Critical Reasoning

mundasingh123 wrote:Hi Geva ,
The real problem that i am facing is that i dont know when to use lateral thinking and when not to .
Now
B which is the OA doesnt make it clear how important is it to not mistakenly label any of the orchestra's in-tune performances as out of tune for a prodigy .
It doesnt make the link between being a prodigy and not labelling orchestra's in-tune performances as out of tune clear .
I am trying to find out the difference between your logic and mine.
You have eliminated the rest of the answers on the basis that we dont know really how the options are going to help the argument .
For example

1

) The GMAT will never require you to know from your own knowledge whether half half-step below the true pitch is a large or small deviation - that alone tells you that this answer choice is suspect,as you lack the tools to decide whether this is is good, bad, or irrelevant. D can also go both ways, another sign of a problematic answer choice: if all the instruments were out of tune by exactly the same margin, then perhaps it was easier to recognize once Domingo caught on to the pattern, and this would then weaken the conclusion.

(

A) if the orchestra was not arranged in the traditional manner then maybe that is what helped Domingo identify the instrument with the wrong tune.
We don't know the effects of a traditional Vs. non-traditional arrangements. There is simply not enough info to see whether this is relevant or not.

So just a general question
are we expected to think beyond the stimulus and the specific option . I mean are we expected to bring any other logic to these CRs . ie Logic based on our practical experience or our common sense ?

Practical experience - no, common sense - yes.

The people who write these tests do not know who you are or what your background is. As far as they know, you could be a Business major, an engineer, a musician, a porn star, anything. They therefore TRY not to write questions where the right answer choice requires specific knowledge of a specific field. Any overly technical or professional term either will be explained by the question (so you have the chance to judge its significance), or is very likely to be irrelevant. For example, if the argument had stated that Domingo can recognize deviations of pitch as close as 3 half steps from the true pitch, I would have some sort of baseline to judge whether D is relevant or not. Without such a baseline, I immediately eliminated D because there's just no way that the question (not a real one, anyway) would make this the right answer - I'm not a musician, and I'm not supposed to know eht significance of D.

B works in terms explained by the argument - he recognized false performances, he did not falsely recognize a true performance - this requires no outside specialized knowledge. Just common sense to see that to be a prodigy, Domingo needs to be able to tell false from true, not just cry "false".

@forest gump

Altering the pitch doesn't necessarily imply the music produced will be out of tune. It only affects the highs and lows of the music produced

Wow, Geva thank you so much for that.
Just one more question. I read your article with the Ruffe fish (lovely post btw) and I realized that in that particular question, I was able to capture the crux of the argument. The argument was very clear in my mind and I knew in essence what was the kind of answer I needed to look for. I knew that the answer choice would be the one that would address the Issue that Anglers would for sure be concerned about the issue at hand and inform the Government.

However, in the question from this post, I found myself going through each answer choice trying to questioning myself "Is this strengthening the author's claim in anyway?" - In short I couldn't catch the crux and was unsure of what kind of an answer I was supposed to look for. I tried breaking the argument apart as well, but couldn't really find that one hole that I needed to plug-in. I hope im making some sense...could you please enlighten us on how to go about and capture the crux of this question.

And also in strengthening questions would you say that the correct answer would ALWAYS be the one that will not lead to a "maybe situation", as in not the one that would either strengthen or weaken?

Thank You Once Again.

Geva Thanks so much for the patience with our queries.You help is really appreciated

theforrestgump wrote:Wow, Geva thank you so much for that.
Just one more question. I read your article with the Ruffe fish (lovely post btw) and I realized that in that particular question, I was able to capture the crux of the argument. The argument was very clear in my mind and I knew in essence what was the kind of answer I needed to look for. I knew that the answer choice would be the one that would address the Issue that Anglers would for sure be concerned about the issue at hand and inform the Government.

However, in the question from this post, I found myself going through each answer choice trying to questioning myself "Is this strengthening the author's claim in anyway?" - In short I couldn't catch the crux and was unsure of what kind of an answer I was supposed to look for. I tried breaking the argument apart as well, but couldn't really find that one hole that I needed to plug-in. I hope im making some sense...could you please enlighten us on how to go about and capture the crux of this question.

And also in strengthening questions would you say that the correct answer would ALWAYS be the one that will not lead to a "maybe situation", as in not the one that would either strengthen or weaken?

Thank You Once Again.

that's the difference between as easy and a difficult question, I guess (though possibly the difference between a real GMAT and a 3rd party question also plays a small part here). For this particular question, I too was not able to capture the 'crux" of the argument, as you put it, at first. On my first pass, I eliminated all answer choices as irrelevant, and had to make another pass. I was, however, able to distinguish between completely irrelevant (A, D, E) and 'maybes' that deserve a second thought to see what they're doing and whether that could perhaps strengthen the argument in an indirect way (B and C). Since there were no direct strengtheners, I went for the opposite view - eliminate weakeners - with a sort of negation test: if B is reversed and Domingo DID mistakenly label in tune performances as out-of tune, that would indeed weaken the conclusion that he is a prodigy. Thus, B eliminates a strengthener, and is indeed the right one.

theforrestgump wrote:Wow, Geva thank you so much for that.
Just one more question. I read your article with the Ruffe fish (lovely post btw) and I realized that in that particular question, I was able to capture the crux of the argument. The argument was very clear in my mind and I knew in essence what was the kind of answer I needed to look for. I knew that the answer choice would be the one that would address the Issue that Anglers would for sure be concerned about the issue at hand and inform the Government.

However, in the question from this post, I found myself going through each answer choice trying to questioning myself "Is this strengthening the author's claim in anyway?" - In short I couldn't catch the crux and was unsure of what kind of an answer I was supposed to look for. I tried breaking the argument apart as well, but couldn't really find that one hole that I needed to plug-in. I hope im making some sense...could you please enlighten us on how to go about and capture the crux of this question.

And also in strengthening questions would you say that the correct answer would ALWAYS be the one that will not lead to a "maybe situation", as in not the one that would either strengthen or weaken?

Thank You Once Again.

As to your other question - Never say Never, and so I wouldn't say ALWAYS - but I definitely suspect any answer choice that is too wishy-washy as to allow interpretation both ways. E is a classic in that respect - saying that the acoustics were "different" doesn't help me decide whether they helped or hindered Domingo in finding the out-of-tune performances, so I would be VERY wary of choosing E.

Geva@MasterGMAT wrote:

theforrestgump wrote:Wow, Geva thank you so much for that.
Just one more question. I read your article with the Ruffe fish (lovely post btw) and I realized that in that particular question, I was able to capture the crux of the argument. The argument was very clear in my mind and I knew in essence what was the kind of answer I needed to look for. I knew that the answer choice would be the one that would address the Issue that Anglers would for sure be concerned about the issue at hand and inform the Government.

However, in the question from this post, I found myself going through each answer choice trying to questioning myself "Is this strengthening the author's claim in anyway?" - In short I couldn't catch the crux and was unsure of what kind of an answer I was supposed to look for. I tried breaking the argument apart as well, but couldn't really find that one hole that I needed to plug-in. I hope im making some sense...could you please enlighten us on how to go about and capture the crux of this question.

And also in strengthening questions would you say that the correct answer would ALWAYS be the one that will not lead to a "maybe situation", as in not the one that would either strengthen or weaken?

Thank You Once Again.

that's the difference between as easy and a difficult question, I guess (though possibly the difference between a real GMAT and a 3rd party question also plays a small part here). For this particular question, I too was not able to capture the 'crux" of the argument, as you put it, at first. On my first pass, I eliminated all answer choices as irrelevant, and had to make another pass. I was, however, able to distinguish between completely irrelevant (A, D, E) and 'maybes' that deserve a second thought to see what they're doing and whether that could perhaps strengthen the argument in an indirect way (B and C). Since there were no direct strengtheners, I went for the opposite view - eliminate weakeners - with a sort of negation test: if B is reversed and Domingo DID mistakenly label in tune performances as out-of tune, that would indeed weaken the conclusion that he is a prodigy. Thus, B eliminates a strengthener, and is indeed the right one.

Thank You Geva. Ia'm sure that what I have learned here will help me in a lot of ways.