Industrial engineer: Some people have suggested that the problem of

Hello, Shikhar22. I am going to try something a little different in the way of analysis this time, using a color-coded image that I have prepared as a prop. To answer your query, you want to tackle this question or any other that asks about the conclusion of an argument the same way: Stick to exactly what the conclusion says. If you do, you cannot go wrong. All you have to do is identify that conclusion. How about we have a look?


The passage map is simple. The first two lines tell us what other people, not the industrial engineer, think about an issue. I boxed just the beginning of those lines because the frame is all that matters. Believe it or not, we do not care about the details of what others believe or worry about. The question asks about the conclusion of the industrial engineer, so until the engineer might offer an opinion on these views, we can more or less ignore them. The next line, however, does just that. Note the strong, judgmental language: This worry is unfounded, however. That is the engineer talking. What follows the semicolon provides the rationale behind that conclusion, not the conclusion itself. All we need to do now is play a matching game with the answer choices.

(A) and (E), the most popular incorrect answers, fail for the same reason. The engineer is not interested in offering suggestions to fix global warming. That has nothing to do with the conclusion, which merely criticizes a view. Just because someone offers a contrary opinion, you cannot assume that a counterproposal is in place.

(B) restates one of the views from earlier in the passage, but that does not make it a conclusion. In fact, if I tell you that someone has concluded something, you can only consider that information a statement, one about the conclusion of someone else. Again, the frame, how information is presented, is what counts.

(D) fails because it restates the justification for the conclusion. In another type of CR question, this information would fill in the blank: This worry is unfounded, however, since ________________.

The key to breaking down the question, then, lies in sticking to the fundamentals: identifying background information, premises, and a conclusion. I hope that helps. I had a lot of fun with the question and doctoring up an image to outline my thought process. Let me know what you think.

Thank you for bringing the question to my attention, and as always, good luck with your studies.

- Andrew