This IR Questions Stumped Me - 2 Professors' Statements:

Question

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43A:
 C

43B:
 F

mikemcgarry · Answer

Hi, there. I'm happy to help.

First of all, for clarity, here are the text of the statements: Professor A : The aid industry should begin to limit its efforts to spending on primary schools, providing medicines and other basic supplies for health care, and to a few key agriculture initiatives. Professor B : Much education work has been ineffective. A village or town with poor schooling may be better off getting a new road than a teacher. Once local farmers can transport produce to market they will be wiling to pay for a school --- and to make the schools succeed. So, Professor A says, essentially --- right now we are spending aid money on a whole bunch of stuff --- let's cut everything else out, and focus just on three absolutely essential areas: (a) primary education (b) basic healthcare (c) maybe an occasional agricultural project now and again Professor B disagrees, saying essentially --- I don't think "primary education" should be one of our limited focuses --- if we focus on infrastructure (presumably one of the many current aid expenditures that A wants to cut), then communities will be empowered to help themselves and money for education will arise from the community itself. With what would Professor A disagree? (A) The aid industry should focus less on the areas of health and agriculture than it now does. Right now, the aid money focuses on a whole bunch of things, and Professor A is advocating limiting it to a top three --- health & agriculture are in her top 3, so she is for increasing the aid to them, and decreasing it to other things. So, A would disagree with this, but we have zero evidence that B has any opinion on it. (B) The aid industry should focus more on the primary education than it now does. This is exactly what Professor A is advocating, so this can't be something with which she disagrees. (C) The aid industry should focus its spending less on the primary education than it now does. This directly contradicts what Professor A advocates, so she definitely would disagree with it, and it's the very substance of Professor B's disagreement with A. (D) Projects in health and agriculture are more likely to be successful if they are not paid for the aid industry. Well, Professor A advocates giving more aid money to these, so presumably she thinks aid money will help those things be successful, which means should would disagree with this statement. BUT, we have no evidence that Professor B has taken any stand on this issue. (E) Projects in education are more likely to be successful if they are paid for the aid industry. Professor A is advocating spending more aid money on primary education, so she must think that that more aid money is a good thing for education. She agrees with this statement. (F) Projects in education are more likely to be successful if they are paid for by the local people. Professor A doesn't appear to consider this option ---she talks about giving more aid money to primary education, but that is not necessarily exclusive with thinking that local money would also be helpful and possibly even more helpful. It's certainly not clear that Professor A would disagree with this. We really have no direct evidence whether she would agree or disagree with this. So, Professor A would clearly disagree with (A), (C), and (D) --- for (A) and (D), we have areas where Professor A would disagree but we really have no clue what Professor B's stance would be. Therefore, the best answer for 43A is (C): on that one, Professor A would disagree, and Professor B would support it. Given that Professor A disagrees with (C), what would Professor B say? Well, Professor B is all about empowering the local community to they can pay for the education themselves --- presumably, she would like to see less money focused on education per se, and more on infrastructure, with the long-term view that eventually that will empower the community to support its own education. The statement that most closely echos those sentiments are (F), which is the best answer for 43B. Does that make sense? Here's a free IR eBook I wrote, that you may find helpful. https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/gmat-integ ... ing-ebook/ Let me know if you have any further questions. Mike

kriz2k11 · Answer

Hi Mike,

Thank You for the explanation.

thulsy · Answer

Hi Mike, 
Thanks for the nice explanation.

Just one point that I cannot agree.... open to discussion

I think professor A mentioned TWO areas, not THREE:

Professor A   : The aid industry should begin to limit its efforts 
(a)  to  spending on primary schools, providing medicines and other basic supplies for health care, 
and 
(b)  to  a few key agriculture initiatives.

I think the parallelism only makes sense in the above way - each item begins with "to", and the connector "and" is used to connect the two items.
", providing medicines and other basic supplies for health care" is just elaborating how the money is supposed to be spent on primary schools, i.e. providing health care supplies to those primary schools.

If, let's assume, the professor wanted to mention THREE areas, then let's check the parallelism:

Professor A   : The aid industry should begin to limit its efforts to 
(a) spending on primary schools, 
(b) providing medicines and other basic supplies for health care, 
and 
(c) to a few key agriculture initiatives.

The above parallelism is compromised.

--
 Additional evidence  that support the TWO-item as discussed above:

Per OG explanation for Question #43A

"For example, if  the relative distribution of spending  by the aid industry   between   primary schools in the poorest areas, medicines and other basic supplies for health care such as mosquito nets,  and  the few key agricultural initiatives  is maintained , while spending in other areas is drastically reduced, then the aid industry will thereby focus its spending more on primary education than it now does."

Notice the wording "between", not "among". This indicates that Professor A lists two items, not three.

Just my 2c. Open for discussion.

mikemcgarry · Answer

Dear thulsy

It appears that you are correct --- grammatically, the prompt lumps (spending on primary schools, providing medicines and other basic supplies for health care) all into one thing, and then (a few key agriculture initiatives) as another thing. GMAC does this in the question, and is consistent in their written solution.

I agree that's how GMAC divides things up, and I think that's inane. This is one question on which I'm going to go out on a limb and say: GMAC did not do the best job of capturing the most logical relationships in the grammar they chose. Clearly, on logical grounds, the medical stuff is in a different category from the school stuff. It's exceptionally difficult to imagine any logical scheme of categorization that would put medical stuff and academic stuff in the same category, but would put agricultural stuff in a different category.

What I suspect is that one person at GMAC wrote the question, and with so many other concerns about crafting the question, was a little sloppy in the grammar --- perhaps the question was crafted by committee, and the grammar was lost in the shuffle ---- and then some other poor schmuck had to write the solutions to a question that was already set in stone, and this latter person choose at least to make everything consistent in the solutions.

GMAC typically holds up exceptionally high standards, but they are human, and at times, they make less than perfect choices. I'm sure it's been challenging for them to get the IR section up and flying by 6/5, so they had to get these questions out ASAP. It's hard ---- they're only human.

That's my 2¢.

Mike

thulsy · Answer

Hi Mike, Yeah I agree that it's weird to group education and healthcare into one single item. So the only justification I can come up is: He is talking about healthcare facilities in those primary schools....

Anyway, this 2-item or 3-item distinction seems not to affect the answer to this question. Perhaps it's GMAC's oversight, as you said.

ronr34 · Answer

In my opinion mike's explanation is the right one.
anyway this does not affect the outcome.
I don't understand why the structure of: to A, B and C is not correct.
anyone?

thulsy · Answer

The original sentence is:
to A, B, and  to  C

If you think A, B, and C are parallel, then the word "to" is odd.
So the only legitimate parallelism is:
 to  A, B
 and 
 to  C
In other word, B is a modifier of A (or you can say A and B are bundled)

gataf · Answer

This question got me because the original problem said precisely, "The aid industry should begin to limit its efforts to spending on primary education in the poorest areas,..."

Given that these problems resemble critical reasoning problems, I take every word to be highly important. In this case, I took the words in the poorest areas very literally.

Do we know for certain that professor A wants the aid industry to "focus more on primary education than it currently does?"
No, we only know that he wants it to focus more on primary education  in the poorest areas . That is why I was confused... maybe professor A wants the overall focus on primary education to decrease, but primary education in the poorest areas to increase.

mikemcgarry · Answer

Dear gataf , You are correct --- many IR problems like this are very much like CR questions. This is why the question type has this name --- it asks you to "integrate" RC & CR skills with quantitative skills. I would say that, on both CR and IR, you have to be careful. On the one hand, you have to read carefully and consider the importance of each and every word. It's absolutely true that both questions punish folks who are sloppy and careless readers. BUT, on the other hand, it's a problem if you are too literalistic. Both questions also punish narrow literalism. So you see, what both require is a balanced approach. Here, the first professor says: "The aid industry should begin to limit its efforts to spending on primary education in the poorest areas." So, this professor wants to increase the spending in education, especially in primary education, and especially in the poorest areas. If the aid organizations, for example, double the amount they spend on primary education in the poorest areas, then their overall primary education budget would increase. Now, you argue --- if they spend more on primary education in the poorest areas, but decrease spending on primary education in all other areas, maybe overall spending on primary education would decrease. First of all, there is absolutely no support for that interpretation in the argument. The arguments contrast spending on education vs. spending on other things like transportation, infrastructure, etc. There is absolutely no attention given to spending on primary education in poor vs. not-so-poor places. Always be careful of taking too seriously objections that go far down a path that that argument doesn't pursue at all. Furthermore, think about motivations. People who argue for education do so because they think education provides the opportunity for people to improve their own lives, raise themselves up by their own boot straps, that sort of thing. No realistic advocate of education is going to say: increase educational spending on this one group, but decrease it on these other groups so that overall education spending drops. That is absolutely unrealistic in terms of what actual education advocates in society would say. In approaching CR & IR, you need to have some basic sense of the push-and-pull of real world issues, of what advocates might reasonably say and what they never would say. After all, part of what the GMAT is testing is: how well do you understand the issues of the modern world. If you make wild decisions with no basis in the face of pressing real world issues, probably you are not going to be a successful manager. Does that make sense? One excellent way to get a more grounded sense of the push-and-pull of real world issues --- read the Economist magazine every week. Please let me know if you have any further questions. Mike :-)

Carcass · Answer

premise: I spent at least 2.30-3.00 minutes to understand what GMAT wants me to do in this question. As such, the last statement; for me is not properly formulated......mah

After this, from A to F on what A agree and B disagree. 20 seconds to answer this stupid question. C (primary education ---> primary school) F (local farmer ---> local people) Oh Gosh

By the way: thank you mike

ChaseWind · Answer

Reasoning diagram:

Professor A: contends to limit efforts in three aspects as below:
1. Spending on primary school in poorest area
2. Providing medicine and other basic supply for health care
3. A few key agriculture initiatives

Professor B: road better than a teacher <-- if local people could transport the products, they will pay for school and make sure the effects

Purpose: we need two options:
1. Professor A opposed
2. Professor B will use it to support 1.

It will be easy if we start from confirming the “2”, Viz. professor B will agree with it:
Only F is closed to it

Then we need confirm “1”
The key is which one is the “2” support, viz. not put so much money on school, obviously, only C.

In test, up to now, it is ok; we do not need further more work. But right now, we can:

Professor contends: limit efforts in three aspects, viz. the total amount should be reduced. That purpose is the key, not just reduced efforts in just one aspect, not two aspects. The “C” only address one aspect, so it is against to the professor’s argument.

skaysingh · Answer

I attempted the question twice at an interval of just 3 days. Both the time I comprehended the question differently.

1) Limit efforts means channelise the effort to the list of items. In other words focus more on these. 
2) Limits efforts mean put a limit as if you are spending too much already.

Is the second interpretation wrong? That actually reverses the who essence of the question.

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