The Asian American History Association receives approximately 1,000 pr

Hey All,

Took a read through this question, and at the risk of sounding contradictory, I think it's a pretty great question. Quite tough, but with plenty of justification for the right answer.

Conclusion: Taking 300 best papers (proposals) will ensure constant standards of quality in presentation
Premise: 1000 proposals a year
Assumption: The 300 best will always have the same quality; proposals = papers = presentations

I know it may look like I simply wrote the correct answer choice here in my assumption, but I also added the second one. The truth is, there wouldn't be a way to know which of those two the question would choose to focus on. Let's go through the answer choices one by one and see what we can find.

(A) Professional associations cannot accept all papers submitted for presentation
at their annual meetings.
PROBLEM: Whether or not this is true, it's totally irrelevant, because we've already been told the Association only plans to accept a fraction of the total submissions.

(B) The total number of proposals submitted to the association will remain at
approximately 1,000 in future years.
PROBLEM: This is the trickiest answer, and it's easiest to see why it's wrong when we compare it to the correct answer. Basically, whether or not there were 1000 submissions every year, that still wouldn't have much of an effect on the overall quality of the best 300 (whether there were 300 in total, or 3000). We don't NEED to assume this, even though it may feel like we would.

(C) Each proposal submitted to the association deserves to be considered a
serious candidate for presentation.
PROBLEM: This is a lot like A. We already know they're cutting out about 700, so clearly we don't need EVERY submission to be a serious candidate for presentation.

(D) It is difficult to judge the quality of a paper on the basis of the proposal alone.
PROBLEM: This one is also really tricky, and held me up for a minute. Remember though, the conclusion is that we will have constant quality in the presentations. So we don't necessarily need to know that the paper will be of the same quality of the proposal. HOWEVER, as far as I can see, if this answer choice said "It is difficult to judge the quality of a PRESENTATION on the basis of the proposal alone", it would be a little better. Of course, there's an even bigger problem, in that we care about CONSISTENCY, not overall quality. Even if the presentations are way worse (or way better) than their proposals/papers, we only care if that quality changes.

(E) The best 300 papers submitted to the association for presentation will be of
the same quality from year to year.
ANSWER: We need to assume this. To prove it, let's try the NOT test. "The best 300 papers submitted to the association for presentation will NOT be of the same quality from year to year." Uh-oh. Now, even if we take the best 300 every year, we can not be assured of any consistency in the overall quality.

Hope that helps!

-t