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microwave popcorn

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by blaster » Mon Jul 18, 2011 10:19 am
There are about 75 brands of microwave popcorn on the market; altogether, they
account for a little over half of the money from sales of microwave food products. It
takes three minutes to pop corn in the microwave, compared to seven minutes to
pop corn conventionally. Yet by weight, microwave popcorn typically costs over five
times as much as conventional popcorn. Judging by the popularity of microwave
popcorn, many people are willing to pay a high price for just a little additional
convenience.

If the statements in the passage are true, which one of the following must also be
true?
(A) No single brand of microwave popcorn accounts for a large share of microwave
food product sales.
(B) There are more brands of microwave popcorn on the market than there are of
any other microwave food product.
(C) By volume, more microwave popcorn is sold than is conventional popcorn.
(D) More money is spent on microwave food products that take three minutes or
less to cook than on microwave food products that take longer to cook.
(E) Of the total number of microwave food products on the market, most are
microwave popcorn products.


[spoiler]OA is D, my answer is E. what i'm missing?[/spoiler]
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Source: — Critical Reasoning |

by abhishek karumuri » Mon Jul 18, 2011 2:09 pm
Blaster

IMO:D

E) Of the total number of microwave food products on the market, most are
microwave popcorn products.
- The aregument says "There are about 75 brands of microwave popcorn on the market".
We are not sure about the total no of microwave food products. So this statement need not be necessarily true..

D)More money is spent on microwave food products that take three minutes or
less to cook than on microwave food products that take longer to cook.
- "Judging by the popularity of microwave popcorn, many people are willing to pay a high price for just a little additional convenience" . So people are willing to buy products that takes less time to cook even if the cost of the products is high.


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by David@VeritasPrep » Mon Jul 18, 2011 5:38 pm
What is the source of this question?

D is a matter of simple math. Here are the two relevant statements, microwave popcorn "accounts for a little over half of the money from sales of microwave food products." Add to this, "It
takes three minutes to pop corn in the microwave"

So we can say that at least over half of all microwave products are popcorn and they take three minutes so D is correct - even if ALL other microwave products take more than three minutes it would still be true that over 50% of all microwave products take 3 minutes or less.

As to choice E, we do not know about the number of microwave products that are on the market we only know that the amount of microwave popcorn sold is over half of the total amount sold.
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by ArpanaAmishi » Mon Jul 18, 2011 10:15 pm
What is wrong in 'c' - (C) By volume, more microwave popcorn is sold than is conventional popcorn.

My reasoning

1. This is popular,people are not minding to pay more and already cpatured more than half of the market - this clearly infers more people have that ,hence sell is higher comparatively
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by amit2k9 » Tue Jul 19, 2011 2:06 am
D closely aligns itself with the conclusion.People are willing to pay the additional price for the convenience.

C nothing has been discussed about the volume or weight of the products in the argument.Safely eliminate it.
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by kevincanspain » Tue Jul 19, 2011 2:17 am
Watch out! Our task here is to identify a statement that must be true on the basis on the text above: it need not be related to the conclusion
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by David@VeritasPrep » Tue Jul 19, 2011 4:27 am
Kevin is right -

There is not necessarily a conclusion to an inference question at all. And if there is, that conclusion is no more important than any other statement. So, unlike strengthen and weaken questions, where the conclusion is king, on inference questions just treat every statement in the stimulus as true and try to find the inference that MUST BE TRUE.

Amit is quite right that C can be eliminated because we have not discussed the volume or weight of microwave popcorn versus conventional popcorn.

However, the reason that D is true is not that it addresses the conclusion but it simple math as I have described above.
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by ArpanaAmishi » Tue Jul 19, 2011 9:25 pm
Can someone let me know the difficulty level of this question ..is it 700+ level ?
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