Those who feel that fewer and fewer people in this country

Conclusion: Fewer and fewer people in this country have a genuine interest in the fine arts.

Evidence: The evidence—record levels of attendance at art museums—seems to contradict the conclusion. The task is to reconcile this apparent discrepancy.

If the increase in the number of repeat visitors has been greater than the increase in the number of visits, then fewer people are going to museums, despite the increase in visits. This supports the author's conclusion that fewer people are interested in the arts. Imagine 1,000 visits in a week for one museum, 10 of which are by people who show up twice during that week. That's 990 individual people who have gone to the museum. Then imagine that the next week there are 1,200 visits (an increase of 200 visits), and the number of repeaters that week is 220, (an increase of 210 repeaters). That represents only 980 individual people going to the museum.

If an interest in the arts cannot be determined by looking at museum attendance, then this would weaken the argument, (B). If tourist attendance is relatively consistent as a portion of total visitors, then this doesn't have any known impact on the argument, (C). Literature of any sort, (D) is out of scope, as is the range of exhibits (E), unless we were told that fine art was not being displayed.

Hi
I think its a fairly simple question and the answer must be C.
B is a strong contender. It is a generalization.......that may or may not be true in the case here.
But read closely the argument it says the fewer people in this country have interest in arts. It goes on to present a premise that is contradictory that says the attendance at museum is at record levels...
So the gap here is if native people do not show interest and record level is than .....how is that the attendance is high.
Even in real life its the tourist, who visit the museum more often than the local people.

Consider Kudos If my post helps!!!

Archit

Let's try -

Quote:

Those who feel that fewer and fewer people in this country have a genuine interest in the fine arts are absolutely correct. This is true despite the oft-mentioned record levels of attendance at art museums.

The argument above would be most strengthened if which of the following statements were true?

So, The stimulus talks about lower interest in fine arts in this country , ie People of this country , however option (C) states -

C. A substantial and relatively consistent portion of the visitors to this country's art museums are, and always have been, international tourists.

The stimulus talks about the People of this country , however option (C) talks about International visitors to the Country's art Museum , which does not strengthen the reasoning why the author claims reduced interest in fine arts..

So, IMHO (C) can hence be negated....

C is wrong for the following reason. The argument talks about a trend: "fewer and fewer people in this country have a genuine interest in the fine arts". That means that the situation has been getting worse for some time. But C introduces a factor that has always been true: "A substantial and relatively consistent portion of the visitors to this country's art museums are, and always have been, international tourists."

You can't explain a change in conditions, from one state to another, by talking about a factor that has always been true, both before the change started and now.

C can be negated if you read the conclusion properly.

Conclusion: Those who feel that fewer and fewer people in this country have a genuine interest in the fine arts are absolutely correct.
We need to state reason for people of the country having less interest in fine arts. C talks about international tourists and there is no number that can help us compare. Substantial in no way means the fewer people have less interest in this country.

The argument above would be most strengthened if which of the following statements were true ?

A- The increase in the number of people who visit art museums more than once has been greater than the increase in the number of visits of these museums.

B- An interest in the fine arts cannot be determined by examining levels of museum attendance.

C- A substantial and relatively consistent portion of the visitors to this country's art museums are, and always have been, international tourists.

What are you talking about ? Answer A weakens the argument.

The argument is that fewer people have genuine interest in arts and we must strengthen the argument.
If more people visit museums more than once , it means that people actually have interest in arts; HENCE, THE ARGUMENT IS WEAKENED....

EDIT:

I see now that ans A is possible because if more people visit the same museum, it means that total attendance to other museums declines...but on the other hand it is possible to assume that if people visit a museum more than once, they are genuinely interested in the stuff and do not do it just for the sake of visiting museums..

My conclusion is that the question is not well structured

Hello ,
Why is option C incorrect ?

Becaue it is only a statistic. I does not explain at all from where the feeling comes by......

Only if the same person visits over and over again the museum and NOT a new one you can explain and reinforce the question itself

Hope this helps

regards

I feel A confirms that - more people have genuine interest (they are repeatedly visiting museums more often). Would not this weaken the conclusion then?

Hi
the argument says taht fewer and fewer people have interest in arts..
Choice A confirms two things..
1) Few people have increased their frequency of attending the art museums...
we may infer, these few people have increased their interest /love in arts, but the choice talks of only few of them..
2) since the increase in number visiting art museums has been surpassed by the number of repeating their visits..
we can easily infer that fewer people are visiting are visiting art museums..
say last year 500 went and this year it has gone upto 1000, an increase of 500. But, repeated visits has gone up by >500..
so the different people vis= 1000- (>500)= <500..
number has decreased

Please evaluate my reasoning:

could eliminate all options but A and C. To take a decision, I depended on the option that looked at strengthening the method of gathering the statistics - attendance. C was too out of scope and could be turned around by saying that subtantial could mean 51% in which case 49% is not a fewer stat.

A- The increase in the number of people who visit art museums more than once has been greater than the increase in the number of visits of these museums.

two keywords to understand why A is the correct answer. A says that the number of people who repeatedly visited the art museums has been greater, and this argument strengthens the conclusion, which is fewer and fewer people have a genuine interest in the fine arts.

In saying that " this is true despite the oft-mentioned record levels of attendance at art museums", doesn't the passage make an unstated assumption that levels of attendance at art museums is not a factor that determines interest in fine art?
And answer choice B restates that assumption. So shouldn't B be the ans than A?

This is an interesting question. The argument provides no premise for its conclusion. It just insists its conclusion is true, even though a piece of evidence that could show the opposite (higher attendance at art museums) is true.

In many ways, this 'strengthen' question really--when I think about what I need the answer to do--is more like an 'explain the discrepancy' question (which, in turn, are often more like 'weaken' questions.)

I want to show that interest in art is down EVEN THOUGH attendance at art museums is high.

In some ways you make a good point--the author must assume that 'museum attendance' is not enough to determine an interest in arts... But if that's true it doesn't convince me that interest in fine arts is *down*. I want to strengthen *that* idea.

If what 'B' says is true, it doesn't mean that interest in fine arts is down... it just means I can't conclude interest is 'up.'

It's possible that an official question would never ask us to choose between such answer choices.

If this were an official question, we would need to learn from it and understand why A is the answer. But this is not an official question, and many non-official questions do not deserve this level of scrutiny. I think this is one of them.

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