rajathpanta wrote:
Pretzel vendor: The new license fee for operating a pretzel stand outside the art museum is prohibitively expensive. Charging typical prices, a vendor would need to sell an average of 25 pretzels per hour to break even. At my stand outside city hall, I average only 15 per hour. Therefore, I could not break even running a pretzel stand outside the art museum, much less turn a profit.
Which of the following, if true, most strongly supports the pretzel vendor’s argument?
(A) There is currently no license fee for operating a pretzel stand outside city hall.
(B) Pretzel vendors who operate stands outside the art museum were making a profit before the imposition of the new license fee.
(C) The number of pretzel stands outside the art museum is no greater than the number of pretzel stands now outside city hall.
(D) People who buy pretzels at pretzel stands are most likely to do so during the hours at which the art museum is open to the public.
(E) Fewer people passing the art museum than passing city hall are likely to buy pretzels.
Let’s start by breaking down the argument.
Premise: Given the new license fee for selling pretzels outside the museum, a vendor would have to sell 25 pretzels per hour to break even.
Premise: Outside city hall, I sell only 15 pretzels per hour.
Conclusion: I could not break even running a pretzel stand outside the art museum, much less turn a profit.
There is a huge gap in this argument. The evidence given is the number of pretzels the vendor sells outside city hall, while the conclusion is about operating a pretzel stand outside of the museum. So, one way to strengthen the argument is to connect the information about sales outside city hall to the conclusion about sales outside the museum.
(A) There is currently no license fee for operating a pretzel stand outside city hall.
The argument gives us no reason to believe that the absence of a fee for operating outside city hall would have any effect on the profitability of operating outside the museum. So, what this choice says does not affect the argument.
(B) Pretzel vendors who operate stands outside the art museum were making a profit before the imposition of the new license fee.
This choice is a little tricky. The argument concludes that profitably operating a pretzel stand outside the museum is not possible now that vendors have to pay the new fee. This choice is related to that conclusion in that it says that before the new fee was imposed, vendors operating outside the museum were making profits. So, this choice and the conclusion combine to make a plausible before-and-after contrast, and therefore a test-taker might be tempted to pick this choice.
However, we are not looking for a contrast or for a statement that is merely plausible. We are looking for a strengthener.
(C) The number of pretzel stands outside the art museum is no greater than the number of pretzel stands now outside city hall.
One way to strengthen the argument is to better connect the information about operating a pretzel stand outside city hall with the conclusion about operating a pretzel stand outside the museum. So, this choice could be tempting, because it does provide information that relates the environment for operating a pretzel stand outside city hall to that for operating a pretzel stand outside the museum.
However, in saying that the number of pretzel stands outside the art museum is no greater than the number of pretzel stands now outside city hall, this choice does not give us clear reason to believe that the situation outside the museum is not as good as the situation outside city hall is for selling pretzels.
“No greater than” does not tell us whether the number of pretzel stands outside the museum is “the same as” or “much smaller than” the number outside city hall. If the number outside the museum were much smaller than the number outside city hall, then there would be less competition outside the museum than there is outside city hall, and it would be conceivable that a vendor could sell many more pretzels outside the museum than the vendor could sell outside city hall.
So, since we can’t tell what exactly this choice indicates about how the situation outside the museum compares to the situation outside city hall, this choice does not strengthen the argument.
(D) People who buy pretzels at pretzel stands are most likely to do so during the hours at which the art museum is open to the public.
What this option adds to the argument is not clear. Does it imply that the pretzel-selling business outside the museum should be strong? Do people who go to the museum buy pretzels? We don’t really know. What we can tell is that this choice doesn’t say anything that supports the conclusion that selling pretzels outside the museum cannot be done profitably.
(E) Fewer people passing the art museum than passing city hall are likely to buy pretzels.
This answer choice is not great. It seems to indicate that conditions for selling pretzels outside the museum are not as good as those outside city hall. At the same time, it does not address the question of whether there are more pretzel vendors outside city hall than there are outside the museum. That fewer people passing by buy pretzels outside the museum than outside city hall could be offset by there being fewer vendors competing outside the museum than competing outside city hall.
Nevertheless, we have clear reasons to eliminate all the other choices. So, this choice, weak as it is, has to be the OA, as it does say something that could be somewhat reasonably construed as connecting the evidence, which is the number of pretzels the vendor can sell outside city hall, and the conclusion, which is about selling pretzels outside the museum. In other words, by weakly indicating that selling conditions are not as good outside the museum as they are outside city hall, this choice confirms what the vendor says about not being able to sell 25 pretzels per hour outside the museum, given that the vendor sells only 15 per hour outside city hall.
The correct answer is E.
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