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UtterNonsense
Joined: 25 Jul 2011
Last visit: 07 Aug 2012
Posts: 18
Given Kudos: 7
Location: United Kingdom
Concentration: Finance, Strategy
Schools: Schulich (A)
GMAT 1: 660 Q49 V31
GPA: 3.13
Updated on: 04 Aug 2021, 23:59
Originally posted by UtterNonsense on 26 Jul 2011, 07:04.
Last edited by Bunuel on 04 Aug 2021, 23:59, edited 1 time in total.
Last edited by Bunuel on 04 Aug 2021, 23:59, edited 1 time in total.
Edited the question.
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E
Be sure to select an answer first to save it in the Error Log before revealing the correct answer (OA)!
Difficulty:
65%
(hard)
Question Stats:
61% (02:11) correct
39%
(02:24)
wrong
based on 871
sessions
History
Date
Time
Result
Not Attempted Yet
XYZ, aquatic mammals inhabiting Florida’s rivers and coastal waters, swim close to the surface and are frequently killed in collisions with boats. To address the problem, boat traffic in XYZ-populated waters is being required to maintain very low speeds. Unfortunately, XYZs are unable to hear low-pitched sounds and a boat’s sound lowers in pitch as the boats slows. Therefore, this approach may in fact make things worse rather than better.
Question) Which of the following if true would strengthen the conclusion?
(A) The areas where boats would have to maintain low speeds were decided partly on the basis of XYZ-population estimates and partly from numbers of reported collisions between XYZ and boats.
(B) Because the water hyacinth that XYZ feed on grow best in water that is nearly still, water hyacinth beds can be disturbed or damaged by fast-moving boat traffic.
(C) Over the last several decades, boat traffic in Florida’s coastal waters has been increasing almost continuously and now represents the greater threat to the endangered XYZ population.
(D) The sound of a boat engine generally travels much further under water than it does through the air.
(E) When experimenters exposed XYZs to the recorded sounds of boats moving at various speeds, the creature were unable to discern the sounds over normal background noise.
Question) Which of the following if true would strengthen the conclusion?
(A) The areas where boats would have to maintain low speeds were decided partly on the basis of XYZ-population estimates and partly from numbers of reported collisions between XYZ and boats.
(B) Because the water hyacinth that XYZ feed on grow best in water that is nearly still, water hyacinth beds can be disturbed or damaged by fast-moving boat traffic.
(C) Over the last several decades, boat traffic in Florida’s coastal waters has been increasing almost continuously and now represents the greater threat to the endangered XYZ population.
(D) The sound of a boat engine generally travels much further under water than it does through the air.
(E) When experimenters exposed XYZs to the recorded sounds of boats moving at various speeds, the creature were unable to discern the sounds over normal background noise.
What I like about CR is the feeling of sudden awareness that an answer choice is correct; everything just clicks into place.
With this question, there were no clicks. In fact, I found (E) to be WEAKENING the conclusion. Of course no other answer choices worked, but we can't work by default here, and choose the answer choice that is most relevant to the prompt (in this case (E).
But just to run a little experiment, let me argue for (E) to illustrate what I must do in order to make this answer choice work.
(E) says that XYZ cannot tell the difference between low-pitched and high-pitched sounds. But a slow boat spends more time moving across a body of water, so that gives XYZ more time to collide with it. Therefore, slow boats are more dangerous.
That answer may seem sensible, but I am doing a few things you should never do on GMAT Critical Reasoning. First off, I am discounting part of the conclusion, which states: slow boats are more dangerous to XYZ than are fast boats, because XYZ cannot hear slow boats.
Secondly, I am making some inferences that are not backed up by the passage (and indeed may not be backed up by reality). Namely, that XYZ is more likely to collide with a slow moving object.
Here nothing is "clicking into place," and I have to really labor to come up with an answer. The less straightforward the reasoning the more likely the given answer choice is wrong.
So it is only by breaking rules fundamental to GMAT that I can conceivably make (E) work. So (E) is definitely NOT the answer
The question--which I like, besides the prosaic tag XYZ (couldn't we just say hu-manatee)--is therefore broken. To fix it, all we would need to do is to add the word WEAKEN to the question. As in:
Which one of the following would WEAKEN the conclusion.
Then, the answer is clearly (E). The conclusion states that XYZ is likely to hear low-pitch than high pitch. (E) says that XYZ is unable to determine the difference).
So again, there is NO ANSWER to the question. It is faulty, but can easily be emended by the addition of one word.
With this question, there were no clicks. In fact, I found (E) to be WEAKENING the conclusion. Of course no other answer choices worked, but we can't work by default here, and choose the answer choice that is most relevant to the prompt (in this case (E).
But just to run a little experiment, let me argue for (E) to illustrate what I must do in order to make this answer choice work.
(E) says that XYZ cannot tell the difference between low-pitched and high-pitched sounds. But a slow boat spends more time moving across a body of water, so that gives XYZ more time to collide with it. Therefore, slow boats are more dangerous.
That answer may seem sensible, but I am doing a few things you should never do on GMAT Critical Reasoning. First off, I am discounting part of the conclusion, which states: slow boats are more dangerous to XYZ than are fast boats, because XYZ cannot hear slow boats.
Secondly, I am making some inferences that are not backed up by the passage (and indeed may not be backed up by reality). Namely, that XYZ is more likely to collide with a slow moving object.
Here nothing is "clicking into place," and I have to really labor to come up with an answer. The less straightforward the reasoning the more likely the given answer choice is wrong.
So it is only by breaking rules fundamental to GMAT that I can conceivably make (E) work. So (E) is definitely NOT the answer
The question--which I like, besides the prosaic tag XYZ (couldn't we just say hu-manatee)--is therefore broken. To fix it, all we would need to do is to add the word WEAKEN to the question. As in:
Which one of the following would WEAKEN the conclusion.
Then, the answer is clearly (E). The conclusion states that XYZ is likely to hear low-pitch than high pitch. (E) says that XYZ is unable to determine the difference).
So again, there is NO ANSWER to the question. It is faulty, but can easily be emended by the addition of one word.
General Discussion
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