Critical Reasoning

Press Secretary: Our critics claim that the president's recent highway project cancellations demonstrate a vindictive desire to punish legislative districts controlled by opposition parties. They offer as evidence the fact that 90 percent of the projects canceled were in such districts. But all of the canceled projects had been identified as wasteful in a report written by respected nonpartisan auditors. So the president's choice was clearly motivated by sound budgetary policy, not partisan politics.

Which of the following is an assumption on which the press secretary's argument depends?

a. Canceling highway projects was not the only way for the president to punish legislative districts controlled by opposition parties.

b. The scheduled highway projects identified as wasteful in the report were not mostly projects in districts controlled by the president's party.

c. the number of projects canceled was a significant proportion of all the high way projects that were to be undertaken by the government in the near future.

d. The highway projects canceled in districts controlled by the president's party were not generally more expensive than the projects canceled in districts controlled by opposition parties.

e. Reports by nonpartisan auditors are not generally regarded byt the opposition parties as a source of objective assessments of government projects.

IMO B

I'd go with (D) on this one.


What's the source and OA?

IMO E.

OA is B. this is from GMAC, so its right. I just don't know why. It seems B is the opposite of what we want. I chose E also.

hmm..is this question from gmat prep test? I sort of see what choice (B) is doing but the conclusion is about sound budgetary policy... Need an expert's opinion here.

It's not E -- E states that nonpartisan reports are not regarded by opposition parties as objective, and the press secretary is offering up a nonpartisan report as an example of how objective the president is being.

--

B, on the other hand, is essential to the press secretary's argument.

Here's what we know:
- The president is canceling highway project
- 90% of those canceled projects are in opposing parties' districts
- A nonpartisan (neutral) report shows which projects are wasteful
- All of the canceled projects were listed in that report

Here's what we don't know:
- Whether there are more projects listed in the report that were not canceled.

So, if the report shows 100 wasteful projects, 90 of which are in the opposing parties' districts and 10 of which are in the president's districts, and the president canceled all of them, then that is probably legit. The president isn't trying to hate on the opposing parties, they're just trying to keep it real (and not wasteful) -- not their fault that the opposing parties' districts' highway projects suck!

But if the report shows 100 wasteful projects, 90 of which are in the president's district and 10 of which are in the opposing parties' districts, and the president canceled...10 of them, 1 from his/her district and 9 from the opposing parties' districts...that is probably not legit. Sketchball!

Probably not.

So B -- which states that the wasteful projects identified in the report were not mostly projects in districts controlled by the president's party -- is necessary for the press secretary's argument.

I received a PM asking me to respond. I actually wrote this in a different thread yesterday, and my explanation was very similar to Mitch's

A--other means of punishment are irrelevant.

B--We know that all of the canceled projects were identified as wasteful, but we don't know how many total projects (including ones that weren't canceled) were identified as wasteful. Say there were a total of 50 projects identified as wasteful. If 10 were in the opposition districts and 40 were in the friendly districts, then the fact that 90% of canceled projects were in the opposition districts could lend evidence to the accusations of punishment.

C--total number of projects is irrelevant

D--Project cost is not mentioned

E--this weakens the conclusion

[quote]When STATISTICS are offered as evidence, the assumption is that there is ONLY ONE WAY to interpret the statistics. [/quote]

Mitch, Please elaborate it as I always get wrong on Statistics CR questions.

GMATGuruNY wrote:When STATISTICS are offered as evidence, the assumption is that there is ONLY ONE WAY to interpret the statistics.

Hi GMATGuruNY,
Can you please clarify how exactly your above quote is important here ?

And offhand, do we have any other official CR in which the above quote is in play ?

Hi Verbal experts,
Could you please let me know Why option C is wrong ?

And please let me know whether my followings reasons are correct to eliminate A & D:

Option A is wrong because A doesn't shed any light on the CONCLUSION. Moreover, the use of EXTREME WORD such as "ONLY" makes it less viable since this is an ASSUMPTION CR and MUST BE TRUE aspect should hold good here! Right ?

Option D is wrong because we already know from the ARGUMENT that auditors were nonpartisan. So, any answer choice that seems to go against that premise (at least raises doubt about the premise) should be eliminated because we can't attack the PREMISE in the ARGUMENT. Right ?

Press Secretary: Our critics claim that the president's recent highway project cancellations demonstrate a vindictive desire to punish legislative districts controlled by opposition parties. They offer as evidence the fact that 90 percent of the projects canceled were in such districts. But all of the canceled projects had been identified as wasteful in a report written by respected nonpartisan auditors. So the president's choice was clearly motivated by sound budgetary policy, not partisan politics.

Which of the following is an assumption on which the press secretary's argument depends?

a. Canceling highway projects was not the only way for the president to punish legislative districts controlled by opposition parties.

b. The scheduled highway projects identified as wasteful in the report were not mostly projects in districts controlled by the president's party.

c. the number of projects canceled was a significant proportion of all the high way projects that were to be undertaken by the government in the near future.

d. The highway projects canceled in districts controlled by the president's party were not generally more expensive than the projects canceled in districts controlled by opposition parties.

e. Reports by nonpartisan auditors are not generally regarded byt the opposition parties as a source of objective assessments of government projects.

Hi Verbal experts,
Could you please let me know Why option C is wrong ?

C is irrelevant. Let's say there are 10 projects that have been canceled. 9 of them are in areas dominated by the opposition party. We're trying to determine whether the canceled projects are disproportionately weighted towards opposition areas because of political bias (the critics' claim) or because it just happens to be the case that the most wasteful projects are randomly located in certain areas (the press secretary's claim.)

Who cares how many uncanceled projects there are? If there are 10 uncanceled projects, that sheds no light on whether institutional bias accounts for the lopsided distribution of the canceled projects, and if there are 10,000 uncanceled projects, it sheds no light on the bias issue.

Option A is wrong because A doesn't shed any light on the CONCLUSION. Moreover, the use of EXTREME WORD such as "ONLY" makes it less viable since this is an ASSUMPTION CR and MUST BE TRUE aspect should hold good here! Right ?

Yep

Option D is wrong because we already know from the ARGUMENT that auditors were nonpartisan. So, any answer choice that seems to go against that premise (at least raises doubt about the premise) should be eliminated because we can't attack the PREMISE in the ARGUMENT. Right ?

Not necessarily. While we do know that the canceled projects, according to the report, were wasteful, we don't know if some were more wasteful than others. Say the bridges in towns A, B, and C are all in opposition areas and are $10,000,000 over budget. And say the tunnel in town D (an area that supports the president) is $100,000,000 over budget, all of the projects might be canceled, but 75% of the canceled projects are still in opposition areas. To put it another way, there's a difference between discussing what percentage of over budget towns are in opposition ares and how over-budget they are.