Jennifer: Video rental outlets in Centerville together handled 10,000

I cannot understand why the OA something else. I went with option A.

The conclusion or argument in the stimulus is -- The decline in rentals was probably due almost entirely to the February 1994 opening of Videorama,. And Brad's objection is -- Videorama sold only 4,000 videos in 1994 and his statement is defending Videorama. If we have to seriously weaken the force of Brad's objection we need to prove that the fall in rental numbers is directly or at least in good part because of Videorama.

Option A attacks Videorama and hence should be the correct option. Option E is in fact strengthening Brad's stance but pointing to a different cause in the fall of rental.

Any other thoughts ???

J: The loss of 10,000 rentals was all Videorama's fault.
B: That's not possible, since Videorama only sold 4000 videos.

That means brad's objection is based on the fact that 4000 is a smaller number than 10,000.

Thus to to WEAKEN brad's objection,COME UP WITH A WAY FOR 4000 SALES TO CANCEL OUT 10,000 RENTALS.

(a) is irrelevant to this issue.

(e) provides a perfect reason why the 4000 sales could, indeed, compensate for the 10,000 rentals: if the sold videos are loaned around, then each of them could cancel out multiple rentals.

Hence E.

What is the source of the source of this question? This is a pretty tricky question where A and E both have good reasons to be right I read it like this:

The decline in rentals was probably due almost entirely to the February 1994 opening of Videorama, the first and only video rental outlet in the area that, in addition to renting videos, also sold them cheaply.

Thus if the 10,000 rental drop is coming from videorama, wouldn't it make sense for A to be a choice as well as E?

This is how it looks to me:

A: If 4000 dvds were sold, and it states there were more rentals than movie sales, then at least 4001 copies were rented out. This would account for the majority, and would take a big chunk out of the other company's business right?

E: If 4000 dvds were sold, and if those people were more likely to lend their dvds, then it would equate to at least one extra person watching that movie who would have rented.

This is where it gets tricky to me. Are we to decide that because of these people giving the video out to others, does that mean it is due to videorama or the consumer? Additionally, if we are to say this is due to videorama, wouldn't A be the choice? If someone can explain this based on the points made I would like to know why this is E and not A. Please provide the source of this question.

You're misunderstanding the argument. The argument isn't that Videorama rented or sold 10,000 videos that would have come as rentals from other stores. The argument is that the total of ALL video rentals (including whatever Videorama rented) in the area decreased by 10,000 in the given year. So in 1993, people in Centerville rented a grand total of, say, 100,000 videos, but in 1994 after Videorama opened, people in Centerville only rented 90,000 videos. The number of videos that Videorama rented is irrelevant, because it's included in that 90,000 figure.

hey..

The arguement compares rentals - that were less in 1994 than 1993.. with sale of videos by videorama..

so why not bridge the gap why saying videorama rented more than it sold ? - a?
similarly why not b ?

Responding to a pm:

The following is the gist of the argument:

Jennifer: Video rental outlets handled 10,000 fewer video rentals in 1994 than in 1993. The decline was due to opening of Videorama in 1994 that sold videos cheaply.

Brad: Wrong. The decline was 10,000 rentals but Videorama sold only 4,000 videos in 1994.

Question: Which would most seriously weaken Brad's objection?

We have to weaken Brad's objection that Videorama sold only 4000 videos whereas the decline is 10,000 videos.
What can explain that 4000 videos sold by Videorama are responsible for the decline of 10,000 in rentals? 4000 videos sold should be responsible for decline of about 4000 rentals only. But if people lend their videos to family and friends, each video sold could account for 2-3 fewer rentals. Then it is possible that 10,000 fewer people rent the videos. Therefore, (E) weakens Brad's objection and is our answer.

(A) and (B) do not provide an explanation against Brad's objection and hence are not correct.

I choose A.

Brad's argument starts with an inherent belief that the reason presented by Jennifer is not enough. He backs it with data about the number of videos sold by Videorama. 'A' most seriously weakens Brad's argument as it shows that the impact felt by the other Video Rental outlets is more so due to the number of videos rented out by VIdeorama as opposed to the number of videos sold.

I agree with charlemagne. The conclusion by Brad states sales but the argument is about rentals. This leaves only A as the option

Thanks for the vote of confidence dude...wonder if Chris' argument is definitive though?

Let me do a better job of showing why (A) is not the answer. In doing so, I'll address Charlemagne original explanation.

Sold videos and rented videos are not discrete in terms of who watches the videos. Think of it this way, if I go over to my friend's house and watch a movie, it doesn't matter whether he bought the video or rented the video. I most likely will not rent the movie myself (I've already seen it).

Therefore the argument is not "due to the number of videos rented out by Videorama as opposed to the number of videos sold", but rather to why fewer people are renting videos from Videorama in the first place. 'Sold videos' can thus have a major impact on whether someone rents from Videorama. If I know my buddy Jake bought a cheap copy of Avatar from Videorama, then I am less likely to run down there and rent Avatar. As (E) says, friends are likely to loan videos. I ask Jake he loans me his copy: one fewer person to rent Avatar for Videorama.

Hope that was clearer .

It's really important to understand what DIRECTION you should be taking for this question.

We want to weaken Brad's argument. Brad was arguing against Jennifer --> essentially we are trying to find something that supports Jennifer's case.

Jennifer says: Decline is due to Videorama
Brad says: No, that's not true, something else is responsible

To weaken Brad's claim, we almost have to reaffirm that the decline is due to Videorama. We just need a more clear way to explain it.

Jennifer's claim can still be valid if we fill in some of the holes. Brad pointed out one of the holes, which was that Videorama only sold 4000 videos and there's a gap in order to reach the 10,000 decline in video rentals.

Now what can explain the gap?

(E) does the best job because if for every 1 video sold that cannibalized 2, 3 or more video rentals, than the cannibalization effect could be far in excess of 10,000 video rentals.

(A) also helps explain the gap but it's not strong enough. If Videorama rented out more than it sold, it's possible that it sold 4,000 and it rented 5,000. Together, that's 9,000 and so there's still 1,000 that cannot be explained. On the other hand, it's possible that 4,000 was sold but 6,000 was rented. That would reach the 10,000 and this would weaken Brad's argument. However, since it goes both ways it does not definitively weaken the argument...and would only be a "weak" method of weakening the argument.

(B) in a similar manner is "weak" and also is not relevant because it places the explanation on something other than Videorama, ie the other two stores, when clearly the argument is referring to Videorama.

Hi,

The discussion so far has been very good.

The only confusion visible is between options A and E.

Let's first follow our standard approach for the answer:

Brad's argument is that opening of Videorama could not be the explanation for decline in rentals since Videorama sold only 4000 videos against a total decline of 10,000 video rentals.

Prethinking Assumption:

Now, if we try to prethink the assumption in Brad's argument, it looks like this: one video sold should lead to a decline of one (nearly) video rental.

Prethinking Weakener:

Now, a weakener is something which weakens the assumption. Thus, a weakener could be like:
Some movies are rented more than once to the same person in a year. (If this is true, then people who buy these videos will not rent. Thus, every purchase would lead to twice or thrice the amount of decline in rentals)

Other weakener could be the one stated in option E. This statement means that every video purchase should lead to multiple times decline in the number of video rentals.

Therefore, E is the correct answer choice.

Now, coming to option A, please note that it is clearly stated the Videorama is located in the area. Thus, any video rentals by Videorama are counted in the figure for the area. Therefore, the number of video rentals by Videorama does not affect Brad's argument.

Hope this helps

Critical Reasoning questions are also asked in the new IR section of GMAT. Click on the below image to access a critical reasoning IR question with detailed approach to such questions.



Thanks,
Chiranjeev

Premise of the argument: "Videorama sold only 4,000 videos in 1994." but "the decline was on the order of 10,000 rentals"
Conclusion of the argument: The decline in rentals was probably not due almost entirely to the February 1994 opening of Videorama

We need to weaken the above argument. Choice E weakens the premise that since it says that though there is a gap of 6000 videos to be accounted for, the gap which represents videos that were not bought can be explained by the fact that they were borrowed from friends who had bought them. That fills the gap and weakens Brad's premise.

Choice A seems close because if videorama handled say, 5000 rentals then the total number of videos handled by videorama becomes 5000+4000 which is 9000. That seems to only strengthen Jennifers argument that the decrease was probably almost entirely due to videorama. But the decline in rental is after including the rentals handled by videorama. So if as in choice A if videorama handled 5000 rentals, the others should have handled 15,000 rentals less. So it doesn't quite weaken Brad's argument as E does because there would be still the gap of 6000..

Why E? Does that mean one gives the purchased video in month of February to his friends? or does it mean that max videos were purchased in feb month and that they were only shared with friends in feb?

Am I missing something with this logic?

Brad says that 10,000 fewer videos were rented but the cheap sale of video rentals by Videorama cannot be responsible for this entire decline because they sold only 4000 videos. So out of these 10,000, it makes sense that 4000 people did not rent the video because they bought them instead but what about the other 6000? Why did they not rent the videos too? So Brad insists that there must be another reason too.
The explanation to Brad's comment can be that the people who buy videos, loan them out to their friends. So every video sold will decreases the number of rentals by not just one but more than one. Hence the entire 10,000 can be explained by the 4000 videos sold.

ChrisLele: Sorry to bring this up after so many days.....but people could have rented the videos in 1993 too. Why just in 1994?

I'm not sure if this answers your question, but before Videorama opened in 1994, fewer videos were being sold in the area. That means that if you wanted to watch a video, you probably had to rent it (rather than borrowing a copy that, for example, your friend owned). So yes people were renting videos in both 1993 and 1994. But once Videorama opened, more people started buying videos. Those people could then loan their purchased copies to friends, so those friends would not have to rent as many videos.

I hope that helps!