Bunuel
The World Bank has developed a computer program that assesses the authenticity of world currency suspected of being counterfeit. The program contains extensive profiles of the printing techniques and components of currencies of all major nations; such profiles include chemical composition of paper, density of ink, and details in the printing plates that are invisible to the naked eye. Counterfeiters, including the best counterfeiters known from history, cannot hope to reproduce all facets of a particular nation’s currency.
Which of the following can be logically concluded from the passage above?
A. The staff resources required to prepare currency for analysis by the program make use of the program prohibitively expensive.
B. Consumer banks will soon purchase the right to use the program on their own computers.
C. The program cannot fail to identify as inauthentic counterfeit currency that has previously escaped detection.
D. The authentication program has taken a number of years to develop.
E. In numerous cases, authentic currency is not recognized as authentic by the program.
PRINCETON REVIEW OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:
C
This is an inference question, so we need an answer choice we know to be true from the argument. All we know about is the ability of one particular computer program to detect counterfeit currency, and how it does so.
(A) No. We have no idea how expensive the program is, and prohibitively is extreme.
(B) No. Possibly, but nothing in the argument talks about consumer banks, so this is out of scope.
(C) Yes. This is the correct answer. The passage says that even the best counterfeiters can’t hope to reproduce all facets of a nation’s currency, and that the program contains extensive profiles of all major currencies.
Even if you’re inclined to argue that the passage doesn’t say the program contains profiles of all techniques and components, it’s still a better answer than any of the others.
(D) No. This may be true, but the information in the passage doesn’t tell us how long development of the program took.
(E) No. This appears nowhere in the passage, and in fact contradicts the argument that this program works very well.