In the winter of 2007, after several tenants of Bledsoe Gardens,

Hi all, here is my explanation:

This is an assumption question; therefore we are looking for an implied premise that justifies the argument logic. It is like fixing a small leap in logic. Keeping this in mind, we can tackle the question.

Text: One of the nursing homes complains that refrigerators are leaking --> administrators lower the base central heating temperature --> Problem solved for the rest of the winter --> Bledsoe Gardens administrator recommends to other nursing homes to repeat the procedure in the case refrigerators happened to leak again in any of the nursing homes.

What is the assumption made by Bledsoe Gardens administrator?

A. Out of scope: This answer choice is trying to deceive the test taker, implying that if the administrator solved the problem by lowering the temperature it should be true that the tenants had previously raised the temperature manually. We do not really care about WHY the refrigerators started leaking, it could have happened for whatever reason.

B. CORRECT. This perfectly fix our leap in logic. Why should the tenant have recommended to all other nursing houses to lower the temperature if their refrigerators started leaking? The only reason is that the administrators who lowered the temperature of the base heating central had correctly identified the causes of the leakege, otherwise lowering the temperature could not have worked.

C. Irrelevant. We do not care about other refrigerator models. Lowering the base central heating temperature will subsequently lower the temperature of other nursing homes. How it happens is not our focus.

D. Out of scope (see A). Again, the argument is not concerned about what caused the refrigerators to leak. The focus is rather on what justifies the tenant recommendation.

E. Good guess. This answer is an assumption made by the argument. Though, it DOES NOT address the main point here. The assumption that we are looking for, builds a bridge between the action of the administrators, who lowered the temperature of the base heating central, and the recommendation of the Bledsoe Gardens administrator to all other nursing houses.

In fact, the question IS NOT "What assumption does the argument make?", RATHER "Which of the following is an assumption that the administrator made?". In order for him recommend to all the other nursing houses to lower the temperature, he must have assumed that the administrators of the home correctly identified the problem, thus solving it by lowering the temperature, and that since they have correctly identified the causes, this procedure will work also for other nursing houses. He could even oversee the fact that the temperature of the base heating central is consistent with the temperature of other nursing homes. The only thing he is thinking is: "By doing X the problem was solved, so I am going to recommend to all others to do X in order to solve the same problem"


Kudos are well accepted if you liked my explanation