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Challenging question

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by khurram » Thu Feb 21, 2008 10:54 am
The reason much refrigerated food spoils is that it ends up out of sight at the back of the shelf. So why not have round shelves that rotate? Because such rotating shelves would have just the same sort of drawback, since things would fall off the shelves' edges into the rear corners.

Which of the following is presupposed in the argument against introducing rotating shelves?





A Refrigerators would not be made so that their interior space is cylindrical.
B Refrigerators would not be made to have a window in front for easy viewing of their contents without opening the door.
C The problem of spoilage of refrigerated food is not amenable to any solution based on design changes.
D Refrigerators are so well designed that there are bound to be drawbacks to any design change.
E Rotating shelves would be designed to rotate only while the refrigerator door was open


Why is the Ans A

I think C could also fit
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Re: Challenging question

by Stuart@KaplanGMAT » Thu Feb 21, 2008 11:50 am
khurram wrote:The reason much refrigerated food spoils is that it ends up out of sight at the back of the shelf. So why not have round shelves that rotate? Because such rotating shelves would have just the same sort of drawback, since things would fall off the shelves' edges into the rear corners.

Which of the following is presupposed in the argument against introducing rotating shelves?


A Refrigerators would not be made so that their interior space is cylindrical.
B Refrigerators would not be made to have a window in front for easy viewing of their contents without opening the door.
C The problem of spoilage of refrigerated food is not amenable to any solution based on design changes.
D Refrigerators are so well designed that there are bound to be drawbacks to any design change.
E Rotating shelves would be designed to rotate only while the refrigerator door was open


Why is the Ans A

I think C could also fit
Like many assumption questions, we can predict the answer to this one: for it to be possible for food to fall off into the corners, the author has to assume that your fridge HAS corners! Choice (a) is a great match for this prediction.

Choice (c) is far too extreme/broad to be an assumption. Does the author have to be taking for granted that there's no possible design solution to the problem? No, the author is only concerned with the rotating round shelf solution, so other solutions are completely outside the scope.

Remember, the correct answer to an assumption question is something that MUST BE TRUE in order for the argument to make sense.

This would also be a great question on which to use Kaplan's Denial Test - let's look at the opposite of choices (a) and (c) and see what impact they have on the argument.

(a) Refrigerators WOULD be made so that their interior space is cylindrical.

Well, if the interior was cylindrical, then there would be no corners and, consequently, the author's objection would be irrelevant. The denial of (a) destroys the argument, therefore (a) is a necessary assumption.

(c) The problem of spoilage IS amenable to a design solution.

Well, just because it's amenable to a solution, does that mean it's amenable to the round shelf solution? We have no clue. The denial of (c) doesn't help us evaluate the argument, therefore (c) is also outside the scope of the argument.
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by khurram » Thu Feb 21, 2008 12:48 pm
Thanks very much.

Printing out your solution and really trying to understand it now.

Thanks
Khurram
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by peter.p.81 » Tue May 10, 2016 11:37 pm
i am going with C. no confidence on my answer.can anyone tell OA?
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