and we'd have to make multiple assumptions to link increase in population to increase in reports.

Thanks,
Karthik

I do not disagree, Karthik. However, we also have to keep in mind the question stem itself, which asks us to pick the answer that most seriously weakens the argument. In other words, this answer, as often occurs on harder CR questions, is allowed to fall into a grey area. It need not be unassailable; it just has to be the least debatable of the five options presented.

- Andrew

Karthik740

The different wordings of the two options will tell you why it works in one and not in the other.

(E) Most of the sightings of alligators on golf courses and lawns in the 1990s occurred at times at which few people were present on those golf courses and lawns.
The sightings occurred at times when few people were around. So all it makes me think is hopefully then, people did not get hurt. I am given that sightings occurred so I do not question whether alligators were actually seen or not.

A word on option (A) here - I was looking for something that told me that alligators are losing their natural habitat. That would explain why they are venturing beyond in search of food etc even though their numbers have not jumped. So my logic for (A) was two pronged - more people means more people around to see when an alligator slides in, and more people also could mean more construction and hence destruction of habitat. Yes, there is a leap involved here but NO other option is viable.

Now let's look at the other question given here: https://gmatclub.com/forum/farmer-sever ... 94365.html

C. No person who claimed to have seen a mountain lion had anyone else with them at the purported sighting.

The option hints that the authenticity may be questionable by saying "no person who claimed to have seen..."
It is not saying no person who saw a mountain lion had anyone else along. If it had said that, the option would have become irrelevant.

It almost seems like everyone is trying to find reasons to prove the official answer correct rather than thinking about it logically.

Option B,C,D are rejected ofcourse.

Just like in case of:

Option A: the inference is that (population increase) implies (alligators leaving their habitats) implies (more sightings on golf courses and lawns),

one may argue that,

Option E: the inference is that (less people saw the alligators) implies (the reports may not be fully correct because people may be wrong/lying)

I think the options are pretty close. There have been similar questions in the GMAT (remember the mountain lion question???) with E as the logic.

Hello, maheswariviresh. I have to say that the part I have highlighted above seems harsh. Have you read through the thread? In addition to several community responses that touch on (E), I also see those by all of the following Experts:

GMATNinja—This post discusses that tricky duo, (E) and (A).

Myself—Here I talk about the mountain lion question and how its correct answer differs from what we see in this question.

VeritasPrepHailey—It looks to me as if each answer is treated thoroughly in this post.

CrackVerbalGMAT—The analysis of (E) in this post makes a good point about assumptions.

VeritasKarishma—In the post right above yours, she discusses both answer choice (E) and the mountain lion question.

In short, I am not sure what you mean by your claim. It seems, at best, hastily made. Moreover, I would be curious to hear your own take on either (A) or (E) beyond a four- or five-word commentary. If you do not like (A), fine, but it is the official answer, so the best we can do is to try to understand what makes it work for this particular question.

Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew

Hey AndrewN,

Thank you for the reply.

First things first. Let us please leave out the "manner" in which you might have interpreted my reply. This is a written forum, and I am sure you judged the tone of what I said in your mind, rather than how i meant it to be. Apologize if I hurt sentiments here, but I guess we are all here to learn.

Further to the way you have made your case, that experts have tried to explain it and hence it is correct, is difficult to work with. If more number of experts have said the same thing, does that make the official answer correct? I dont agree with that approach.

I believe that this forum is for discussion, and I have no come across a single question/logic which is refuted by the experts saying that "No. The official anwer is incorrect, because it should be this." It is very hard to believe that out of the hundreds of thousands of questions that have official answers, none of them are incorrect. Beg your pardon if that sounds harsh, but its really hard to take that on face value that everything that the official answer suggests is correct, and has been so over the last 10-15 years, EVERY SINGLE TIME. By no means do I want to suggest that I am right or you are wrong. I just want to contest with the question "What if the official answer was E? Would we not have come up with reasons for the same, or would you have said, "No, the official answer is incorrect" ?

Coming back to the question (sorry I got deviated because the "manner" of questioning was itself in question here) -

The logic: "In choice (A), we are to understand that if the human population of Florida increased significantly during the 1990s (my emphases), then it would make sense that the number of reported sightings might also logically increase" is almost like "If population around a house deemed haunted increases, the number of reported sightings of a ghost will also increase" thereby implying that "people will always be sound and not go by hearsay." Sounds crazy, no?

Reports of the number of alligator sightings increased in no way implies that the reports are correct, dont you think? If there are lesser people when these sightings are made, even a patch of grass that in the shape of an alligator some distance off might induce someone to run and report an alligator sighting (since they are just thinking about the fact that this is an alligator prone area). I am just asking. Why can't it be true?

Another logic that I've read on the threads is this: "Human population increased>>> more people>>> more sightings of alligators (even if the population of them is same or decreased)"

Again, I see the same flaw. I disagree with the fact that human population increase leads to more people seeing alligators. Is that true in case of blue whales, or maybe other rarely found animal species? We are bringing outside knowledge to answer this question, which we have, as a community decided not to do when answering CR questions.

Hello again, maheswariviresh. Dissenting opinions are fine and should be a part of such a forum. But to make a blanket statement about what every other post in the thread (via "everyone") does or does not achieve, to suggest that not just one, but several Experts may be doing little more than peddling or aping the OA, is bold and most likely misguided. Maybe some of these people got the answer correct the first time because they had insights into the matter that you may not have had—i.e. maybe they were "thinking about it logically" and made an educated decision about separating one trap answer from another, correct answer to this particular question.

Perhaps you have not spent enough time on the forum. I wrote a post just yesterday in which I debated an OA to a third-party question. I have even seen one post in which Bunuel, whose Quant expertise I do not question, has pointed out that an official GMAT Prep question has an incorrect OA... and has gone on to explain why. (I wish I could find the link.)

I appreciate your outlining your thought process about this question in your response. Nevertheless, there are a few points I would like to touch on so that other readers might not make similar conclusions.

You have spun my words into something entirely different here. I write my responses very carefully to (generally) avoid using absolute language such as will or always. I said "it would make sense" and "might also." Cautious language is more difficult to challenge than definitive or absolute language, the type that is often found in incorrect answer choices in both CR and RC. In fact, many Experts often point out that a single word such as "never" or even "not" (without a cushioning "may" in front of it) can make all the difference between a correct line of thought and an incorrect one.

Of course, people could have seen something other than an alligator and reported having seen one. But we have to come to terms, either way, with why the number of these reports increased dramatically in the 1990s. (E) actually looks worse when you consider that part about few people having been present during sightings. Fewer people around to see alligators, whether real or imaginary, should lead to fewer reports, not more. Meanwhile, more people around to see alligators might reasonably lead to more reports. (This is not a fact.) So, while (E) could be true, against (A), it does not make a more compelling case. One final point on the matter: Do not lose sight of the question itself, which (also) does not deal in absolutes. We are not seeking an airtight, open-and-shut case (as we would in a "Must Be True" question). We are only looking for the answer choice that most seriously weakens the argument.

Again, you are free to disagree with my view. As long as you explain why, it will only benefit the community.

I wish you the best in your preparation. I may not use emoticons (even with friends or family), but my sentiments are just as genuine.

- Andrew

When we decide to take a standardised test, we have to conform to that standards that it sets. We can chose to question it, using all the intelligence we have, and sometimes rightly so, but, when you have decided to surrender yourself to standardised test, you’ll have to conform to the patterns of its use of logic and structure.

GMAT is to get to a business school. It’s not life, neither, it makes you less intelligent or more IMO, only makes you more attuned to what it demands. Most successful businessmen I know never went to a business school, or took a standardised test, and if we are to believe we are above the test and its maker’s logic, we shouldn’t take the test, I think. The very idea of testing yourself to a third party creation is to conform to its structure and you can only possibly succeed in it is by learning its patterns. There’s no point debating it’s correctness or feeling offended by being told to stick with its structure. This is the fight you have chosen, so you must conform to it. Because if you don’t, it’s ruthless in reminding you that you must.

So yeah, sweating over why official questions are right is better than perspiring over how flawed it is. Because gmat, verbal especially, tests your conformance to its logic pattern, not to a general pattern. A lesson I learned early on.

Posted from my mobile device

I'll dispute somewhat that the GMAT is testing its own kind of logic, logic that is different from what you find elsewhere. There's a reason GMAT test takers, at least when they understand where the two tests overlap, can use LSAT questions for practice. And if you're arguing a case in court, say, a good argument there would be a good argument in GMAT CR, and a bad argument in court would be a bad argument in GMAT CR, for the same reasons. The same is true if you submit an article to an academic journal. Naturally there are patterns to be found in GMAT questions -- the GMAT tests certain logical issues more frequently than others -- so it's definitely a good idea to study official questions in detail. But that's to learn what logical issues the test emphasizes, and not because you're trying to learn some special logic unique to the GMAT.

I'll agree that there probably isn't a very strong correlation between someone's standardized test ability and someone's business ability -- there are many different skills one can use to be successful at business, and very few of those skills are tested on the GMAT. So someone's GMAT score probably isn't a great predictor of how successful they'll be in business. But that's not what the GMAT is for. The GMAT is specifically used to predict how successful a test taker will be in an academic program, nothing more. And GMAC prepares annual studies that demonstrate it is quite a good predictor of that, which is why it is used in the application process.

Posted from my mobile device

https://gmatclub.com/forum/farmer-sever ... 94365.html
in the above question, we have questioned the credibility of the finding by saying no one was present while they saw the lion.
But in this question, we were told not to question the finding(option E). Would you please explain the conundrum? GMATNinjaTwo, GMATNinja,

Hello, Manoj1998, and pardon the interruption, since I am not a GMAT Ninja. However, I have posted several responses in this thread, and I have even written a post on the very question you ask, way back on page 1, here. I hope it proves helpful to you and resolves your doubts.

Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew

We are told "not to question the finding." We are told people would not DELIBERATELY file a false report.

This question is asking us to pinpoint the assumption that must fill the gap between "People CLAIM to see a mountain lion" and "people ACTUALLY SAW a mountain lying."

We do not doubt that people CLAIMED TO SEE the mountain lion, and we do not doubt that they GENUINELY BELIEVE they saw the mountain lion, but there's still a gap between that and ACTUALLY SEEING a mountain lion. Maybe they were mistaken. Maybe their eyes played tricks on them. Maybe they saw a different animal and mistook it for a mountain lion.

It would help if a sighting had more than one person involved, to corroborate that it was in fact a mountain lion. C points out that actually many sightings were people alone. This is, to be clear, one of the *weakest* weakeners I've ever seen! But it barely blows the feather in the direction of 'the argument is weaker' and that's all we have to do.

E is not relevant. E says 'most people never said they saw a mountain lion,' which might be true. But the passage makes clear people in that last few months have claimed to see one, even though mountain lions had believed to be driven away 20 years ago. Sure MOST people haven't seen one, but that doesn't weaken the fact that many people *have* in recent months.

IanStewart AndrewN GMATNinja

So the core of your argument is:

The more people are around -> the higher the probability that an alligator is seen on a lawn or golf course -> the higher the report rate, even though real amount of alligators is equal to or less than before the relevant time frame

What if there are more people AND more alligators?

Applying the logic you explain the answer with, I would still get the same result: An increase in the amount of reports, but maybe, I also have an increase in the aligator population

This is just my opinion, but I am a little frustrated with these questions where likelihoods start popping into the equation...

Hello, hadimadi. You will note that no one you mentioned above disputes the notion that the alligator population could have increased. The goal is to weaken the argument that the alligator population must have increased significantly (my italics). In fact, I made it a point to draw attention to the distinction in my original post:

Neither does IanStewart dismiss the possibility that the alligator population has increased (my highlights):

And finally, GMATNinja had his say on the matter a little further down on the first page. Notice the consistent message (again, my highlights):

You have to be careful not to confuse a weaken question with a made-up stem that asks you for irrefutable evidence against an argument. We are only looking to weaken the must here, not necessarily the content of the argument itself.

I suspect that this question frustrates a lot of people. Once that frustration wears off, however, you can really dig into the question stem and see the task a little differently, the answer choices for what they are, and you can begin to see other challenging CR weaken questions the same way.

Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew