Critical Reasoning

this problem is clearly based on #70 in OG12, with the following substitutions:
aspirin in #70 --> disinfectant, here
moderate fever in #70 --> germs, here
stimulate white blood cells and inhibit bacteria in #70 --> develop immunity, here

looking at og12 #70 may help you to understand this problem better; apparently, the knewton guys didn't even bother to scramble the answer choices, so you can compare (a) to (a), (b) to (b), and so on.
the only choice that has been changed significantly is (a); the other four are more or less exact analogies to their og counterparts.

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This is how Knewton eliminates A but isnt " reduce a variety of communicable diseases among children who attend preschools." correct since its mentioned in the stimulus that spraying disinfectant kills germs that cause illnesses such as common cold .

yeah -- i agree that there are problems with this choice.

first of all, there's the word "can", which is sufficiently weak that it's very easily justified. (i.e., if the answer choice said "justified" more definitively -- without "can" -- then it would be easier to eliminate on the grounds of that artificial certainty.)
and, more importantly, there's the word "variety" ... if "a variety" refers to just the diseases whose germs are being eradicated by the disinfectant, then, yes, i agree that the statement is supported. on the other hand, if "a variety" also includes the "other, more serious pathogens" mentioned at the end of the passage, then this statement runs counter to the content of the passage (because the children are now less protected against those serious pathogens, according to the given information).

so, in sum, i agree that choice (a) is not sufficiently incorrect to be wrong on an actual GMAC test.

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Kewton also tries to explain the difference between "reduce immunity and weaken immunity " which i didnt understand at all.

is it worded in terms of
(a) reducing immunity to a particular disease
vs.
(b) weakening the immune system in general?

if so, that is a massive difference.
as an analogy, if there are no available books for learning Basque (a language spoken in northeastern Spain), then that is going to significantly impact my ability to learn Basque ... but it is not going to weaken my ability to learn languages in general.

mundasingh123 wrote:Hi Ron Thanks for the Reply
My question was w.r.t choices B and C .B says that disinfecting reduces immunity and C says that Disinfecting weakens the immune system .

you are not taking note of the important part of the distinction --
choice (b) says "reduce children's immunity to serious illnesses" --> i.e., to reduce the immune response that these children have to the particular diseases in question.
choice (c) refers to weakening the children's entire immune system, which is something very different.

did you understand the analogy that i made in the previous post?
* if there are no books from which i can learn the Basque language, then that situation will reduce my ability to learn that particular language (similar to choice b), but it will have no effect on my ability to learn languages in general (similar to c).
* if i suffer brain damage to the lobes that control language learning, then that situation will have an overall effect on my ability to learn languages in general (similar to c).

I request that you refer to the following url as well https://www.beatthegmat.com/difference-b ... tml#365010

i'm not following the point of the separate url.
i.e., why didn't you just post that here? is there some other issue that i'm not noticing?

mundasingh123 wrote:Hi Ron are you saying this because a person can get sick even after the germs are killed by disinfecting
or
Is it because disinfecting does not guarantee that all germs will be killed (Because the stimulus says "most germs ")

First of all, there's the word "can", which is sufficiently weak that it's very easily justified. (i.e., if the answer choice said "justified" more definitively -- without "can" -- then it would be easier to eliminate on the grounds of that artificial certainty.)

i'm sorry, i don't follow.

in the part of the post that you quoted, i was just pointing out that the word "can" -- in general -- makes a choice much easier to justify (and much harder to disprove). since that choice is intended as an incorrect answer choice, "can" is troublesome there, because it renders that choice extremely hard to eliminate.

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in any case, i think that most of the productive discussion around this problem has been exhausted, especially because there are some flaws in the wording of the answer choices themselves.

because the problem is clearly based on OG12 #70 (and is inferior to that problem, in terms of how well it conforms to the template of official problems), at this point it's probably best to turn your attention back to OG12 #70. you'll get more out of the OG problem, and it's unlikely that the problem in this thread will give any useful insights that are not also provided by the official problem upon which it is based.

mundasingh123 wrote:

i'm sorry, i don't follow.

in the part of the post that you quoted, i was just pointing out that the word "can" -- in general -- makes a choice much easier to justify (and much harder to disprove). since that choice is intended as an incorrect answer choice, "can" is troublesome there, because it renders that choice extremely hard to eliminate.

Hi ron , My question was with respect to the situations that i could make out from wording of the answer choice just in case i wanted to justify how A could be correct . Thanks for pointing me towards og 70 . Ill go through . Thanks for clearing the issue on the feasiblity of A as the correct answer

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yeah, #70 is a better resource here. i agree that choice (a) in this example has problems.