Financial Analyst: Healthcare professionals, such as doctors, nurses,

A?
This is a Weaken the Argument question. So we have to look for something that will make the conclusion less likely to be true. The Argument follows that strong quantitative skills are required for successful management of financial projects. Then, the average healthcare professional is less skilled at managing financial projects than average management professionals not in healthcare. The connection between these two premises is that healthcare professionals must then have weaker quantitative skills than non healthcare professionals. Essentially, we are looking for an answer choice that will show that this isn't necessarily true.

B - seems irrelevant because the argument doesn't talk about training in project management
C - seems to strengthen the argument a bit as it shows that non healthcare professionals would have better quant skills, making the conclusion more likely.
D- seems irrelevant as free time is not part of the argument
E - says that healthcare professionals must use quant skills daily. That's great but how does that compare to non healthcare professionals? We should be looking for a comparative measure of quantitative competency.
A shows that there is about an equal focus on quant skills between the two types of professionals, implying that quantitative skills should be about equal for the two.

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Financial Analyst: Healthcare professionals, such as doctors, nurses, and pharmacists, rarely succeed when they manage financial projects. In fact, the average healthcare professional is less skilled at managing financial projects than the average management professional who does not work in a healthcare field. Successful management of financial projects requires strong quantitative skills. Therefore, the average management professional has stronger quantitative skills than the average healthcare professional.

Which of the following, if true, casts the most serious doubt on the conclusion drawn above?

(A) The education of an average healthcare professional includes about as many classes focused on quantitative skills as that of an average management professional. - Irrelevant, since the argument talks about greater quant skills, higher classes doesnt necessarily results in higher quant skills
(B) Unlike the education of an average healthcare professional, that of an average management professional includes training in project management.- Irrelevant, training in project management does not really mean that Quant skills will be better. Moreover this supports the argument and does not weaken it
(C) The average management professional has completed a higher level of mathematics than the average healthcare professional. - Strengthener, supports the argument
(D) Project managers generally have more free time to dedicate to financial projects than most doctors. - Correct choice, if doctors have less time, no matter even if they have higher quant skills they would still not be able to devote the time required to manage it
(E) Doctors, nurses, and pharmacists must use quantitative skills on a daily basis in order to be successful at their jobs.- Supports the argument, incorrect

Correct Choice: D

Conc -the average management professional has stronger quantitative skills than the average healthcare professional.

what if both of them have equal quant skill and there is some other factor that causes downfall.

A - classes does not translate into skills
B - irrelevant
C - strengthens the conc.
D - correct
E - using daily does not imply tey have higher skill

(A) The education of an average healthcare professional includes about as many classes focused on quantitative skills as that of an average management professional. - This MAY weaken the argument, but we must make the asusmption that better education = better quant skills which may not necessarily be true. Let's keep this now but see if there are any better answers.
(B) Unlike the education of an average healthcare professional, that of an average management professional includes training in project management. - This would give an alternative reason why average management professionals are better than healthcare professionals at managing projects. It's not because they are better at quant, but because they received more training. This is a greater weakener
(C) The average management professional has completed a higher level of mathematics than the average healthcare professional. - Similar to A. We must make the assumption that higher level of mathematics = better at quant
(D) Project managers generally have more free time to dedicate to financial projects than most doctors. - Very good trap answer. Note that the answers only compares project managers to DOCTORS! What about other healthcare professionals such as nurses and pharamacists? Even if the managers have more free time than doctors, they may have less free time than nurses or pharmacists but still be better at managing projects. Therefore, this is incorrect.
(E) Doctors, nurses, and pharmacists must use quantitative skills on a daily basis in order to be successful at their jobs. - Does not compare healthcare professionals with management professional. Incorrect

Between A, B and C, B is the best answer

Hello GMATNinja,

The conclusion is as you have stated in your comments above.

However, option B doesn't weaken the "conclusion". The argument states that management professionals are good at managing projects, and since managing projects requires good quant skills, they are good at quant. Thus we can say as per the argument that the ones who are managing projects or who have learnt to manage projects must be good in quants.

So the whole argument is about being good in quant. How does option B weaken the choice then?

Option B essentially states that management people received project training, thus as per our aforesaid understanding, they must be good at quant.

As per the above explanations and from what I understood from the option B, the option does provides an alternate explanation for better management of projects, but it doesn't state anything regarding as to why management people are NOT better at quant than healthcare people are.

Please throw some light on this. It is hard to digest that option B weakens the "CONCLUSION". In my honest opinion it doesn't.

Regards

I agree with this statement: "Thus we can say as per the argument that the ones who are managing projects or who have learnt to manage projects must be good in quants." However, the conclusion is not that "the average management professional" is good at quant. The conclusion is that the average management professional has stronger quantitative skills than the average healthcare professional.

Yes, we have not weakened the idea that management professionals are good at quant. But do we know that they are better than the average healthcare professional? Being good at quant is a NECESSARY condition for successful management of financial projects, but it is not necessarily a SUFFICIENT condition. You might need quant skills, training in project management, good people skills, etc.

According to the author, not being good at managing financial projects is evidence that healthcare professionals are not good at quant, but this is not necessarily true. Perhaps they are good at quant and simply lack another NECESSARY condition (i.e. training in project management). By introducing this possibility, choice (B) does weaken the conclusion.

I hope that helps!

Hello VeritasKarishma

Option B: Option B says that management professional got training.

But it does not impact the conclusion that
Therefore, the average management professional has stronger quantitative skills than the average healthcare professional.

Option E: I think this is the answer as it weakens the conclusion. Management profession spend more time thus make better choice not because of skill set.

What do you think?
Thanks again.

VeritasKarishma

is this line of thought ok?

better quant skills cause successful fin projects
so, if treated as a cause/effect thing, we just have to look for alternate causes, in which case B makes sense

Also.....
had the argument been: the avg healthcare prof is weaker in quant skills than the avg mgmt prof
would A been the correct answer?

Regards

Hi GMATNinja

Thank you for your explanation, but I still have lots of questions to option (B)



So Ninja, if we go with your thinking, we must consider the conclusion in the question be


(1) Average management professional perform better (at managing financial project) than average healthcare professional not because of “quantitative skill”, or say quantitative skill is not important enough that we need to consider, but its other factors which contribute to the reason why management professional better skilled at managing financial project than healthcare professional

Rather than

(2) Therefore, the average management professional has stronger(not weaker) quantitative skills than the average healthcare professional.

????

In this kind of complex question, we should determine the “conclusion” to which we want to overthrow before we reach the correct choice

I just cannot understand where the conclusion sits????





If we see conclusion (2) be used

Then I will arrive at the same result as



-healthcare professional have stronger quantitative skill
-overthrow the conclusion “the average management professional has stronger(not weaker) quantitative skills than the average healthcare professional.”

Then (E) should be the correct answer







Also

(B) If management professionals are trained in project management but healthcare professionals are not


(B) If management professionals are trained in project management but healthcare professionals are not, that probably explains why management professionals are better at managing projects, including financial projects. Choice (B) provides an alternative to the explanation stated in the conclusion, and, thus, casts serious doubt on the conclusion. Let's keep choice (B).




We cannot simply infer from this that whoever, management professional or healthcare professionals, will perform better in financial project.
Because maybe healthcare professional lack training, but they have other skills other than quantitative skill which enable them to surpass management professional in managing financial projects

In this situation, the whole premise/fact about “management professional perform better in managing financial project than healthcare professional” cannot established


If we see conclusion (1) be used

Then this will put option (A), whether its correct or not in question, and it is that (A) would in this situation be correct rather than wrong


In option(A), if management professional and healthcare professional have the same quantitative knowledge
then it’s very easy to infer that they have same quantitative skill

Thus “quantitative skill” could not be the determining factor.
Management professional perform better than healthcare professional not because “quantitative skill”, but maybe its other factor which contribute to this phenomenon









below are a list of explanations which cast doubt on option (B), their thinking have somewhat in line with me
























urhowig

(B) Unlike the education of an average healthcare professional, that of an average management professional includes training in project management.
- The argument relies on the assumption that if good in quants -> better skilled in financial projects. Project management is out of scope.
Also, in the argument, there is no link between project management and financial projects. We can not say training in project management will make someone better skilled in financial projects.






INSEADIESE

Hi GMATNinja

I am really a fan of your explanations. You always use pure logic to breakdown the argument into simple logical fragments.. big fan!

Just a question.. here goes my analysis :

First of all, the main conclusion of the argument is *Therefore, the average management professional has stronger quantitative skills than the average healthcare professional* ... so what we really need to show is that just because an average management professional is better than an average healthcare professional when it comes to managing financial projects doesn’t necessarily mean that the average management professional has better quant skills than does an average healthcare professional in general.....the way we can weaken this conclusion is by saying that good quantitative skills are not just about managing financial projects.. what if an average healthcare professional is better than an average management professional when it comes to handling the business expenses or maybe handling some sort of other finances? If so, then can we really generalise that an average management professional has got better quant skills than an average healthcare professional.. clearly not..

Coming back to option B.. now option B doesn’t really seem to weaken the conclusion. Instead it seems to weaken a given fact ie *Successful management of financial projects requires strong quantitative skills* as the option, ie option B, provides an alternate explanation of mentioned causality ie strong quant skills—> successful management of the financial projects..

What am I missing?

Kindly explain

Regards,
Adit

- Healthcare professionals (HPs) rarely succeed when they manage financial projects.
- Avg healthcare professional is less skilled at managing financial projects than the average management professional (MP) who does not work in healthcare.
- Successful management of financial projects requires strong quantitative skills.

Conclusion - Average management professional has stronger quantitative skills than the average healthcare professional.

The argument says that "Strong Quant skills" are necessary for "Successful management of financial projects".
It also says that HPs are not able to manage fin projects successfully and that MPs do a better job.
So it concludes that MPs have stronger Quant kills than HPs.

But here is a problem with this logic: Strong Quant skills are just a necessary condition. Even if someone has strong Quant skills, they may not be able to manage the project well because they may be missing some other skills e.g. people skills or project mngmnt skills etc.
Just because HPs are not able to manage fin projects well, can we say that they don't have good Quant skills or that MPs have better Quant skills? No. It is possible that MPs have some other skills that are required that HPs don't have.
So what will weaken the conclusion? Knowing that MPs have some other required skill that HPs don't have. Note that this decreases the probability that HPs have weaker Quant skills than MPs. It doesn't prove that the conclusion does not hold and in a weaken question, we don't need to prove that the conclusion cannot hold. We only deal with likelihoods. If we get to know about another possible factor, the likelihood that Quant is the factor decreases.

(B) Unlike the education of an average healthcare professional, that of an average management professional includes training in project management.
This tells us that MPs learn about project mngmnt that HPs don't. This could account for why MPs do a better job. Then MPs may not have better Quant skills than HPs. This weakens our conclusion.

(E) Doctors, nurses, and pharmacists must use quantitative skills on a daily basis in order to be successful at their jobs.
The conclusion is about who has better Quant skills. Even if HPs have Quant skills, they may not have "strong Quant skills" which are required. So this doesn't weaken our conclusion.

You mean (D)? Will more time help them do well? We don't know. Since we are talking about managing projects, project management skills are relevant - we get that. Hence (B) is far more relevant than (D).

A cause-effect relation is a sufficient condition. This is not a sufficient condition. As I explained in my comment above, it is a necessary condition.
Also note that "A has stronger skills than B" is the same as "B has weaker skills than A" - no difference in the two.
Option (A) would not be correct. Same number of classes does not imply same skill.

The conclusion is definitely "the average management professional has stronger quantitative skills than the average healthcare professional."

This is the first thing I addressed in my explanation, and it's based on a precise reading of the passage, with no additional interpretation. You've just said the same thing, so if your main concern is not being sure where the conclusion is, then good news! You already have this right on the money

For the rest of my reply, I am not going to refer to "conclusion (1)" because neither of us believe that is what the author has concluded.


I'm not quite following your reasoning here. But let's take a direct look at choice (E) and evaluate it independently:


As I pointed out in my original explanation, there's a major logical problem with choice (E): It says absolutely nothing about whether the average health care professional has STRONGER or WEAKER quantitative skills than the average management professional.

If we take (E) to be true, then it's entirely possible that the average healthcare professional has rock solid quantitative skills — but the average management professional still STRONGER quantitative skills. It's also entirely possible that the average management professional has WEAKER quantitative skills than the average medical professional.

Choice (E) gives us no new information on this comparison, either way. And making this comparison is THE point of the author's conclusion. Consequently, (E) gives us no reason to make us doubt the conclusion, and it should be eliminated.


Be careful. This question is NOT an inference question, so we can't answer it by trying to confirm whether answer choices can be inferred from the passage. That is definitely not what I was doing in order to evaluate choice (B).

The question asks us which answer choice, if true, "casts the most serious doubt on the conclusion drawn above."

If choice (B) were true, then it would undermine the argument, and therefore cast doubt on the conclusion, which depends on a specific chain of logic: that having weaker quantitative skills is why health care professionals rarely succeed when they manage financial projects.

If true, (B) would suggest a completely different reason why we observe this result. Based on this new information, we'd be more likely to conclude that having weaker project management skills is why health care professionals rarely succeed when they manage financial projects.

We'd also be less likely to accept the author's conclusion, because if choice (B) were true, we'd have evidence that healthcare professionals have weaker project management skills than management professionals, but we'd still have no evidence telling us whether healthcare professionals have weaker quantitative skills than management professionals.


As I mentioned earlier, I see no reason to address "conclusion (1)," because neither you or I believe that is what the author has concluded.

I hope this helps clarify why (E) should be eliminated, and how to properly evaluate the merit of choice (B) — given the question asked and the logic of the argument made by the author.

Hi GMATNinja

Option B does present an alternate reason, but not sure how it weakens the conclusion. Can you please explain.
The conclusion is - Avg. management professionals have better quant skills than avg. healthcare workers. My point is that even with this alternate reason, the conclusion is still same - be it through training - they still have better quant skills.
Ideally, there should be an option which weakens the conclusion or shows that avg. management professionals do not have better quant skills.
Kindly let me know where is my thought process going wrong!!!

GMATNinja generis AndrewN egmat zhanbo VeritasKarishma

It is said that option C strengthens the conclusion. Why cannot the same reasoning be applied to option B??

Hello, warrior1991. I understand the point you are making. At the same time, the exact conclusion is that the average management professional has stronger quantitative skills than the average healthcare professional. To cast doubt on such a conclusion, we should look to attack the notion that Management Quant Skills > Healthcare Quant Skills for professionals within each area, on average. Choice (C) seems to provide a reasonable explanation as to why the average management professional might, in fact, have stronger quant skills. That is, it makes sense that more advanced training in mathematics would lead to more development in quantitative reasoning. The conclusion would hold. (Notice that the conclusion does not state that management professionals inherently possess stronger quantitative skills.) If we examine choice (B) a little closer, though, we have no such clearcut link. Now the management professional trains in project management while the healthcare professional does not. Does project management necessarily develop quantitative reasoning skills? I fail to see the direct correlation. Rather, the linear relationship suggested is that training in project management leads to increased skill at managing projects—in this particular case, financial projects. That is different from what we had before. It may not be the most satisfying answer, and it certainly is not the only one that could work, but of the five options presented, (B) is the best, most reasonable answer to the question being asked, providing an alternative explanation for the observation noted in the second line of the passage.

I hope that helps. Thank you for thinking to ask me about the question.

- Andrew

Project management of option (B) is a different subject. Option (B) tells us that MPs know something else better than HPs which could be relevant - Project management.
Option (C) says that MPs take higher Math classes than do HPs.

Option (C) is supporting what the conclusion is saying - that MPs have better Quant skills than HPs. Option (B) is telling us that MPs know something else better than HPs. So that could be reason instead of Quant skills.
Hence (B) weakens the conclusion while (C) strengthens it.