Guidebook writer: I have visited hotels throughout the

Question

Guidebook writer: I have visited hotels throughout the country and have noticed that in those built before 1930 the quality of the original carpentry work is generally superior to that in hotels built afterward. Clearly carpenters working on hotels before 1930 typically worked with more skill, care, and effort than carpenters who have worked on hotels built subsequently.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the guidebook writer’s argument?

A. The quality of original carpentry in hotels is generally far superior to the quality of original carpentry in other structures, such as houses and stores.
B. Hotels built since 1930 can generally accommodate more guests than those built before 1930.
C. The materials available to carpenters working before 1930 were not significantly different in quality from the materials available to carpenters working after 1930.
D. The better the quality of original carpentry in a building, the less likely that building is to fall into disuse and be demolished. 
E. The average length of apprenticeship for carpenters has declined significantly since 1930

Raffie · Answer

Got to be D. What this is saying is that some of the pre-1930's hotels with poor carpentry have already been demolished.

This is a sampling question. The sample looked at by the reviewer has been distorted.

eyunni · Answer

(E). Will try to explain if correct.
Edit: I think it actually strengthens the argument. I am not sure.

GMATBLACKBELT · Answer

D.

Amit05 · Answer

What is the OA and OE ??

moni77 · Answer

At first I was thinking about E, but this one strengthens the argument.
Thinking more about it, yes it is D, even if initially I eliminated that answer.

gregspirited · Answer

OA is D

sztiwari · Answer

Can you explain how. I feel D is strengthening.
It explains" better the qualite ; less likely will it eb demolished". The writer is staying in such hotels constructed in 1930 which indicates they are not demolished and hence are better. If not better that the current ones ; they are still good. How does it weaken??????????

johnrb · Answer

The passage concludes that carpenters were better in the 1930s, because houses surviving from that period are of higher quality than today's houses. But if all the houses that survived were the best quality houses, then maybe the carpenters back then,  on the whole,  weren't any better than today's--it's just that all the 1930s bad carpenters had their houses fall apart in the meantime, so we don't see them today. In other words, D tells us that all we see are the best houses from that period, so we can't draw conclusions about the quality of the houses as a whole.

(It's as if, when asked to send a random sample of students to be examined for a school assessment, a principal arranged instead to send the top 10 students. The assessors would think the school was really great--but it's really just the principal gaming the system.)

Skewed · Answer

i.e. survivorship bias.

vscid · Answer

True, E strengthens it. It explains why pre-1930s carpenters were more skilled. It boils down to D ultimately.

Good one!

tarek99 · Answer

I still have a problem with option D. This is because it doesn't explain why the quality of the carpentry after the 1930's is worst than that of the carpentry before the 1930's. According to option D, if indeed the better the quality of the carpentry, the less likely that such buildings would be demolished, then how come that didn't happen to the buildings after the 1930's?

If people have kept only the good quality buildings throughout these years, then shouldn't we rather see only the good quality carpentry in the buildings in both before and after the 1930's? Option D doesn't even imply that such a practice was done only to the buildings before the 1930's, so it means that we can also apply it to the buildings after the 1930's. If so, then this option rather strengthens the argument because by keeping only the best quality buildings made after the 1930's, those buildings are still worst than the buildings made before the 1930's. So the argument is strengthened.

Can anyone help out with this one??
thanks!

spriya · Answer

nmohindru · Answer

IMO B)

Guidebook writer: I have visited hotels throughout the

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