Critical Reasoning

IMO B.

A simply repeats what is said in statement.
E is out of scope, we simply cannot tell victims were unconsious just because they were not wearing life jackets.

and B looks more reasonable. I think we should be careful to note a point that not all involved in boating accidents were drowned. Those of who were drowned 90% were not wearing life jacket.

vishalj wrote: A, however, is not a direct statement from premise. In the premise "During the past five years, more than 5000 Maltanians have drowned in boating accidents. Figures released by the country's Boating Association show that ninety percent of the victims were not wearing life jackets at the time of their accidents ", it is not clearly mentioned that the figure released by the county's Boating Association is all about those 5000 drowing victims. It is possible that 90% of victims that didn't wear jackets were either drowned, killed by high'speed boat or attacked by shark. I think you get my point. However, in A, by using "most" we can make inference about drawning victims. The word " most" could be anything except "none".

I do believe your reasoning here for an assumption question is flawed. By your reasoning that the information "could" be incomplete and that there could be outside factors even in the answer itself, there are essentially no correct answer, because any answer could be unproven by suspecting flaw in the answer.

For example, A never specified whether the data is for drowning victims in boating accidents, drowning victims that has nothing to do with boats, or drowning victims in general. A also never said whether the data is from the boating association, or some random country, or a nearby marina who released its own data. The list can go on and on...

Hence the reason why we must accept answers in an assumption question to be correct.

Figures released by the country's Boating Association show that ninety percent of the victims were not wearing life jackets at the time of their accidents.

A: Most of the drowning victims were not wearing lifejackets at the time of their accidents

I believe the assumption is quite sound that both are talking about the same thing. If so, then A is merely rephrasing the data already included in the stimulus. 90% = most.

If we can't eliminate A on the ground of above, then I might need to find new CR books to learn from.

Definitely a great discussion going on here.

uwhusky - By reading your comments, it seems that you are thinking this question to be an assumption question.

According to me, this is an inference questions. But I may be wrong. I made a detailed list of different types of inference question. And I found the similiar question in my list.

Let me know your thoughts.

Which of the following best supports the argument above?

This question cannot be an inference question. An inference question would be like a conclusion question, where we use the facts presented in the stimulus and look for the conclusion in the answers.

This question is asking which answer supports the argument in the stimulus, and thus this is a "strengthen" question.

I beg to differ. I am quoting questions from different reliable source. You can find the word "support" in both the strengthening and inference questions. However, in the strengthening question, look out for "the following, if true".

Which one of the following, if true, most strongly supports the statement above? (Strengthen - Powerscore - Pg 153)

Which of the following is most strongly supported by the information above? (Inference - Powerscore - Pg 74)

Which of the following is supported by the argument above? (Inference - Veritas - will get the page number later)

Let me know what you think.

You're correctly listing the inference question, but you're incorrectly associating them with the keyword, support. This question is asking which answer supports the argument in the stimulus, but your list of examples asks which answer is supported by the stimulus.

Vishalj -

This is definitely a strengthen question, not an inference. I would also say that it is not an assumption question as none of the answers is required by the argument and the question stem does not say the word "assumption" or "assumes."

In looking for the type of question I never focus on the "if true." Something that is much more reliable is to understand where the conclusion is located. Official GMAT Inference questions very often say "which of the following conclusions" that is the key - the conclusion follows the question stem. That means the answer choice is the conclusion. That is an inference question.

The question we are looking at here says, "which of the following best supports the argument above?" And argument means conclusion. So the conclusion is above. Meaning the conclusion is in the stimulus and is being supported by the answer choice. That means this is a strengthen question.

Hope this is helpful.

Oops, somewhere along the line I confused this question as an assumption question.

Thank you very much, David. Not seeing "if true" blind-sided me in this question. From now on, I think that I can spot the question correctly by finding the conclusion. I didn't know this before. Now, I read the Veritas book again. It clearly mentioned to spot "support" for strengthen and "is supported by" for inference. Will not forget it.

And thanks uwhusky for a great conversation.

No problem guys!

I like to see an item with this much discussion.

Yes vishalj. The thing that is pointed out in the Veritas book is that the answer choice is in passive voice for inference - in other words "the answer choice is supported by the above" and for strengthen the answer choice is in active voice -- "the choice supports the above conclusion.'

Keep up the good work!

what the OA????????????????????????

what is the OA?

The official answer has not been disclosed and I could not find this question anywhere else, but let me make a case for 2 or B as the answer.

The conclusion is "by wearing life jackets, boaters can reduce their risk of drowning if they are involved in a boating accident." The evidence in favor of this is "ninety percent of the victims were not wearing life jackets at the time of their accidents. "

So, what we know is that 90% of those who died did not have their life jackets on. However the conclusion is speaking of helping a person survive an accident. So we are really talking about the relative survival rates of those who are involved in an accident and are wearing life jackets and are not wearing life jackets.

This is a classic setup for a critical reasoning problem. Let me give you another example from the Veritas Critical Reasoning 2 book. There is a problem that talks about bicycling on the left side and on the right side of the road. The conclusion is that it is more dangerous to bicycle on the left side than on the right side. The evidence is that 25% of bicycle accidents involve bicycles on the left side of the road. Now the question is - what does this prove? If we do not know what percentage of people cycle on the left then we do not know if they are safer or not. For example - what if 75% of bicycling is on the left side and only 25% of the accidents? That would make the left side safer. Yet if only 10% of cyclists are on the left and they account for 25% of the accidents this is not safer.

So, let's apply this reasoning to this question. We know here that 90% of those who drowned in boat accidents were not wearing their life jackets. But what if 99% of those involved in accidents did not wear jackets? Then you can see that it is actually safer not to wear a life jacket because the percentage of those involved in accidents is greater than the percentage of those who drowned. Using these numbers you can see even more clearly that if 99% of those in accidents did not wear life jackets only 1% did wear them - yet 10% of those who drowned were wearing life jackets. So that means that - as a percentage - many more of those who drowned were wearing jackets. So in this case the evidence would fail.

Now answer 2 (or B) gives tells us that more than 10% of those who were involved in accidents were wearing the life jackets and since only 10% of those who drowned were wearing life jackets you can see that there are people surviving accidents at a greater rate if they are wearing life jackets.

What a tricky question!

Hi David , though u have explained in the best possible way i really wasnt able to understand the following portion because i find it too convoluted

We know here that 90% of those who drowned in boat accidents were not wearing their life jackets. But what if 99% of those involved in accidents did not wear jackets? Then you can see that it is actually safer not to wear a life jacket because the percentage of those involved in accidents is greater than the percentage of those who drowned. Using these numbers you can see even more clearly that if 99% of those in accidents did not wear life jackets only 1% did wear them - yet 10% of those who drowned were wearing life jackets. So that means that - as a percentage - many more of those who drowned were wearing jackets. So in this case the evidence would fail.