RenB wrote:
Hi
AndrewNThank you for your inputs!
I was stuck between option A and E and chose E based on some grounds. I reviewed the question and my analysis and came up with an understanding why my selection may be wrong.
I seek your guidance for 2 things-
1. Your POV on the corrective analysis
2. Resolution of the query- Whether we may require to make assumptions in strengthen/ weaken qs while considering any option choice :/
1. Corrective analysis
My thought process was that there can fundamentally 2 things could have happened which can help strengthen the author's reasoning-
More people going towards the alligators
More alligators going to the people
Saw A, thought it is bang on, but then thought that yes the population has increased, but highly possible that the population has increased in pockets which may not necessarily be around areas where alligators dwell. Doesnt close the loop. Then while evaluating E, I thought that alligators might generally come to these places when there are less people around. So thought that people are seeing them at such times so not necessary that the population of alligators has increased.
Then thought if such is the nature of alligators and no. of people are the same, the number of sightings should not have increased that too dramatically.
2. This brings me to my question- arent we assuming that the population increase correlates with the population increase of the visitors at the golf courses and lawns? What if the population is growing at the city centres and these lawns are closer to swamps? The population increase may not lead to increased visitors.
Please help me out here- Can we assume things, what are the things we can assume and what is the way by which I can understand that I am overthinking
This question has been in my head for quite some time now. Looking forward to your guidance. TIA!
Hello,
RenB. First, if you have an answer that you cannot argue against, then why would you trade it for something else? This is exactly the sort of tradeoff that test-takers make that will ensure that more challenging CR (and, to an extent, RC) questions will remain a toss-up. One of the most useful test-taking techniques I developed for myself and have subsequently taught my students is that you have to have the discipline to silence the voice of doubt that will crop up, and that you should not allow yourself to change an answer unless you can disprove it. Everyone has experienced that awful feeling of having had the correct answer and then changed it. So why not try answering questions the other way, with more confidence that you have selected the safest bet? No more chasing answers. Watch your accuracy go up.
I can tell from reading your second question that you probably misinterpreted
reports of alligators appearing on golf courses and lawns. Lawns are part of the property on which people live, so they would not be visitors in these locations. Sure, they could live in swampy areas—some Americans joke that Florida is a giant swamp—but that does not change the fact that reports of sightings have
increased dramatically. If the human population has increased significantly, then the number of sightings reported in their front- or backyards alone might understandably increase, regardless of whether the alligator population had also
increased dramatically, and here, we get increased sightings at golf courses, just for good measure. You might also refer to my earlier post
here, in which I discuss the apparent appeal of
most in answer choice (E).
AndrewN wrote:
In this question, the argument is that the number of alligators has increased significantly, and regardless of when most sightings occurred, that still leaves room for other types of sightings, those in which many people were present. If, for instance, there were 1,000 sightings, and 501 occurred at times at which few people were present, then what about the other 499? Or, to be fair, if we are basing this conclusion on 3 sightings, when there had been just 1 before--a 200 percent increase!--if two of those three, or most of those sightings occurred at times at which few people were present, that still leaves that third instance, and a lot of people could have seen an alligator. Whatever the case may be, whichever numbers you want to use, choice (E) does not affect the argument in the same way, logically, as (A), for reasons better explained earlier.
You may want to adopt a path-of-least-resistance approach to CR. You are not looking to make assumptions; rather, you should be looking at which answer choice best fits the linear logic of the passage, so there is the
least friction, and that option requires the
least in the way of making assumptions.
Thank you for following up. Keep working on identifying just what makes these questions—official questions—tick. Do not create rules, but follow the logical trail of breadcrumbs that GMAC leaves for you.
- Andrew