Historian: In the Drindian Empire, censuses were conducted a

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Historian: In the Drindian Empire, censuses were conducted annually to determine the population of each village. Village census records for the last half of the 16005 are remarkably complete. This very completeness makes one point stand out; in five different years, villages overwhelmingly reported significant population declines. Tellingly, each of those five years immediately followed an increase in a certain Drindian tax. This tax, which was assessed on villages, was computed by the central government using the annual census figures. Obviously,
whenever the tax went up, villages had an especially powerful economic incentive to minimize the number of people they recorded; and concealing the size of a village's population from government census takers would have been easy. Therefore, the reported declines probably did not happen.

Therefore, the reported declines probably did not happen.


A) The first presents a finding to support the position the historian seeks to establish ; the second is a consideration that has been used to argue against that position.

B) The first provides a context for certain evidence that supports the position that the historian seeks to establish ; the second is the judgment advanced to support that position.

C) The first is a position that the historian seeks to establish ; the second is evidence that has been used to argue against that position.

D) The first is an assumption that the historian explicitly makes in support of a certain position ; the second is that position.

E) The first is the claim that the historian rejects ; the second is a conclusion drawn to justify that rejection.

There are various version of this Bolds face question available, but this is the original one that appeared on the Gmat Prep Question Pack 1

I have hard time decoding this one. OA is B, but I find that BF2 is actually in contradiction to BF1[/spoiler]

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by DavidG@VeritasPrep » Tue Jul 05, 2016 4:57 am
richachampion wrote:Historian: In the Drindian Empire, censuses were conducted annually to determine the population of each village. Village census records for the last half of the 16005 are remarkably complete. This very completeness makes one point stand out; in five different years, villages overwhelmingly reported significant population declines. Tellingly, each of those five years immediately followed an increase in a certain Drindian tax. This tax, which was assessed on villages, was computed by the central government using the annual census figures. Obviously,
whenever the tax went up, villages had an especially powerful economic incentive to minimize the number of people they recorded; and concealing the size of a village's population from government census takers would have been easy. Therefore, the reported declines probably did not happen.

Therefore, the reported declines probably did not happen.


A) The first presents a finding to support the position the historian seeks to establish ; the second is a consideration that has been used to argue against that position.

B) The first provides a context for certain evidence that supports the position that the historian seeks to establish ; the second is the judgment advanced to support that position.

C) The first is a position that the historian seeks to establish ; the second is evidence that has been used to argue against that position.

D) The first is an assumption that the historian explicitly makes in support of a certain position ; the second is that position.

E) The first is the claim that the historian rejects ; the second is a conclusion drawn to justify that rejection.

There are various version of this Bolds face question available, but this is the original one that appeared on the Gmat Prep Question Pack 1

I have hard time decoding this one. OA is B, but I find that BF2 is actually in contradiction to BF1[/spoiler]
The two bold-faced claims don't contradict each other. A census that is "remarkably complete" may still have holes in it. (It just has fewer gaps than one would suspect.)

Boiled way down:

The first bold is just an observation. The records are more complete than one might think.
Then we get some evidence: in each of five different years, the population declined.
The second bold explains why this would be the case: villages were underreporting their populations to minimize their tax bill.
Then we get a conclusion: the population declines weren't real.

A: Nah. The fact that the records are surprisingly complete doesn't support the position that the population declines didn't happen.
B: Looks okay. The first surely provides context. The second is a judgment to support the ultimate conclusion that the population declines didn't actually happen.
C: Nope. The first bold is not a position. It's an observation/context
D: Nope: The first bold is not an assumption
E: Nope: the author doesn't reject the claim that the records are remarkably complete. We get this line: This very completeness makes one point stand out In other words, the author is saying that the completeness of the records makes the population declines stand out. She's never saying that the records are not, in fact, remarkably complete.

B it is.
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by richachampion » Tue May 09, 2017 4:01 am
Can we discuss more about the "context" here in this? Because this word is quite often used in the critical reasoning.
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