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Bunuel
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I don’t quite agree with the solution. if curriculum is outdated means why people are failing the exam isn't it?
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Same question , why is D wrong ? If this would have been a weaken question then i think D would be the perfect answer , why not for this type of Q then ?
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Hi

We need to weaken the conclusion that discontinuing sports will improve academics.

In D the option just talks about how books are outdated for the past 2 years. It doesn't say anything about discontinuing sports, whereas correct option B states that members of the sports team passed the graduation exam, thereby shattering the Principal's conclusion. It says students who played, passed the exam and hence sports may not be the actual reason why students are not performing well on the graduation exam.

Hope this helps :)

k11work
Same question , why is D wrong ? If this would have been a weaken question then i think D would be the perfect answer , why not for this type of Q then ?
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Correcting myself here, I believe D is a weakener, just that B is a better weakener. I believe the question should be " Casts Most Doubt " rather than just cast doubt, because in the GMAT I believe the question link are often stated with the Most doubt, and re-reading, B casts more doubt than D.

I have come across many OG questions where D would be an implied outcome, i.e since Math and science textbooks are outdated, even if the principal were to close all school sport activities, the main reason why they were failing would be that the textbooks are outdated. This does cast doubt that removing sports activities will not improve academics.
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I marked B first but then marked D thinking its a better weakener as even if the principal tries to stop sports activities, the performance might not improve

B is casting a doubt on principal's assumption that its the sports that is causing this decline in grades..

not sure which is better
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I would always suggest that go for the one which directly weakens the link being discussed in the argument. Like in this case, time spent on sports vs academics seems to be impacting the graduation results, but if sport team members are getting good results than there's some other reason for the observed decline and discontinuing the sports won't help with the results. Having said that there could still be some reasons for D to weaken the argument, due to outdated course material but as it's not a direct weakener like B, it's always safe to prefer B over D.

bb - Do you think we should tweak D here to make it more wrong as it seems to be weakening the argument indirectly?
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I marked B first but then marked D thinking its a better weakener as even if the principal tries to stop sports activities, the performance might not improve

B is casting a doubt on principal's assumption that its the sports that is causing this decline in grades..

not sure which is better
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I did not quite understand the solution. teacher thinks that participating in sports leads to poor academic performance and we need to weaken by proving that it is not participating in sports that leads to poor academic performance but something else.
I think D is the right ans as this implies that it is bc of the books being outdated that the performance is poor, if the books would have been updated the performance would not have been affected.
Also, the focus of the principal is primarily on science and maths portion of the exam, and Option B talks about the graduation exam overall and not specific to these subjects.
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Hi,

You are right that sometimes showing another cause/factor is the reason is an effective weakener. In this particular case, that doesn't happen:
  • Even if D) is true, it doesnt necessarily imply that sports aren't hurting the academic performance. The exception to this type of weakener is co-existing. If both can exist at the same time, then it doesn't remain an effective weakener in that case.
  • To weaken, you need something that attacks the direct causal link the author has used for e.g. sports students arent the ones doing badly => this is exactly what B) does
Hope this helps!
AarushiSatnalika
I did not quite understand the solution. teacher thinks that participating in sports leads to poor academic performance and we need to weaken by proving that it is not participating in sports that leads to poor academic performance but something else.
I think D is the right ans as this implies that it is bc of the books being outdated that the performance is poor, if the books would have been updated the performance would not have been affected.
Also, the focus of the principal is primarily on science and maths portion of the exam, and Option B talks about the graduation exam overall and not specific to these subjects.
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