ParthSanghavi wrote:
josephlash8 wrote:
In the last few years, Newton High School’s drama club has not placed higher than fifth place in a drama competition, despite previously placing first three times. In an effort to improve the club’s performance, the drama club coach asked the students to practice 30 minutes longer each week. At this year’s first competition, the team won third place. The coach has now asked the students to devote an additional 30 minutes each week to practice in an attempt to place even higher at a future competition.
The answer to which of the following questions is most likely to be helpful in determining whether the coach’s decision to further increase practice time will yield the desired results?
A) Have all of the performances on which the club has been judged been rated equally?
B) What is the maximum amount of time the club members can devote to additional practice without affecting their schoolwork?
C) How many new performance pieces has the club learned in the last year?
D) What amount of time do winning drama clubs devote to practice each week?
E) How many drama clubs that typically place higher than Newton’s participated at the first competition this year?
broall nightblade354 AdityaHongunti @sayanatc2k
Could you please explain how (E) is correct?
Here, the argument states that since Newton High students devoted extra time to practice, their performance improved and were able to secure 3rd place. Hence the additional practice was the reason for the improvement. Keeping this in mind, the drama coach wants their students to put in more hours in a bid to secure 1st place.
Now, (D) tells us that Newton High can compare practice hours with the winning drama clubs and see where does Newton High Stands.
(E) asks to compare number of participants. How is this right?
your reasoning is on point ..no change in that...keep it up
However , option D asks us to know what amount of time the winning team devoted . But are we given FOR A FACT that the amount of time devoted is proportional to the chance of winning??
See the reasoning is made by someone else and it his is understanding that time is proportional to winning but this is NOT A FACT. What u did here is take the logic of the author as fact.
You are on point by saying that the author thinks that the reason for improvement is the devoted time.. observe the words that he " thinks" ..thinking is not a fact and hence we cannot draw a link or relation based on that.
The author bases his conclusion on the causal relationship between time and improvement and hence concludes. What we have to evaluate here is the truth of the causal relationship..was there really a cause or was there some other cause??
See 2 events can stand together without any causal relationship...what if there was some other reason for the team to be placed higher?
Whenever there is a competition we judge each team on how they fared. Now here the author has to assume that none of the teams did not themselves perform extremely poor. If they performed as they did earlier then the cause (devoted time) may be true...but if other teams were extremely poor in performance then the placing higher phenomenon did not occur because of devoted time but overall poor performance of other teams.. the NEWTON school may have performed the same as it did but other performed poorly and hence may have been placed on higher spot comparatively.
Additionally what if the great teams who were on top did not participate in the challenge?? Then the placing of Newton is not because of devoted time but the overall low quality of competition...if the great players are out or the overall number which affects the overall competitiveness of the competition is decreased then the placing higher is not really due to devoted time..
Think of it like market share
A and B are two companies. B has 60% market share A has 40%. A implements some plan to increase market share. A's market share increased to 60%.conclusion- plan worked...but is that increase because of plan ? Or is it because B had some problems which led to low market share..then the plan did not work but something went wrong with B.
This is it... Always know what are facts and what is reasoning.
When you choose D ,you assume that there is a link between devoted time and chance of winning, but note that there is no such link EXPLICITLY GIVEN in the argument.
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10 Dec 2018, 12:42
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wrong 
