Explosion of Public Interest

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Explosion of Public Interest

by Haaress » Thu Apr 29, 2010 12:25 pm
In North America there has been an explosion of public interest in, an enjoyment of, opera over the last three decades. The evidence of this explosion is that 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 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 opera companies were all established as a result of enthusiasm on the part of a potential audience.

Please give a detailed explanation of why each of the answers is correct or incorrect. Thanks!

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by money9111 » Thu Apr 29, 2010 1:41 pm
IMO D

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by Haaress » Thu Apr 29, 2010 6:15 pm
The correct answer is B. It is classified as a challenging question

Conclusion : In North America there has been an explosion of public interest in, an enjoyment of, opera over the last three decades.

Premise: The evidence of this explosion is that the 70 or so professional opera companies currently active in North America, 45 were founded over the course of the last 30 years.


The evidence in the stimulus gives statistics on the increase in the number of opera companies but is silent on the number of companies that failed during the same period...

In general, assumption questions fill in a gap without necessarily "strengthening" the arguments.

D - the size of audience - presents an additional premise that strengthens the argument because it provides one extra level of support for the Conclusion - An explosion of public interest in opera.

Answer choice B , however, completes the argument by providing extra info on the other side of the evidence - the proportion of companies that failed during this period.

Please let me know what you think. Thanks!
Last edited by Haaress on Fri Apr 30, 2010 7:02 am, edited 2 times in total.

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by deepesh.gupta » Thu Apr 29, 2010 6:59 pm
I think D should be correct. My explaination is as follows:

Conclusion -> In last 30 years there has been significant increase in public interest in opera in US
Premise -> 45 out 70 companies founded in last 30 years

The missing link according to me is that there is no relation shown between the increase in company and increase in public interest. This is done by option D - the average size of audience has also increased.
Haaress wrote:The correct answer is B. It is classified as a challenging question.

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by YellowSapphire » Thu Jul 21, 2011 8:14 am
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B is the right answer.

I could not understand that why E is wrong.
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by nkumar13 » Thu Jul 21, 2011 9:16 am
Conclusion: Explosion.. over the last three decades.
Evidence: 45 were founded in last three decade.
Assumption: There was less than 45 founded in the previous three decades (4th thru 6th decade)

So the answer is B.

D - I don't see any relation bethween D and the evidence.

E - The conclusion is not based on the potential audience but rather it is based on the number of the NEW companies founded. What if the there were more companies found even before the last three decades because of the entusiasm of the audience and then they closed because of some reason (but not due to less audience).

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by mankey » Fri Nov 25, 2011 10:40 pm
I think it should be E.

What is the OA?

Thanks.

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by user123321 » Sat Nov 26, 2011 5:08 am
Should be B.

The problem says...currently 70 companies are present of which 45 are established in the last 30 years.
so he says number of opera companies are growing.

The assumption which is required here is....what if before 30 years, if there are more than 70 companies and more than 45 of them got closed which are established at that time...then at that time there were more than 70 companies. And it crashes the argument, which says number of opera companies are growing.

So B says this as an assumption...There are no more than 45 companies which are established before 30 years and ceased their operations down the line in last 30 years.

Hope this helps.

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by GMATGuruNY » Sat Nov 26, 2011 4:41 pm
Haaress wrote:In North America there has been an explosion of public interest in, an enjoyment of, opera over the last three decades. The evidence of this explosion is that 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?

Please give a detailed explanation of why each of the answers is correct or incorrect. Thanks!
Premise: Of the 70 opera companies currently active, 45 were established over the past 30 years.
Conclusion: There has been an EXPLOSION OF INTEREST in opera.

The argument connects the NUMBER of opera companies FOUNDED to an EXPLOSION OF INTEREST in opera.

BE VERY SKEPTICAL OF STATISTICS.
What if, while the 45 opera companies were founded, HUNDREDS more were dissolved?
The argument assumes that the number FOUNDED was greater than the number DISSOLVED.

Answer choice B offers this necessary assumption: There were fewer than 45 professional opera companies...that CEASED operations during the last 30 years.

The correct answer is B.

Reasons to eliminate the remaining answer choices.

A. All of the 70 professional opera companies are commercially viable options. Outside the scope. The argument is not about whether the opera companies are commercially viable.

C. There has been a corresponding increase in the number of professional companies devoted to other performing arts. Outside the scope. The argument is only about opera companies.

D. The size of the average audience at performances by professional opera companies has increased over the past three decades. This answer choice does not have to be true. Average ≠ number. If there are a lot more performances, then the TOTAL NUMBER of attendees could INCREASE while the AVERAGE number of attendees per performance DECREASED.

E. The 45 most recently founded opera companies were all established as a result of enthusiasm on the part of a potential audience. Too extreme. It does not have to be true that ALL of the 45 opera companies were established as a result of audience enthusiasm. If only 44 of the 45 opera companies were founded as a result of audience enthusiasm, the conclusion would not be invalidated.
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