jct512 wrote:
I do not understand the difference between E & C,
Hello,
jct512. I will post my thoughts on each choice in hopes that they may help the community at large, answering your query in the process. How about we start with the prompt, as I often do when tackling CR questions:
Vavali wrote:
Which one of the following statements can be properly inferred from the passage?
You have to be careful not to take license and assume away when you see a word such as
inferred. There is a very strict logic that must be adhered to, and we will get to that in a moment.
Vavali wrote:
People with serious financial problems are so worried about money that they cannot be happy. Their misery makes everyone close to them—family, friends, colleagues—unhappy as well. Only if their financial problems are solved can they and those around them be happy.
Note that the frame of the passage is
people with serious financial problems, and every instance of
their in the passage refers back to these people, so we will expect to see this subgroup in the correct answer choice. The linear logic of the passage is as follows:
- People of group A
are so worried about money that conclusion A,
they cannot be happy.
- Conclusion A leads to conclusion B, that
everyone close to them... [is] unhappy as well.
-
Condition A,
only if their financial problems are solved leads to conclusion C,
can they and those around them be happy.
Notice that conclusion C is
not a guarantee. It is only saying that the group of people who are worried about money, and, by extension, their close ones,
can be happy on the condition that
their, the same one throughout the passage, financial problems are solved. Now take a look at each answer choice, assessing it for
exactly what it says.
Vavali wrote:
(A) Only serious problems make people unhappy.
Analysis: We are not even talking about
financial problems here, just
serious problems in general. The frame of the passage is concerned with a subgroup of people specifically faced with
serious financial problems, so we cannot speculate on any other broad category of issues.
Red light.Vavali wrote:
(B) People who solve their serious financial problems will be happy.
Analysis: This one can appear to answer the question, but we have already addressed its fatal flaw: it sounds as if these people are guaranteed happiness in
will be, and that just is not so. The difference between the
can be of the passage and the
will be of this answer choice is subtle, but one, the former, opens a door of possibility, while the other, the latter, closes it and seals the deal.
Red light.Vavali wrote:
(C) People who do not have serious financial problems will be happy.
Analysis: This option starts out on shaky ground by addressing a group of people the passage does not even mention, those
without serious financial problems, so anything we would think to add to the dialogue would be outside the scope of the information presented, certainly not an inference we could draw based on what is said about a different group. Notice, too, the same problem in
will be that we discussed in the last answer choice. We are not interested in guarantees, since the passage does not make any about being happy.
Red light. Vavali wrote:
(D) If people are unhappy, they have serious financial problems.
Analysis: A classic reversal of logic, what is known as the
converse of the original conditional statement. The first line of the passage states that if A--people have serious financial problems--then B--they cannot be happy. This answer choice says instead that if B, then A. It does not make sense to generalize that just because
people, any group of people, are unhappy, they
must be facing
serious financial problems.
As Donnie Darko might (amusingly) say, "There are other things that need to be taken into account here, like the whole spectrum of human emotion." In short, people can be unhappy for any of a number of reasons.
Red light.Vavali wrote:
(E) If people are happy, they do not have serious financial problems.
Analysis: Notice that the topic sentence of the passage states that
people with serious financial problems... cannot be happy. If facing serious financial problems precludes people from being happy, then you can infer that happy people
must not have serious financial problems. The group in question is mentioned, and they are mentioned in a logically sound conditional statement.
Green light.I hope that helps. If anyone has further questions, feel free to ask. Good luck with your studies.
- Andrew