Ms. Eva Rose argued that money and time invested in acquiring a profes

Question

Ms. Eva Rose argued that money and time invested in acquiring a professional degree are totally wasted. As evidence supporting her argument, she offered the case of a man who, at considerable expense of money and time, completed his law degree and then married and lived as a house-husband, taking care of their children and working part time at a day care center so his wife could pursue her career.

The logical reasoning of Ms. Rose's argument is closely paralleled by which of the folllowing?

(A) A juvenile delinquent who insists that his behavoir should be attributable to the fact that his parents did not love him
(B) A senator who votes large sums of money for military equipment, but who votes against programs designed to help the poor
(C) A conscientious objector who bases his draft resistance on the premise that there can be no moral wars
(D) When a policeman is found guilty of murdering his wife, an opponent of police brutality who says, "That's what the people mean by law and order."
(E) A high school senior who decides that rather than go to college he will enroll in a vocational training program to learn to be an electrician

IanStewart · Answer

I'd dispute that there is any "logical reasoning" in most of the answer choices, but the stem is an argument that draws its conclusion by generalizing from a single example: one person did not use his professional degree, therefore professional degrees are a waste of time for everybody. Only answer D does something similar, paraphrasing: one police officer murdered someone, therefore the entire legal system should be condemned.

unraveled · Answer

Hi Ian,

I was left with 'D' and 'E' after POE. However, i marked 'E' for the reason that in 'D' there was a mention of opponent i.e. involvement of another person whose opposes an act whereas, in actual argument Ms. Eva Rose is presenting a case to strengthen her argument. It's not that i fell in love with 'E' the moment i read it but because i could not draw similarities in the question stem and 'D'.

What i mean is that i didn't see how there is any parallelism between stem and option 'D'.

So going by what you mentioned about 'D', can we parallel two arguments even if they are talking differently(usage of words) but ultimately generalizing their own thoughts/opinions.

IanStewart · Answer

This type of question is very rare on the GMAT, but is common on the LSAT, so you'll see a lot of these parallel argument questions on this forum (since people post a lot of LSAT questions). In the LSAT versions, the right answer is almost always worded using a different sentence structure from the original argument, to disguise the right answer. So you should usually expect the right answer to look different, grammatically, from the stem.

But you probably won't need to worry about this at all if you're preparing for the GMAT, and I don't think this specific question is a particularly good example of the question type anyway (because there is no "logical reasoning" in a few of the answer choices).

unraveled · Answer

Kudos from me first.!!!

Thanks for prompt response. I will keep that in mind and check to only look for GMAT questions. Your words are encouraging for me in such difficult times.

Sajjad1994 · Answer

Official Explanation

As we noted at the beginning of our discussion of question 7, there is another weakness in Rose’s argument: She takes a single example and from it draws a very general conclusion.  (D)  exemplifies this weakness.

Here, too, we have a person who rests his claim on a single example, and obviously this makes the claim very weak.

(E)  mentions education, but here education is a detail of the argument. The form of the argument—a foolish generalization—is not restricted to education.

(A), (B), and (C)  are all wrong because they do not reflect the form of the argument, a generalization on a single example.

The correct answer is (D).

VerbalBot · Answer

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Ms. Eva Rose argued that money and time invested in acquiring a profes

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