Hoozan wrote:
GMATNinja, the argument says that the company makes
surprise visits. So even if 10 out of 100 mills are inspected, this inspection is done so without informing the mills. So shouldn't this strengthen our argument? Because by making surprise visits the company is not making a preference of visiting any particular mill. If 10/100 are visited, we can say that there is no reference given to any mill and that all the mills have any equal chance of getting caught
On the other hand (A) says that 2/3 are internally hired. The company has set up its
own certification scheme. This 2/3 of this scheme is managed by its
own employees. The way I see it, the entire game is in the hands of Flyna. So even if the company claims that the wood is legal because it is all verified and certified, the fact that (most of) this entire process is controled by the company does throw some doubt of trusting the claim. Yes, we need to assume that there is a possibility that the company/employees aren't 100% diligent. BUT I believe this is something very practical to assume event though nothing is mentioned in the argument
The right answer is the one that "most undermines" Flyna's claim that its Country X wood supply is obtained legally.
Let's start with (A):
Quote:
A. Only about one-third of Flyna's inspectors were hired from outside the company.
So what impact does this have on Flyna's claim?
Keep in mind: all of the inspectors are CURRENTLY employees of Flyna. So if Flyna pressures its employees to give false reports, then all the inspectors would be
equally affected, whether they were hired from inside or outside the company. So the number of inspectors that were hired from inside the company wouldn't be relevant.
Thinking about this from another angle: why would Flyna want its inspectors to give dishonest reports about lumber mills in the first place? Presumably, they are making an effort to use legally obtained lumber, so it's unclear why they would pressure their inspectors to lie. We could certainly
imagine a scenario where Flyna would want its inspectors to lie, but that would require some pretty big leaps.
Finally, notice the above reasoning strays rather far from the exact wording of the answer choice. In other words, to even make (A) relevant, we'd need to make a whole host of assumptions about how Flyna treats its inspectors, and what it's hoping to get from inspections. And if we need to make assumptions to justify an answer choice, that's a sign it's not the right answer.
For all those reasons, let's get rid of (A).
How about (D)?
Quote:
D. The proportion of Country X's lumber mills inspected each year by Flyna's staff is about 10 percent, randomly selected.
From this, we know that 90% of Country X's lumber mills are not inspected each year. Thus, for the vast majority of the mills Flyna uses, we have no guarantee that the lumber is obtained legally.
As you correctly point out, since the inspections are random, "all the mills have an equal chance of getting caught." But does this guarantee that none of the mills will use illegal lumber?
Not at all. To conclude that, we'd need to make a pretty big assumption about how the lumber mills behave. In other words, we'd need to assume that none of them cheat, and that the fear of inspection is enough to ensure compliance. So because this argument against (D) requires some big assumptions, it's not a good reason to reject it.
On the other hand, we don't need to make any assumptions about (D) to conclude that the vast majority of the lumber mills will not be inspected any given year. For that reason, (D) undermines the conclusion that Flyna's wood supply is legally obtained.
I hope that helps!