Critical Reasoning

What is the source of this question? You're right that the GMAT almost never has correct answers on CR that are analogies to other situations. What happened in another time or place will not necessarily be relevant to what's happening here. For that reason, I don't think this is a very good question.

That said, we're not looking for a perfect answer on CR questions, we're just looking for the least-bad. So let's break the argument down:

Premises:
- health experts agree that second-hand smoke (SHS) is a serious risk
- link between SHS and shorter life span

Conclusion:
Ban on smoking in public places will promote quality of life and length of lifespan

Logical Gaps:
- Will the ban on smoking in public places directly affect SHS exposure? Does a significant amount of SHS exposure happen in public places?
- What is the population like? If everyone is a smoker, SHS isn't relevant - first-hand smoke would be the bigger danger. If no one smokes, SHS in public places isn't much of a danger at all.
- What is the connection between SHS and quality of life?

In order to SUPPORT the argument, we need to address at least one of these logical gaps.

A. We don't care about other pollutants. This doesn't speak to the connection between the public smoking ban and SHS.

B. We don't care about reducing smokers, just reducing SHS

C. This speaks to who smokes, but not where. Maybe all of the smoking happens in the home, so we don't know if the ban will reduce SHS.

D. As I said before, other states shouldn't be relevant. But if a ban on public smoking reduced SHS, there's a chance that it could do so in this state. Weak, but it's the best we have.

E. The fact that the state is up-wind (which makes little meteorological sense) does not necessarily mean that the SHS will travel from that state to this one. Even if it did, a ban on public smoking here won't change people's behavior there.

In conclusion, this is not a great question, but D is the least terrible answer.

Hey Aditya,

I second everything Ceilidh said here, particularly that this is a bad question. To be honest, I think the case you make for (C) is pretty solid (if nobody in town smokes, it's unlikely the legislation is going to affect much of anything). And because the GMAT so seldom does what they do in (D), I also would've probably picked (C) myself. Crap question.

-t

Hey Aditya,

Yeah. No Platinum GMAT. No super GMAT. No Mega GMAT. For the love of all that is holy: stick to GMAT Prep, OG, and any of the major american companies (Manhattan Prep, Kaplan, Veritas, etc.). You shouldn't need any other books than that. There is plenty of legitimate content out there, so I don't understand the point in going to these other companies! : )

-t

aditya8062 wrote:at times i feel like challenging my mental faculties ,though i get disappointed when my basic learning and rules gets refuted by such questions

You've hit the nail on the head here! Studying from sources like these is more frustrating than it is helpful, because you'll undo the good learning you've done elsewhere. The "any practice is good practice" idea definitely isn't true on the GMAT - these do more harm than good.

Good luck!