Critical Reasoning: Evaluate Question bank (700+)

1. A certain pharmaceutical firm claims that its dietary supplement, Dietol, is highly effective in helping obese people lose weight and improve physical endurance. The company supports this claim by providing the results of a recent experiment that involved over 800 subjects suffering from obesity. During the 9-week experiment, each of the subjects was required to take a regular dose of Dietol every day immediately after their daily 2-hour workouts supervised by a professional fitness instructor. As a result of the experiment, the subjects lost an average of 12 pounds of weight per person, and over 95% of all participants demonstrated higher physical endurance.

The answer to which of the following questions would be most helpful in evaluating the conclusion of the pharmaceutical company?

• What was the daily dose of Dietol that the subjects were required to take?

• What was the maximum weight lost by any participant during the 9-week program?

• What would be the average weight loss and the improvement in endurance in a group of subjects with similar characteristics involved in the same physical fitness program but not taking Dietol?

• What was the average age among the subjects participating in the experiment?

• Did the majority of subjects experience a significant improvement in physical strength?


2. The recording industry is fighting a losing battle: it simply does not have the resources to prosecute all of the individuals who illegally download music from the Internet. Because the number of individuals who will be charged with a crime is so limited, the actions of the recording industry will have a minimal impact on the number of people who illegally download music.

The answer to which of the following questions would best help evaluate the accuracy of the conclusion above?

• Will recording industry lawyers dedicate the majority of their time to prosecuting those who illegally download music?

• Is a small minority of individuals responsible for the majority of illegal song downloads?

• Do many individuals who illegally download songs share their music files with other Internet users?

• Will new Internet security technology permit the recording industry to more quickly and easily identify individuals who illegally download music?

• Will the threat of prosecution alter the behavior of those who illegally download music?

3. While political discourse and the media in the United States have focused on the rise of job outsourcing, few have mentioned the sharp fall of talent “insourcing,” or the drop in enrollment of foreign-born graduate students since 2001, and its dire results. The decrease in such insourcing will hurt America’s competitiveness in basic research and applied technology, with serious consequences for years to come. The de-internationalization of graduate programs across the country will also negatively affect the global outlook and experience of the American students remaining in those programs; they will not have the opportunity to learn about foreign cultures directly from members of those cultures. What distinguishes the decline of talent insourcing from the rise of job outsourcing is that the former can be easily rectified by a policy change of the United States government.

The answer to which of the following questions would be most useful in evaluating the author’s claim regarding the impact of decreased insourcing in America?


• What is the cost to reverse the trend of insourcing in America?

• How does insourcing replace domestic jobs lost from outsourcing?

• Since 2001, what has been the decrease in the number of foreign-born students in America?

• What opportunities do American graduate students have to interact regularly with foreigners who are not students?

• What effect would a government policy have on the number of foreign graduate students?

4. Profits for one of Company X’s flagship products have been declining slowly for several years. The CFO investigated and determined that inflation has raised the cost of producing the product but consumers who were surveyed reported that they weren’t willing to pay more than the current price. As a result, the CFO recommended that the company stop producing this product because the CEO only wants products whose profit margins are increasing.

The answer to which of the following questions would be most useful in evaluating whether the CFO’s decision to divest the company of its flagship product is warranted?

• Does the company have new and profitable products available with which to replace the flagship product?

• Will the rest of Company X’s management team agree with the CFO’s recommendation?

• Are there additional features which could be added to the product and for which consumers might be willing to pay a higher price?

• Is there a way to alter the manufacturing or distribution processes in order to reduce the cost to produce the flagship product?

• What percentage of Company X’s revenues is represented by sales of the flagship product in question?

5. The Civil Service Act of 1883, also known as the Pendleton Act, which created a professional corps of administrators, was passed after a disappointed office-seeker assassinated President James A. Garfield. For a hundred years, this system has anchored American government service to competence rather than corruption. The best way to preserve this state in the new millennium is to maintain the Pendleton Act as it is.

Which of the following would be most useful to evaluate the argument’s conclusion?

• The methods that the Swiss and British governments have used to prevent corruption in government service for the past one hundred years

• The current level of job satisfaction among government office-seekers and office-holders

• The levels of competence and corruption in American government service between 1950 and the present

• The number of Presidents assassinated since the passage of the Pendleton Act

• The percentage of office-holders fired or convicted on charges stemming from corruption during the first hundred years of the Pendleton Act

6. Zoologists warn of an imminent surge in the number of bird species that will become extinct within this century. Nevertheless, these zoologists are wrong. One need only consider the information gathered on native North American raptors, such as bald eagles and peregrine falcons. Several of these species came close to vanishing between 1900 and 1970, but since 1970, the local populations of these raptors have rebounded.

The answer to which of the following questions provides information that would be most helpful in evaluating the argument above?

• How many species of non-native raptors have been introduced into North America since 1970?

• What special efforts, if any, have been made to rescue native North American raptors since 1970?

• How many years’ experience do the zoologists have in evaluating patterns of extinction among animals?

• To what degree have native North American raptors migrated to other parts of the world?

• How many acres of woodland are set aside each year as bird refuges?

7. Most cable television companies currently require customers to subscribe to packages of channels, but consumer groups have recently proposed legislation that would force the companies to offer a la carte pricing. Subscribers would pay less, argue the consumer groups, because they could purchase only the desired channels. However, the cable industry argues that under the current package pricing, popular channels subsidize less-popular ones, providing more options for viewers. For this reason, the industry claims that it is always cheaper for the consumer to purchase many bundled channels than to buy them individually.

Which of the following would be most important for the government to determine before deciding whether to require cable television companies to offer a la carte pricing in order to reduce consumer costs?

• Whether the total number of channels offered to consumers would decrease, along with programming diversity, as a result of the a la carte pricing structure

• Whether advertising revenue for the cable television companies would decrease as a result of the a la carte pricing structure

• Whether the vast majority of consumers would greatly reduce the number of channels purchased if given the option of purchasing them individually

• Whether cable and satellite companies currently have the ability to buy channels individually from programmers and content providers

• Whether a la carte subscribers would be required to have new television set-top boxes

8. The director of programming at NNN, the National News Network, proclaimed that, despite charges to the contrary, the Network does not have a conservative bias. The director acknowledged that, when a liberal news personality was recently added to the Network, an additional conservative news program was also established. However, the director argued that far from demonstrating any bias, these actions reflect a commitment to presenting a balanced perspective in interpreting current events.

Which of the following pieces of information would be most useful in evaluating the validity of the programming director’s argument?

• The Network has established an additional liberal news program whenever an additional conservative news personality has been added.

• The Network airs a program focused largely on the opinions of its viewers on contemporary issues.

• The newly added liberal news personality came from a rival network with an acknowledged liberal bias.

• The newly added liberal news personality has indicated that he has not felt any editorial pressure in his new environment.

• The viewer ratings of the Network have been lower this past year than in previous years.

9. Child development specialists have observed that adolescents who receive large weekly allowances tend to spend money on items considered frivolous by their parents whereas adolescents who receive small weekly allowances do not. Thus, in order to ensure that their children do not spend money on frivolous items, parents should not give their children large weekly allowances.

Which of the following pieces of information would be most useful in evaluating the validity of the conclusion above?

• The average amount of money received by adolescents who receive large weekly allowances

• Any differences among parents in the standard used to judge an item as frivolous

• The educational background of the child development specialists who made this observation

• The difference between the average annual income of families in which the parents give their children large weekly allowances and that of families in which the parents give their children small weekly allowances

• The percentage of adolescents who receive no weekly allowance

10. The downturn in the economy last year has prompted many companies to make widely publicized layoffs, resulting in thousands of lost jobs. Economists predicted that these layoffs would cause people generally to cut back on their discretionary spending even if their jobs were secure, in anticipation of coming hard times. However, this prediction has not come to pass, since there has been no increase in the amount of money set aside by the general public in savings accounts.

The answer to which of the following questions would be most useful in evaluating the significance of the savings patterns described above?

• What business sectors were most affected by the layoffs?

• How much of their savings, on average, do laid-off employees deplete before finding new employment?

• What has been the percent increase in the cost of necessities such as food, housing, and utilities during the period since the layoffs?

• What percentage of people laid off have savings accounts?

• What has been the average salary during the period since the layoffs?