Critical Reasoning

Physiological research has uncovered disturbing evidence linking a number of structural disorder disorders to logging. Among the ailments seemingly connected with this now-popular sport are spinal disk displacements, stress fractures of the feet and ankles, knee and hip joint deterioration, and tendonitis. Furthermore, these injuries do not occur exclusively among beginning runners-veteran joggers suffer an equal percentage of injuries. What the accumulating data suggest is that the human anatomy is not able to withstand the stresses of jogging.

Which one of the following is an assumption of the argument?

(A) The link between jogging and certain structural disorders appears to be a causal one.
(B) Jogging causes more serious disorders than other sports.
(C) The jogger's level of experience is a factor determining the likelihood of a jogging injury.
(D) Some sports are safer for the human body than jogging.
(E) The human species is not very durable.

I got it right. but I am having a really hard time with assumption questions...I can get weaken and first family questions right most of the time(90-100%) but assumption I am doing a lot of mistakes.
This question is easy because apart from right answer all other choices are absurd(pardon my strong language). But IF somebody can enlighten me how to tackle Assumption question taking this question or any other question as an example..I will be highly thankful....

Hi,

Negating the assumption is an effective method of solving the assumption questions.

~ assumption => ~ conclusion.

so try negating all the choises. which ever causes the conclusion to fall apart is the winner.

A


Negate A and the conclusion falls apart.

The link between jogging and certain structural disorders appears to be NOT a causal one. Then why the human anatomy is not able to withstand the stresses of jogging???

@ The Jock

My recommendation would be to pick up a copy of the Power Score CR bible. Aside from being the best guide out there to tackle Critical Reasoning, they have a fantastic section on 'Find the assumption' questions centered around the process of negation i.e. eliminating the obviously wrong answers and, among the remaining answer choices, trying to see if the conclusion would strengthen should an answer choice be true and subsequently weaken should it NOT be true:

It also encourages taking a moment to guess the assumption before even moving on to the answer choices as that will help narrow down to the right answer when the questions get really difficult. They have an exercise section where your only action is to negate an answer choice instead of actually picking an answer.

Let's take the example of the easy question that you documented below:

There are a couple of premises here but, for the sake of this excercise, I am going to summarize them into a single premise to narrow down on the
answer choices:

Using the CR forumula which is Premise + (assumption) = conclusion we disect the above argument and get


Premise: Research has shown that joggers, regardless of their experience level, end up with serious structural disorders

Conclusion: The human body is unable to withstand the stress of jogging

For those fairly experienced with assumption questions, the first assumption that will come to mind is that - 'joggers who suffer such injuries did not have
any structural deformaties before they started jogging'

Another similar assumption we can guess is that ' joggers did not indulge in some other intensive sport such as weight lifting that could also be
responsible for these injuries'

If these were to be true, then it means that it is solely jogging that is the cause of the injuries that joggers suffer.

Now we look at the answer choices to search for one that may prove that:


A) States that there is a causal relationship between jogging and structural disorders - If we take this answer choice to be true then, the argument is strenghtened as it proves that jogging is indeed the cause of injuries. If we take this to be not true, then the argument is weakened as, if there is no causal relationship between jogging and injuries, it would mean that there is some other factor responsible for the injuries. As A meets the criteria of negation, A is the correct answer.

B) Is to extreme. If we assume that jogging does cause more serious injuries than other sports, the argument may be true but we are looking for a link between jogging and structural disorder injuries, not the seriousness of the injuries that jogging causes compared to other sports. Same thing if we assume jogging does not cause serious injuries - it could still mean that jogging causes these structural injuries but it doesn't break your skull like other sports may.

C) This is already part of the premise and hence is incorrect

D) This is just answer choice B) in reverse

E) Probably the second most tempting answer after A but is to extreme. We are looking for an assumption to tie the premise to the conclusion and the durability of the human species is a very macro term and cannot be classified as an assumption to link jogging to structural injuries.


Hope this helps.

Thanks a lot guys..it helps...
Ravish...Really nice explanation...I have got my hand on that book and I am reading it and guess what...I am able to discern every bit in your post...so I hope it is a good sign...Thanks Ravish.