Critical Reasoning

I am posting this question from the Official Guide Verbal Review, 2nd Edition (this question 74 out of 82) because there have been some really bad versions of the question around.

"A product that represents a clear technological advance over competing products can generally command a high price. Because technological advances tend to be quickly surpassed and companies want to make large profits while they still can, many companies charge the maximum possible price for such a product. But large profits on the new product will give competitors a strong incentive to quickly match the new product's capabilities. Consequently, the strategy to maximize overall profit from a new product is to charge less than the greatest possible price.

In the argument above, the two portions in boldface play which of the following roles?


(A) The first is a consideration raised to argue that a certain strategy is counterproductive; the second presents that strategy.

(B) The first is a consideration raised to support the strategy that the argument recommends; the second presents that strategy.

(C) The first is a consideration raised to help explain the popularity of a certain strategy; the second presents that strategy.

(D) The first is an assumption, rejected by the argument, that has been used to justify a course of action; the second presents that course of action.

E) The first is a consideration that has been used to justify a certain strategy; the second presents the intended outcome of that strategy."


OA after some discussion.

is it E?
However, I am little skeptical about 'outcome of a strategy' used in 'E'.
What is the OA?

David@VeritasPrep wrote:I am posting this question from the Official Guide Verbal Review, 2nd Edition (this question 74 out of 82) because there have been some really bad versions of the question around.

"A product that represents a clear technological advance over competing products can generally command a high price. Because technological advances tend to be quickly surpassed and companies want to make large profits while they still can, many companies charge the maximum possible price for such a product. But large profits on the new product will give competitors a strong incentive to quickly match the new product's capabilities. Consequently, the strategy to maximize overall profit from a new product is to charge less than the greatest possible price.

In the argument above, the two portions in boldface play which of the following roles?


(A) The first is a consideration raised to argue that a certain strategy is counterproductive; the second presents that strategy.

(B) The first is a consideration raised to support the strategy that the argument recommends; the second presents that strategy.

(C) The first is a consideration raised to help explain the popularity of a certain strategy; the second presents that strategy.

(D) The first is an assumption, rejected by the argument, that has been used to justify a course of action; the second presents that course of action.

E) The first is a consideration that has been used to justify a certain strategy; the second presents the intended outcome of that strategy."


OA after some discussion.

thanks david for bringing this question to attention .........ya now I realise that the question which I posted had been modified ..............for this question I would have gone with option E because

A ) uses counterproductive which is wrong
B) argument doesnt recommend the first bold portion
C) wrong because the first bold portion doesn't recommend the popularity
D) wrong because second bold portion is not the coarse of action

Second boldface is not the strategy,hence A-D not valid.
E is the best choice

This question is trickier than I thought!

Why would you guys say that the second portion is not a strategy?

Is "charging the maximum possible price for such a product" not a strategy? In fact it is a strategy. It is a strategy that is rejected by the argument -- and it is not the strategy that the argument ultimately recommends - the argument recommends charging "less that the greatest possible price." But charging the most is still a strategy.

Choice C and E each have about the same description of the first bold portion - basically it is a consideration that explains why people adopt a strategy. But E is wrong because the second portion is not "the intended outcome of that strategy." Charging the maximum possible price is a choice and therefore a strategy, it is not an outcome. An outcome would be to "make big profits" or to "get rich" or to "drive competitors out of business." These are things that are more than choices companies make they are the results of choices.

Charging the maximum possible price is not a result it is a decision and it is a strategy.

OA is C.

E without doubt

OA is C!!

See the explanation above. I now see why this question is 74/82 in the official guide. This is a hard question, seems like everyone wants to go for E, a good distraction!

A really LOVE this kind of question, for a number of reasons:

- I like tough question, only trough this you can improve your skills

- You can understand where real GMAT is.......in the use and abuse of your logic. you need to do this.

That say, the positive thing is that for a tough question I split correct and ultimately I had 2 choices AND actually at a closer look if we read this part of the passage between the two bold parts we can infer that the second is indeed a strategy

"companies want to make large profits while they still can"..........

The negative thing is that I pick the wrong answer ahhahaha, but is a learning

thanks a lot

What a wonderful question! I'm in love with the Boldface!

David@VeritasPrep wrote:OA is C!!

See the explanation above. I now see why this question is 74/82 in the official guide. This is a hard question, seems like everyone wants to go for E, a good distraction!

Hi David,

Thanks a lot for your explanation ........I am still confused with first bold phrase part i.e on the "popularity" .......please help me on clearing that

Sure,

The strategy of charging the maximum possible price for a product is a strategy. This strategy seems to be popular in that the stimulus indicates that "many" companies do this. So that is the popular strategy...but why is it popular to charge the maximum price?

That is where the first bold portion comes in...the reason it is a popular strategy to charge the largest possible amount is that "technological advances tend to be quickly surpassed" so companies better make money rapidly.

That is why the first portion is explaining the popularity.

No posting of this question that I saw anywhere had the correct wording for this as it appears in the OG. People had changed the word "popularity" to something else - perhaps to make it clearer - but this is what you would see on test day so it is good for us to struggle through it!

David@VeritasPrep wrote:Sure,

The strategy of charging the maximum possible price for a product is a strategy. This strategy seems to be popular in that the stimulus indicates that "many" companies do this. So that is the popular strategy...but why is it popular to charge the maximum price?

That is where the first bold portion comes in...the reason it is a popular strategy to charge the largest possible amount is that "technological advances tend to be quickly surpassed" so companies better make money rapidly.

That is why the first portion is explaining the popularity.

No posting of this question that I saw anywhere had the correct wording for this as it appears in the OG. People had changed the word "popularity" to something else - perhaps to make it clearer - but this is what you would see on test day so it is good for us to struggle through it!

thanks a lot David

The only reason I didn't choose C was the word 'POPULARITY'. Now I see why I was wrong.
Thanks David!

received a PM asking what I meant about this question being #74 out of 82 in the OG Verbal Review.

I mean that it appears as the 74th question out of a total of 82 and that the questions are arranged in order of increasing difficulty. So this would be considered an upper-level question.

Now I am not one to try and rate every type of question with a specific number I think that ranges of are more useful and if you divide the critical reasoning questions into quarters this would be in the top 1/4 of all CR questions as would most of the other questions with the last 15 or so in the OG Verbal Review 2nd edition book.

Just as an aside, I consider that the bold faced questions can be the most difficult questions of all the CR types. This is because, as in this question, the abstract nature of the answer choices can cause some confusion.

If you have not tried it, you might want to follow this link to what I consider to be one of the most difficult CR questions of any of the OG books. This is from the Verbal Review 1st edition.

https://www.beatthegmat.com/bold-faced-q ... 65499.html

Hi David,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us. After reading your posts, i thought to share my view also. It seems like every student has different weak areas in CR, and this also hold for SC section too. Why i'm saying this because i analyse myself.

To be very true, i find myself very much comfortable in boldface CR questions, even i think that its unfortunate for me that hardly 1 question of bold face will appear in GMAT exam. My accuracy, now in boldface questions is almost 100%, also i picked up the correct OP in both the bold face CR questions u mentioned.
My weakness is ASSUMPTION questions and other rare set of questions like "which of the following is required to evaluate the argument" etc. I take more than required time in assumption questions, because m not that confident about the answer choice i pick and then try to apply negation test again n again. Sometimes even worse thing happen that still i will not be sure so i again read the options and then finally pick on the basis of principal of elimination. Though m working hard on it and i hope to get a good command before 22nd june.

Can u please tell me from your experience, how many questions based on ASSUMPTION i can expect in GMAT????

Thanks a lot
Atul