Critical Reasoning

Hi David,
In the CR question stems I sometimes get stuck with information which I can't comprehend and tend to loose time for eg I did nt understand the bolded statement and started wasting time although I was able to solve the problem correctly but its just that i get stuck sometimes in info which may or may not be required in the questions. I mean its safe to say that when the incomprehensible info is the background info(refering to you Tim Duncan article) I get the ans right but if its a part of MIP I will get the question wrong.
Would like to hear from you on this problem I am facing.

David@VeritasPrep wrote:The US Department of Agriculture divides the North American continent into "hardiness zones." These zones are based on the average lowest winter temperature and are used to determine what types of plants will likely survive in a given area.Zone 1 represents the coldest average winter low temperature and zone 11 the warmest. The zones are closely correlated with, but do not exactly match another set of zones that indicate the length of the growing season. Minneapolis is in hardiness zone 4 and Denver is in hardiness zone 5.

Which of the following statements is most supported by the information above?

A) During the coming winter, the lowest recorded temperature in Minneapolis will be lower than the lowest recorded temperature in Denver.

B) The growing season in Denver is longer than the growing season in Minneapolis.

C) A greater variety of plants can be grown in Denver, due to the warmer average winter low.

D) It is likely that at least some plants that are recommended to be grown in Denver would not be recommended for Minneapolis.

E) Minneapolis actually has a more favorable climate for growing most vegetables than does Denver.

If what you are asking is what the portion that you have placed in bold actually means, it means that a map of the hardiness zones (which are based on the lowest winter temperature that an area drops to in an average year) will look very much like - but not exactly like - a map of the zones that tell us how long plants can grow each year (this is the time between the last frost of the spring, which kills young plants and the first frost of the fall, which ends the growth of plants for the year).

Many people who take the GMAT and especially many people on BTG live in places where the temperature does not drop below freezing and the growing season is all year!!

However, actually understand the complexities of what is written is not necessary to get the correct answer. You could just say that "hardiness zones" - whatever those are - are similar too but not exactly the same distribution as "growing season" - whatever that may be.

Add to this the fact that you are told that zone 1 is coldest and zone 11 warmest and that Minneapolis is in zone 4 and Denver zone 5 and you can say that Minneapolis is probably colder than Denver.

Here is how we can eliminate even with limited knowledge of the stimulus...

A) This is a prediction and can be eliminated as we do not know what will happen for cold temperatures this year - remember predictions can be eliminated as the future is uncertain! Eliminate

B) The "growing season" does not match the hardiness zones so we cannot speak of the growing season of these places with any certainty. Eliminate.

C) Do you know which place can grow a greater variety of plants? The stimulus does not say. Eliminate.

D) The wording helps to make this choice a good one. This is nice "noncommittal" wording that is easier to prove in an inference question. Given that these places are in different "hardiness zones" it does seem likely that there would be some plants grown in one and not in the other. And that is all this answer requires. CORRECT.

E) What does more favorable climate mean? Do we know where more vegetables grow?? Out of scope. Eliminate.

Does that help? Sometimes you can do it without even 100% knowing all the vocab.

What do you think?

Nice ques. to solidfy concepts....Eliminated all but D as they were not mentioned in arg. and for most support ques. answer has to follow from given statements.

Thanks David

I get this question right but do so in more than 2 minutes. I am ceased to reread the sentence " do not match another set....". Rereading this sentence make me slow. I think this sentence maybe a thing which gmat creates to make the question hard. If so, gmat here tests reading capacity not logic.

duongthang -

Please read the posting of mine that is two postings above yours. I have addressed the fact that many people may not completely grasp all concepts in this question - AND may face the same thing on test day - but that you can use the FRAMEWORK of the question to work through the logic of it.

While this is not an official GMAT question, if you see above it is one that I have written and I always admit that non-official questions are not perfect, the GMAT will give you some concepts and vocabulary somewhere that you cannot quite get - either in reading comp, sentence correction, or critical reasoning - and you have to be able to reason through using the cues in the text.

There are so many example of this and here is one - what is "peat"? It is the central concept to the following question, but it is not something that you need to understand. (see how the person who posted was confused and focused on the vocab while the posters who reply including the Veritas expert show that you can just substitute the tough vocabulary with a math variable "x" or "y"!

https://www.beatthegmat.com/veritas-sess ... 63169.html

Hope it helps!