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kaulnikhil · Sun Sep 06, 2009 1:54 am

A medical article once pointed with great alarm to an increase in cancer among milk drinkers. Cancer, it seems, was becoming increasingly frequent in New England, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Switzerland, where a lot of milk is produced and consumed, while remaining rare in Ceylon, where milk is scarce. For further evidence it was pointed out that cancer was less frequent in some states of the southern United States where less milk was consumed. Also, it was pointed out, milk-drinking English women get some kinds of cancer eighteen times as frequently as Japanese women who seldom drink milk.
A little digging might uncover quite a number of ways to account for these figures, but one factor is enough by itself to show them up. Cancer is predominantly a disease that strikes in middle life or after. Switzerland and the states of the United States mentioned first are alike in having populations with relatively long spans of life. English women at the time the study was made were living an average of twelve years longer than Japanese women.
Professor Helen M. Walker has worked out an amusing illustration of the folly in assuming there must be cause and effect whenever two things vary together. In investigating the relationship between age and some physical characteristics of women, begin by measuring the angle of the feet in walking. You will find that the angle tends to be greater among older women. You might first consider whether this indicates that women grow older because they toe out, and you can see immediately that this is ridiculous. So it appears that age increases the angle between the feet, and most women must come to toe out more as they grow older.
Any such conclusion is probably false and certainly unwarranted. You could only reach it legitimately by studying the same women-or possibly equivalent groups-over a period of time. That would eliminate the factor responsible here, which is that the older women grew up at a time when a young lady was taught to toe out in walking, while the members of the younger group were learning posture in a day when that was discouraged.
When you find somebody-usually an interested party-making a fuss about a correlation, look first of all to see if it is not one of this type, produced by the stream of events, the trend of the times. In our time it is easy to show a positive correlation between any pair of things like these: number of students in college, number of inmates in mental institutions, consumption of cigarettes, incidence of heart disease, use of X-ray machines, production of false teeth, salaries of California school teachers, profits of Nevada gambling halls. To call some one of these the cause of some other is manifestly silly. But it is done every day.

12. According to the author, Professor Walker believes that
(A) women who toe out age more rapidly than women who do not
(B) most women toe out as they grow older because age increases the angle between the feet
(C) older women tend to walk with a greater angle between the feet
(D) toeing out is the reason why women grow old
(E) a causal relationship must exist whenever two things vary together

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kbharadwaj.1987 · Sun Sep 06, 2009 2:26 am

Is that C?

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kaulnikhil · Sun Sep 06, 2009 2:28 am

yeah .. y not B ??

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rookiez · Sun Sep 06, 2009 4:14 am

Whats the source and can you post all questions?

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heshamelaziry · Mon Sep 14, 2009 9:51 pm

It must be E. Please provide OA or don't post practice materials.

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kiennguyen · Thu Nov 05, 2009 12:41 am

IMO C

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kaulnikhil · Thu Nov 05, 2009 12:48 pm

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Jatinder · Sat Nov 07, 2009 11:32 pm

Should be E.
C is the author's belief, not the professor's

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raisethebar · Wed Dec 30, 2009 4:19 am

Yes, I agree E makes sense.
Actually both C and E are beliveved by professor but E makes more sense.

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maihuna · Wed Dec 30, 2009 6:06 am

It could be B, should be C

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gmatv09 · Wed Dec 30, 2009 2:44 pm

Professor Helen M. Walker has worked out an amusing illustration of the folly in assuming there must be cause and effect whenever two things vary together.

IMO E

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Testluv · Wed Dec 30, 2009 4:10 pm

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duongthang · Sat Jan 02, 2010 1:49 am

Usually, we read first time for structure not for details. This saves time and is gmat way of reading gmat wants us to have

But I find that and I practice to prove that for some questions we do not need to read the passage and do not know the structure, we still answer those. I used to practice to do this. I do not read the text, and read only the relevant line of text, I still answer the detail question correctly.

This skill is used when you run out of time on the test and when the detail questions have line numbers with which we can find the relevant lines of text which give the answer.

if you do not believe, try.

main purpose of the passage above is that there is no causal relation between 2 variants which vary together. But if you read only paragraph 3, you can still answer the question.

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