That sales can be increased by the presence of sunlight within

Question

That sales can be increased by the presence of sunlight within a store has been shown by the experience of the only Savefast department store with a large skylight. The sky-light allows sunlight into half of the store, reducing the need for artificial light. The rest of the store uses only artificial light. Since the store opened two years ago, the departments on the sunlit side have had substantially higher sales than the other departments.

Which of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument?

A) On particularly cloudy days, more artificial light is used to illuminate the part of the store under the skylight.
B) When the store is open at night, the departments in the part of the store under the skylight have sales that are no higher than those of other departments.
C) Many customers purchase items from departments in both parts of the store on a single shopping trip.
D) Besides the skylight, there are several significant architectural differences between the two parts of the store.
E) The departments in the part of the store under the skylight are the departments that generally have the highest sales in other stores in the Save fast chain.

lostin · Answer

IMO - Correct answer B

As per stem -Skylight is attributed to increased higher sales for substantially higher sales on the sunlit side.

(A) Doesn't address stem argument (skylight and sales).
(B) It says - in the night - the store under the skylight has similar sales as other departments. So in absence of skylight (in night) - sales of the departments are similar hence Skylight can be attributed to increased sales in day time.
(C) Looks irrelevant to me. No mention of Skylight and sales.
(D) Anything this option is - weakens the argument and gives another possible reason for increased sales in sunlit departments
(E) This option also weakens the stem - giving an example that Sunlight has nothing to do with increased sales. Sunlit areas anyways have higher sales.

IAmConfused · Answer

Why isn't Choice E correct? It shows that departments under the skylight in other stores also follow this trend of high sales. Doesn't that strengthen the claim if I show more situations where the conclusion of the passage follows?

dcummins · Answer

Hi  IAmConfused

The argument is that sales can be increased within a store by the presence of Sunlight.

Let's think about this for a second... what if the departments that have sunlight on them would have higher sales than the departments that don't have sunlight on them anyway? Wouldn't this destroy the argument?

The argument therefore assumes that this is not the case and that the only reason the sales are higher is because of the sunlight

B is correct because it tells us that 'All things being equal' sales are higher with sunlight on certain goods.

E is incorrect because it actually weakens the argument - it tells us that the departments that currently have sunlight on them would have had higher sales anyway... so sunlight can't really be the cause for the difference in sales can it?

Hope thise helps and hopefully You are no longer confused lol...

Pallavi2020 · Answer

The conclusion of this argument is that the sales can be increased by Sunlight. Now if you re-read the answer choice E, it infact weakens the conclusion. Because if this sunlit protion houses goods that are anayways high selling then the sales can't be attributed to the sunlight.

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Shadyshades · Answer

Hmmm...it says because of the presence of sunlight within a store will lead to high sales.

Half of the store gets sunlight so we don't need artificial light.

Other half uses artificial light.

There it is, the conclusion, the departments on the sunlit side have higher sales than those of other departments.

A) On particularly cloudy days, more artificial light is used to illuminate the part of the store under the skylight. 
- so we are using artificial light on sunlit area of the store during cloudy days. But it is the presence of sunlight that leads to higher sales. Hmm...it means the departments on the sunlit side have lower sales now. If anything, it slightly weakens the conclusion.

B) When the store is open at night, the departments in the part of the store under the skylight have sales that are no higher than those of other departments. 
- It says the departments on the sunlit side have lower sales than those of other departments at night. Obviously, Yes. If i have to give credit to the presence of sunlight for high sales, i have to believe that sales will not be high at night; at least not higher than other departments who are selling under artificial lights. I will keep this option.

C) Many customers purchase items from departments in both parts of the store on a single shopping trip. 
- If many customers chose to purchase from each departments then i expect the sales to go high for artificial light departments also. 
 Hence, i won't be able to identify which department has high sales. It is leading me nowhere. I can eliminate this option.

D) Besides the skylight, there are several significant architectural differences between the two parts of the store. 
- I need to strengthen the fact that the presence of sunlight leads to high sales. Other factors will destroy the argument.

E) The departments in the part of the store under the skylight are the departments that generally have the highest sales in other stores in the Save fast chain. 
- so the departments on the sunlit side have generally high sales. Means, there is no role played by sunlit on those departments. This actually weakens my conclusion.

Option B it is.

IAmConfused · Answer

Thanks for your response. The reason I was confused in this was because the way option E was stated: "The departments in the part of the store under the skylight are the departments that generally have the highest sales in other stores in the Save fast chain," I assumed that it meant that departments under the skylight are departments that generally have higher sales  because of the sunlight  and not without it. If they get better sales without the sunlight then it makes sense that this weakens the argument, but if it said that departments in sunlight in other stores have higher sales (without mentioning the word "generally") then this could be a valid answer right since we would then assume that it is because of the sunlight and not in general?

DmitryFarberMPrep · Answer

IAmConfused
It may help to note that at the beginning of the argument, we're told that this is the only store in the chain that has a large skylight. This allows us to know for sure that E is just telling us that these departments sell well in general, without any influence from a skylight. If we learned that some other stores had skylights over the same department and had high sales, that would strengthen our correlation, but it wouldn't do much for our argument. It would still leave us wondering if the sales were higher because of the skylight. If the same products are placed under the skylight in 100 stores, and those products always sell well, is it because of the skylight, or because they are popular products? The only way more skylight data would help would be if we found that stores with different products under the skylight had higher sales of those products. That would make it more likely that the skylight was the cause, since the products themselves were not held constant.

I hope this helped. If it did, I hope you will change your name to IAmEnlightened.

VerbalBot · Answer

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That sales can be increased by the presence of sunlight within

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