Corporate Officer

This topic has expert replies
Legendary Member
Posts: 2789
Joined: Tue Jul 26, 2011 12:19 am
Location: Chennai, India
Thanked: 206 times
Followed by:43 members
GMAT Score:640

Corporate Officer

by GmatKiss » Fri Mar 09, 2012 9:09 am
Corporate Officer: Last year was an unusually poor one for our chemical division, which has traditionally contributed about 60 percent of the corporation's profits. It is therefore encouraging that there is the following evidence that the pharmaceutical division is growing stronger: it contributed 45 percent of the corporation's profits, up from 20 percent the previous year.

On the basis of the facts stated, which of the following is the best critique of the evidence presented above?

(A) The increase in the pharmaceutical division's contribution to corporation profits could have resulted largely from the introduction of single, important new product.
(B) In multidivisional corporations that have pharmaceutical divisions, over half of the corporation's profits usually come from the pharmaceuticals.
(C) The percentage of the corporation's profits attributable to the pharmaceutical division could have increased even if that division's performance had not improved.
(D) The information cited does not make it possible to determine whether the 20 percent share of profits cited was itself an improvement over the year before.
(E) The information cited does not make it possible to compare the performance of the chemical and pharmaceutical divisions in of the percent of total profits attributable to each.

IMO: E
Source: — Critical Reasoning |

Legendary Member
Posts: 581
Joined: Sun Apr 03, 2011 7:53 am
Thanked: 52 times
Followed by:5 members

by killer1387 » Mon Mar 12, 2012 11:05 pm
IMO C

User avatar
Legendary Member
Posts: 1325
Joined: Sun Nov 01, 2009 6:24 am
Thanked: 105 times
Followed by:14 members

by vikram4689 » Tue Mar 13, 2012 6:24 am
C is correct, We need to critique and hence weaken the conclusion. E ,although true, is irrelevant. We do not NEED to compare the performance in relation to % of total profit.
Premise: If you like my post
Conclusion : Press the Thanks Button ;)

Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts
Posts: 74
Joined: Sun Sep 05, 2010 3:11 pm
Thanked: 3 times

by klmehta03 » Fri Mar 30, 2012 4:57 am
IMO E can we have OA pls?

Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts
Posts: 298
Joined: Tue Feb 16, 2010 1:09 am
Thanked: 2 times
Followed by:1 members

by Deepthi Subbu » Fri Mar 30, 2012 8:49 am
Definitely E . Critique means evaluate and not criticize or weaken.

Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts
Posts: 341
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 6:59 pm
Thanked: 17 times
Followed by:4 members
GMAT Score:720

by ice_rush » Fri Mar 30, 2012 5:10 pm
Most definitely not E, but C. The conclusion is about pharmaceutical division growing stronger..Only C shows that company's high percentage gain does not necessarily correlate with strong performance.

What's the OA?