Modest amounts of exercise can produce a dramatic improvement in cardi

Official answer at Manhatten Prep:

Correct answer:
A

Answer choice analysis:
A) Super safely worded. "Doing this CAN produce that". Seems supportable. We know that exercising even moderately on most days of the week can get you cardiovascular benefits. And we know that more vigorous (strenuous) exercise is even more effective than that. If modest amounts (most days of the week) can produce dramatic improvements, and vigorous exercise is more effective, then we have good support for (A).

B) More dangerous wording: "doing this GENERALLY produces that". Also, we were told that half an hour on at least 4 days a week would do it. This is talking about doing twice as long half as frequently. Yes, that may add up to the same total of hours, but maybe there's something crucial about exercising more than two days a week.

C) Dangerous wording: "____ is AT LEAST AS GREAT as ____". This also seems to go against the gist that strenuous is "MORE effective".

D) Super dangerous wording: "There is NO WAY". That's crazy. Nothing we read was that extreme.

E) Super dangerous: "To obtain ___ one MUST do ____". Nothing we read suggested that strenuous exercise was necessary. In fact, it said the opposite.

Takeaway/Pattern: Knowing that strong and comparative language is inherently sketchy on Inference answer choices, we can quickly filter (D) and (E) out of initial consideration. (B) is not AS strongly worded, but it's still stronger than (A) or (C). Once we try to support (A) vs. (C), we can see how (A) is supportable by combining what we know about moderate exercise with the claim that vigorous exercise is more effective.