Critical Reasoning

The flight from country D to country T takes 5 hours and includes two layovers along the way. The time by train is only 4.5 hours. To save time and money, vacationers from country D should take the train to country T

Which of the following, if true, would best strengthen the above argument?

A. For most residents of country D, the cost of getting to and from the train station is about the same as the cost of getting to and from the airport.

B. The routes for both the flight and the train ride from country T to country D as the same as the respective routes going in the opporsite direction.

C. The flight time of 5 hours is atypical for the trip from country D to country T.

D. The train ride from country D to country T offers a higher level of comfort.

E. The airline that flies from country D to country T no longer offers bonus points that can be redeemed for a cash rebate.



Need your answers with explanations please

OA with official explanation will be posted later.

Thanks!

My guess would be A since the intent is to save time and money and that is the only one that mentions either.

rohit_gmat wrote:The flight from country D to country T takes 5 hours and includes two layovers along the way. The time by train is only 4.5 hours. To save time and money, vacationers from country D should take the train to country T

Which of the following, if true, would best strengthen the above argument?

A. For most residents of country D, the cost of getting to and from the train station is about the same as the cost of getting to and from the airport.

B. The routes for both the flight and the train ride from country T to country D as the same as the respective routes going in the opporsite direction.

C. The flight time of 5 hours is atypical for the trip from country D to country T.

D. The train ride from country D to country T offers a higher level of comfort.

E. The airline that flies from country D to country T no longer offers bonus points that can be redeemed for a cash rebate.



Need your answers with explanations please

OA with official explanation will be posted later.

Thanks!

Argument is based on railway and airway, intent is to save time (30 mins) and money.
A - Correctly serves the purpose, if money is not saved at least time is saved. Airfares can be more costly than railway fare.
B - Does not serve any purpose.
C - Not relevant.
D - Not relevant, comfort is out of scope.
E - Does not prove anything as compared to saving money, if traveled by train i.e. how much money will be rebated (through airway) as compared, if traveled by train.

Tani Wolff - Kaplan wrote:My guess would be A since the intent is to save time and money and that is the only one that mentions either.

Hi Tani,

Thanks for the prompt response
A is also what I initially picked (since it seemed to be most relevant)

Unfortunately the OA (from KAPLAN) is B .... this was taken from the online KAPLAN Monthly quizzes (GMAT Purple Quiz Q 24/28)...

The official explanation is as follows : Since the arugment discusses vactioners - who by definition must return to D - the author assumes that the round-trip deal is better by train. If the half-an-hour difference remains in effect for the return trip, then this supports the superiority of traveling by train.

IMO, the OA demands a bit too much of thinking... rather than just focusing on the statments mentioned in the paragraph...

will we encounter such stuff on the actual GMAT???

please advise

thanks!

I'm not crazy about that one either. Also, traveling the same route does not necessarily mean the same time so the "assumption" is not inherent in the response. Also, the time and cost of getting to and from the airport versus the train can be crucial.

Any test prep company will carefully screen and test answers to their sample questions, but there is no way they can test them as thoroughly as those on the LSAT, which are tested through thousands of respondents via the experimental section on the exam. Nevertheless, I do see actual LSAT answer with which I strongly disagree. In the end, the questions are written by people.

I disagree with the OA and agree with other posters that, A should be the correct answer.

The question states that, in order to save time AND money, vacationers should take the train and A is the only answer choice that addresses both. It is already known that it takes less time if taking the train as compared to travelling by air and by choosing A, which also proves that the costs of travelling to and from the train station are the same as getting to and from the airport, we can assume that costs are a moot point and only time is a relevant factor and the question has already stated that the train is a more timely option.

B requires to much out of the box thinking and you can never expect to encounter such a question that will require to make an assumption about a word (in this case being vacationer). If this is the case then maybe I can also assume that the vacationer may return at a time when travel volumes are low and airfare may be considerably cheaper since train fare's rarely fluctuate.

rohit_gmat wrote:The flight from country D to country T takes 5 hours and includes two layovers along the way. The time by train is only 4.5 hours. To save time and money, vacationers from country D should take the train to country T

Which of the following, if true, would best strengthen the above argument?

A. For most residents of country D, the cost of getting to and from the train station is about the same as the cost of getting to and from the airport.

B. The routes for both the flight and the train ride from country T to country D as the same as the respective routes going in the opporsite direction.

C. The flight time of 5 hours is atypical for the trip from country D to country T.

D. The train ride from country D to country T offers a higher level of comfort.

E. The airline that flies from country D to country T no longer offers bonus points that can be redeemed for a cash rebate.

I was drawn to between (A) and (B), I selected (B). I'm not sure what (A) has to do with the stem, all it talks about is the cost of getting to the airport or train station, it doesn't really go into detail about costs and time regarding to traveling from country to country (important for the typical vacationer)...

gtr02 wrote:

rohit_gmat wrote:The flight from country D to country T takes 5 hours and includes two layovers along the way. The time by train is only 4.5 hours. To save time and money, vacationers from country D should take the train to country T

Which of the following, if true, would best strengthen the above argument?

A. For most residents of country D, the cost of getting to and from the train station is about the same as the cost of getting to and from the airport.

B. The routes for both the flight and the train ride from country T to country D as the same as the respective routes going in the opporsite direction.

C. The flight time of 5 hours is atypical for the trip from country D to country T.

D. The train ride from country D to country T offers a higher level of comfort.

E. The airline that flies from country D to country T no longer offers bonus points that can be redeemed for a cash rebate.

I was drawn to between (A) and (B), I selected (B). I'm not sure what (A) has to do with the stem, all it talks about is the cost of getting to the airport or train station, it doesn't really go into detail about costs and time regarding to traveling from country to country (important for the typical vacationer)...

Where is it mentioned that the vacationer is travelling from country to country... the q only talks about country D and country T...

That is a wacky question. I cant imagine I would have gotten that correct. None of the answers really sound good. The problem is that they want you to strengthen the argument that you save time and money with the train, but they never inform us that the train is cheaper than the plane.

A. This doesnt really tell you that the cost of the train is any cheaper just that the cost of getting there is the same as is the time. But the question already tells us the time is faster so if we assume the plane is more expensive then this would strengthen the answer.

B. This lets you know that the time is the same both coming and going but it tells us nothing of the cost. Again to make this right we have to assume the plane is more expensive. I guess this is the best answer because it is the only one that lets you know that its faster in both directions (and i think that is a fair assumption since they say these are vacationers).

C. Clearly wrong.

D. Clearly wrong

E. This doesnt really tell us which is more expensive. It just implies that the airline used to be cheaper than it is now

I think this just requires too many assumptions to be a good practice questions.

Hi Folks,

Just a heads up--this problem is up for errata. Answer (A) is right, and our explanation justifying (B) was in error. For the record, (B) is wrong because there is nothing in the prompt that prevents vacationers from taking the train one way and the plane the other! In fact, if time and money are different each way, that might be an optimal choice.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this discussion. We're sorry for the conclusion, but we're glad we had an opportunity to fix this.

OMG I am so glad I wasn't the only one SUPER confused by why B was considered correct online. I spent forever trying to understand the logic on that one. While I am a bit annoyed I wasted tons of time trying to understand something that was ultimately an error, I am glad I actually did understand the question correctly, after all