Critical Reasoning

Option C: the number of projects canceled was a significant proportion of all the high way projects that were to be undertaken by the government in the near future.

DavidG@VeritasPrep wrote:Who cares how many uncanceled projects there are? If there are 10 uncanceled projects, that sheds no light on whether institutional bias accounts for the lopsided distribution of the canceled projects, and if there are 10,000 uncanceled projects, it sheds no light on the bias issue.

Don't really get this part...!

Please let me know whether my following reasoning is correct in eliminating Option C --

Although Option C seems to support the CONCLUSION, its NEGATION doesn't CONCLUSIVELY shatter the CONCLUSION of the ARGUMENT. So, C is wrong.

Hi Dave,
Actually in the Qs Pack CR# 1283, I found Option D as: Nonpartisan auditors were President's friends.

So,in this case please let me know whether my following reasoning is correct in eliminating Option D --

Option D is wrong because we already know from the ARGUMENT that auditors were nonpartisan. So, any answer choice that seems to go against that premise (at least raises doubt about the premise) should be eliminated because we can't attack the PREMISE in the ARGUMENT. Right ?

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Now as the Option D appears in this thread: The highway projects canceled in districts controlled by the president's party were not generally more expensive than the projects canceled in districts controlled by opposition parties.

So, it implies any of the two -

The highway projects canceled in districts controlled by the president's party were generally LESS expensive than the projects canceled in districts controlled by opposition parties. So, it seems to STRENGTHEN the CONCLUSION.

OR

The highway projects canceled in districts controlled by the president's party were generally AS expensive AS the projects canceled in districts controlled by opposition parties. So, it seems to WEAKEN the CONCLUSION.

Therefore, any answer choice that attempts to STRENGTHEN the CONCLUSION at one hand and on the other hand attempts to WEAKEN the CONCLUSION, will definitely be a WRONG Option.

Am I correct ?

RBBmba@2014 wrote:

Option C: the number of projects canceled was a significant proportion of all the high way projects that were to be undertaken by the government in the near future.

DavidG@VeritasPrep wrote:Who cares how many uncanceled projects there are? If there are 10 uncanceled projects, that sheds no light on whether institutional bias accounts for the lopsided distribution of the canceled projects, and if there are 10,000 uncanceled projects, it sheds no light on the bias issue.

Don't really get this part...!

Please let me know whether my following reasoning is correct in eliminating Option C --

Although Option C seems to support the CONCLUSION, its NEGATION doesn't CONCLUSIVELY shatter the CONCLUSION of the ARGUMENT. So, C is wrong.

Sure. This is an Assumption question - it will be the case for every wrong answer that its negation won't undermine the conclusion!

Hi Dave,
Actually in the Qs Pack CR# 1283, I found Option D as: Nonpartisan auditors were President's friends.

If an argument stipulated that the auditors were nonpartisan and an answer choice asserted that, in fact, they weren't non-partisan, that answer could not be correct.

DavidG@VeritasPrep wrote:

RBBmba@2014 wrote: Please let me know whether my following reasoning is correct in eliminating Option C --

Although Option C seems to support the CONCLUSION, its NEGATION doesn't CONCLUSIVELY shatter the CONCLUSION of the ARGUMENT. So, C is wrong.

Sure. This is an Assumption question - it will be the case for every wrong answer that its negation won't undermine the conclusion!

So, my above mentioned understanding on why C is wrong is okay. Right ?

DavidG@VeritasPrep wrote:

Hi Dave,
Actually in the Qs Pack CR# 1283, I found Option D as: Nonpartisan auditors were President's friends.

If an argument stipulated that the auditors were nonpartisan and an answer choice asserted that, in fact, they weren't non-partisan, that answer could not be correct.

Thanks for confirming Dave!

However, could you please share your quick thoughts on my FOLLOWING analysis of this VERSION of Option D (as it appears in this thread): The highway projects canceled in districts controlled by the president's party were not generally more expensive than the projects canceled in districts controlled by opposition parties.

Option D (in BLUE) implies any of the two -

The highway projects canceled in districts controlled by the president's party were generally LESS expensive than the projects canceled in districts controlled by opposition parties. So, it seems to STRENGTHEN the CONCLUSION.

OR

The highway projects canceled in districts controlled by the president's party were generally AS expensive AS the projects canceled in districts controlled by opposition parties. So, it seems to WEAKEN the CONCLUSION.

Therefore, any answer choice that attempts to STRENGTHEN the CONCLUSION at one hand and on the other hand attempts to WEAKEN the CONCLUSION, will definitely be a WRONG Option.

Am I correct ?

RBBmba@2014 wrote:

DavidG@VeritasPrep wrote:

Hi Dave,
Actually in the Qs Pack CR# 1283, I found Option D as: Nonpartisan auditors were President's friends.

If an argument stipulated that the auditors were nonpartisan and an answer choice asserted that, in fact, they weren't non-partisan, that answer could not be correct.

Thanks for confirming Dave!

However, could you please share your quick thoughts on my FOLLOWING analysis of this VERSION of Option D (as it appears in this thread): The highway projects canceled in districts controlled by the president's party were not generally more expensive than the projects canceled in districts controlled by opposition parties.

Option D (in BLUE) implies any of the two -

The highway projects canceled in districts controlled by the president's party were generally LESS expensive than the projects canceled in districts controlled by opposition parties. So, it seems to STRENGTHEN the CONCLUSION.

OR

The highway projects canceled in districts controlled by the president's party were generally AS expensive AS the projects canceled in districts controlled by opposition parties. So, it seems to WEAKEN the CONCLUSION.

Therefore, any answer choice that attempts to STRENGTHEN the CONCLUSION at one hand and on the other hand attempts to WEAKEN the CONCLUSION, will definitely be a WRONG Option.

Am I correct ?

I'd argue that neither has much an impact on the conclusion. According to the non-partisan analysis, all the canceled projects were too expensive to justify continuing, right? If you have an ironclad rule stipulating that anything over-budget is going to be canceled (we don't know that they had this rule, but it's useful for illustrative purposes) knowing how over-budget a project is, just isn't helpful information, because the project that's $1 over budget will be canceled on the merits and the project that's $10,000,000 will be canceled on the merits. In order to assess whether there's bias, we need to know information about what fraction of each party's over-budget projects were canceled, not how over-budget the canceled ones were.

RBBmba@2014 wrote:

GMATGuruNY wrote:When STATISTICS are offered as evidence, the assumption is that there is ONLY ONE WAY to interpret the statistics.

Hi GMATGuruNY,
Can you please clarify how exactly your above quote is important here ?

And offhand, do we have any other official CR in which the above quote is in play ?

Hi GMATGuruNY,
Any quick feedback on the above concern ?

Look forward to hear from you. Much thanks in advance!

RBBmba@2014 wrote:

RBBmba@2014 wrote:

GMATGuruNY wrote:When STATISTICS are offered as evidence, the assumption is that there is ONLY ONE WAY to interpret the statistics.

Hi GMATGuruNY,
Can you please clarify how exactly your above quote is important here ?

And offhand, do we have any other official CR in which the above quote is in play ?

Hi GMATGuruNY,
Any quick feedback on the above concern ?

Look forward to hear from you. Much thanks in advance!

Virtually any CR that uses statistical evidence to support a conclusion assumes that there is only one way to interpret the statistical evidence.
Another example:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mgmat-simila ... 09876.html
This CR links a PERCENTAGE increase to a NUMERICAL increase.
It assumes that there is no other way to interpret the percentage increase.

RBBmba@2014 wrote:

DavidG@VeritasPrep wrote:

RBBmba@2014 wrote: Please let me know whether my following reasoning is correct in eliminating Option C --

Although Option C seems to support the CONCLUSION, its NEGATION doesn't CONCLUSIVELY shatter the CONCLUSION of the ARGUMENT. So, C is wrong.

Sure. This is an Assumption question - it will be the case for every wrong answer that its negation won't undermine the conclusion!

So, my above mentioned understanding on why C is wrong is okay. Right ?

I'd argue that C has no bearing on the conclusion, but with respect to its negation, your analysis is correct.