Critical Reasoning

Whats the general strategy for CR questions that involve evaluating an argument? I've never really grasped my head around it..

I think that we use different terminology for this...on the GMAT the "evaluated" usually means, "the most useful information in order to be able to evaluate the argument." Is this what you are referring to?

On the LSAT there is a type of question where you literally evaluate an argument, which is to say that you make a judgement as to how strong the argument is. But this is not on the GMAT. Is this what you mean?

I will be happy to give you a simple, workable strategy as soon as I know what you are specifically referring to! I would hate to launch into a big explanation and find you were speaking of something else.

Hi David,

Yes i'm referring to the GMAT version of evaluating an argument. If its easier, you could provide an example and your thought process / high level strategy on how to answer these questions.

David@VeritasPrep wrote:I think that we use different terminology for this...on the GMAT the "evaluated" usually means, "the most useful information in order to be able to evaluate the argument." Is this what you are referring to?

On the LSAT there is a type of question where you literally evaluate an argument, which is to say that you make a judgement as to how strong the argument is. But this is not on the GMAT. Is this what you mean?

I will be happy to give you a simple, workable strategy as soon as I know what you are specifically referring to! I would hate to launch into a big explanation and find you were speaking of something else.

This is a question that another student posted a couple of years ago. It is not an official question but it is a good example of what we are talking about.

Please try this question yourself and then proceed to my discussion of this question type found in the next posting.

It is illegal to advertise prescription medications in Hedland except directly to physicians, either by mail or in medical journals. A proposed law would allow general advertising of prescription medications. Opponents object that the general population lacks the specialized knowledge to evaluate such advertisements and might ask their physicians for inappropriate medications. But since physicians have the final say as to whether to prescribe a medication for a patient, inappropriate prescriptions would not become more common.

Which of the following would it be most useful to establish in order to evaluate the argument?

(A) Whether advertising for prescription medications might alert patients to the existence of effective treatments for minor ailments that they had previously thought to be untreatable
(B) Whether some people might go to a physician for no reason other than to ask for a particular medication they have seen advertised
(C) Whether the proposed law requires prescription-medication advertisements directed to the general public to provide the same information as do advertisements directed to physicians
(D) Whether advertisements for prescription medications are currently an important source of information about newly available medications for physicians
(E) Whether physicians would give in to a patient's demand for a prescription medication chosen by the patient when the one originally prescribed by the physician fails to perform as desired

OA is E

The last 2 times that I took the official GMAT exam, this type of question was the one that I saw more than any other single type. 1 out of every 3 questions I saw was "most useful to know in order to evaluate." That may have been peculiar to my tests, but I do know that this type of question is on rise!

In order to attack this question you proceed in the "normal" manner for a question that has a conclusion in the stimulus. This applies to strengthen, weaken, assumption, method of reasoning, and most useful to know questions. The technique here is what I call the "Conclusion -driven technique." On the GMAT when you strengthen or weaken something it is the main conclusion of the argument so you should start and finish there.

Once you have the conclusion you can then ask yourself, "what is the evidence here?" This will point you in the direction of usually just one premise - what I call the "Most Important Premise" or the MIP. The other information will generally be background information. For more on the conclusion, MIP and background info please read "MIP technique: Critical reasoning the Tim Duncan Way https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/02/ ... duncan-way

Once you have the conclusion and the MIP that the conclusion relies upon you can look for the gap between the two. What would cause this evidence (the MIP) to not really lead to the conclusion? This is a technique for a weaken question and it works well here. Once you have determined the information that you are lacking you can look for that in the answer choices.

Let's try these steps for the problem that you have attached:

1) Identify the main conclusion:

The main conclusion for this argument is signaled by the word "would" (which I call a "command conclusion" word along with other commands like, "should, needs, must, and can.")

Conclusion: "inappropriate prescriptions would not become more common."

2) Identify the most important premise (MIP). In this case you have a very helpful tool to distinguish between the MIP and the background information. The signal word "but" indicates that we are going to contradict what has come before. In an argument such as this the MIP and the conclusion must come AFTER the word "but." The information before this word is included in order to then contradict it. Opponents say that people would ask for inappropriate medications "BUT" and then the true reasoning of the argument comes forth to contradict this.

In this case the MIP is therefore "since physicians have the final say as to whether to prescribe a medication for a patient..." So this is the evidence that is supposed to lead to the main conclusion of "inappropriate prescriptions would not become more common."

3) What could go wrong with this evidence leading to this conclusion? Where is the gap in the logic? Well, is it possible that even if a physician has the final say in prescribing that the inappropriate prescriptions might still be more common if the patient sees the advertising?

I have not yet looked at the answer choices, but If we wanted to weaken this argument we would say, "Even though the physician has the final say, the physician will often do what the patient asks and prescribe the inappropriate medicine to keep the patient happy."

If we wanted to strengthen the argument's conclusion we might say, "Physicians always do what they think is best and it does not matter if the patient asks for a medication they have seen advertised since this will not change what the physician does.

4) Let us predict what we are looking for from the correct answer choice. We want an answer choice that indicates the information that we need to know to either more strongly link this MIP to this conclusion, or if we end up with different information, would weaken the link between MIP and conclusion.

So what we are looking for in an answer choice is information that tells us whether the fact that the physician has the final say in which prescriptions actually get written is a protection against inappropriate prescriptions. Specifically I am anticipating something about the physician either listening to a patient that comes in wanting a particular prescription or ignores that patient's request when inappropriate.

Now to the answer choices...Choices A, C, and D do not seem to result in any medicines being prescribed so these can be eliminated. We come down to choices B and E. B tells us that a person might come to the doctor just asking for a particular medication, however does the doctor actually prescribe it? Maybe not....the doctor still has the final say. Choice E is more what we are looking for...the doctor "Gives in to a patient's demand" meaning that the doctor's own judgment is put aside here and the fact that the patient is demanding the product seen on the advertisement possibly results in an inappropriate prescription.

Answered one way, choice E strengthens the argument. If the physician does not give into the demand then no more inappropriate prescriptions. Answered the other way then it weakens, the physician gives into the demand of the patient and we have more bad prescriptions. This is the essence of "most useful to know."

David@VeritasPrep wrote: Once you have the conclusion and the MIP that the conclusion relies upon you can look for the gap between the two. What would cause this evidence (the MIP) to not really lead to the conclusion? This is a technique for a weaken question and it works well here.

David@VeritasPrep wrote: 3) What could go wrong with this evidence leading to this conclusion? Where is the gap in the logic? Well, is it possible that even if a physician has the final say in prescribing that the inappropriate prescriptions might still be more common if the patient sees the advertising?

I have not yet looked at the answer choices, but If we wanted to weaken this argument we would say, "Even though the physician has the final say, the physician will often do what the patient asks and prescribe the inappropriate medicine to keep the patient happy."

If we wanted to strengthen the argument's conclusion we might say, "Physicians always do what they think is best and it does not matter if the patient asks for a medication they have seen advertised since this will not change what the physician does.

David@VeritasPrep wrote: 4) Let us predict what we are looking for from the correct answer choice. We want an answer choice that indicates the information that we need to know to either more strongly link this MIP to this conclusion, or if we end up with different information, would weaken the link between MIP and conclusion.

Answered one way, choice E strengthens the argument. If the physician does not give into the demand then no more inappropriate prescriptions. Answered the other way then it weakens, the physician gives into the demand of the patient and we have more bad prescriptions. This is the essence of "most useful to know."

hi David@VeritasPrep/other Veritas experts,
got confused after going through your above three quotes.

in the first quote, you've mentioned that an evaluate CR will work like a weaken CR - that means, approach to solve a weaken CR and an evaluate CR will be similar.

however, from your 2nd and 3rd quotes, it appears that for an evaluate CR we need to consider both the aspects - weakening and strengthening the conclusion.

so, could you please clarify what exactly needs to be done to solve an an evaluate CR in GMAT ?