Critical Reasoning

In North America there has been an explosion of public interest in, and enjoyment of,opera over the last three decades. The evidence of this explosion is that of the 70 or so professional opera companies currently active in North America,45 were founded over the course of the last 30 years.

The reasoning above assumes which one of the following?

a) All of the 70 professional opera companies are commercially viable options.

b) There were fewer than 45 professional opera companies that had been active 30 years ago and that ceased operations during the last 30 years.

c) There has not been a corresponding increase in the number of professional companies devoted to other performing arts.

d) The size of the average audience at performances by professional opera companies has increased over the past three decades.

e) The 45 most recently founded companies were all established as a result of enthusiasm on the part of a potential audience.

OA will be provided later.

challenger63 wrote:In North America there has been an explosion of public interest in, and enjoyment of,opera over the last three decades. The evidence of this explosion is that of the 70 or so professional opera companies currently active in North America,45 were founded over the course of the last 30 years.

The reasoning above assumes which one of the following?

a) All of the 70 professional opera companies are commercially viable options.

b) There were fewer than 45 professional opera companies that had been active 30 years ago and that ceased operations during the last 30 years.

c) There has not been a corresponding increase in the number of professional companies devoted to other performing arts.

d) The size of the average audience at performances by professional opera companies has increased over the past three decades.

e) The 45 most recently founded companies were all established as a result of enthusiasm on the part of a potential audience.

OA will be provided later.

IMO : B
If you negate this statement then it will oppose the whole argument, so this is our answer.
(Negation technique for Assumptions)
Others are out of scope.

I would say E. It is an assumption question and only E assumes public interest and creation of new companies.

I'm surely confused between B and E.


B is targeting the evidence. If I negate B - there were more than 45 companies 30 years ago, it affects the evidence. However the conclusion is about public interest. We can stretch and say that since author is linking more companies to more public interest, if there were more companies in the past, there was more public interest in past than now. But 2 things are driving me crazy -
1) If I indirectly link more companies in past to more public interest in past, how does this affect my conclusion that More companies opened because of more public interest?
2) Usage of word 'ceased'. Is the author trying to say that more companies in past (when I negate) = more public interest -> but still the companies ceased operations....And the conclusion falls???

I'm over- over -over !! thinking

When I negate E -> The 45 companies were not established as a result of enthusiasm.
Now I have issues with words like 'most recently founded' , 'enthusiasm' (and not public interest), and 'potential audience'.

I will step back and ask the experts to pitch in.
Had it been on a official GMAT day, I would have chosen B.

Experts please help us on this.

This is one of my favorite GMAT questions ever!

The stimulus gives us the number of new opera houses (45) as evidence of an explosion of interest. That's more than one per year, so on the surface that seems like pretty good evidence.

B tells us that fewer than 45 went out of business during the same time period. Pick an arbitrary number; let's say 30. If 45 were founded, and 30 went out of business, we now have 15 more opera houses than we did 30 years ago. Is that evidence of more interest? I'd say it definitely supports the idea.

If we negate B, it would say that no fewer than 45 (i.e., 45 or more) went out of business. Again, pick an arbitrary number: 60. If 45 were founded, and 60 went out of business, we now have 15 fewer opera houses than we did 30 years ago. Is that evidence of more interest? No, in fact it contradicts that idea.

In E, the correct negation is that the 45 opera houses were not all established as a result of audience enthusiasm. What if 1 or 2 of them were established for other reasons? Maybe Warren Buffett decided Omaha really needed a new opera house and opened his own without consideration of the Omaha opera audience. Would that one exception contradict the conclusion? No, so it's not required.

Official answer B

I actually wrote an entire article about this one!

It is called "Approaching Assumption Questions like an Expert" here is the link https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2012/06/ ... -an-expert

The article gives you another way to look at questions like these and includes several official guide questions that are similar to this one...