Critical Reasoning

Noting the success of DVDs in the marketplace, the newly opened video store Movie Tapes, which sells specialty videocassettes, began an ambitious publicity campaign to promote the sale of their tapes over more technologically advanced DVDs. After six months in business, Movie Tapes found that its sales had doubled - in fact, it had sold twice as many copies of movies on tape as all the other stores in town had sold on DVD of the same movies. Clearly, the publicity campaign was responsible for Movie Tapes' video cassettes selling better than DVDs.

Which of the following, if true, casts the most serious doubt on the conclusion drawn above?

A) DVDs include special features that enhance the viewing experience.
B) The local school system uses only VCRs in the classroom.
C) Only a very small number of the movies the store sells are available on DVD.
D) A month before the campaign began, the public library started buying videocassettes to lend.
E) Neither the price of DVDs nor that of videocassettes has risen in two years.

OA: C (Kaplan)

Weaken questions can introduce new information in the options that can undermine the argument. The argument clearly sales that there are many DVD stores in business and that the tapes store did well than all of them. I chose D and not C due to the same reason. Kaplan explains that there is no evidence that public library accounts for the higher sales. However, if there are DVD selling stores in the area, why will customers buy tapes from this store rather than visiting another store?

Please clarify. Thanks!

mparakala wrote:Noting the success of DVDs in the marketplace, the newly opened video store Movie Tapes, which sells specialty videocassettes, began an ambitious publicity campaign to promote the sale of their tapes over more technologically advanced DVDs. After six months in business, Movie Tapes found that its sales had doubled - in fact, it had sold twice as many copies of movies on tape as all the other stores in town had sold on DVD of the same movies. Clearly, the publicity campaign was responsible for Movie Tapes' video cassettes selling better than DVDs.

Which of the following, if true, casts the most serious doubt on the conclusion drawn above?

A) DVDs include special features that enhance the viewing experience.
B) The local school system uses only VCRs in the classroom.
C) Only a very small number of the movies the store sells are available on DVD.
D) A month before the campaign began, the public library started buying videocassettes to lend.
E) Neither the price of DVDs nor that of videocassettes has risen in two years.

OA: C (Kaplan)

Weaken questions can introduce new information in the options that can undermine the argument. The argument clearly sales that there are many DVD stores in business and that the tapes store did well than all of them. I chose D and not C due to the same reason. Kaplan explains that there is no evidence that public library accounts for the higher sales. However, if there are DVD selling stores in the area, why will customers buy tapes from this store rather than visiting another store?

Please clarify. Thanks!

Lets say newly opened video store has 100 tapes for movie x available with them. now say there are 30 DVD store in town with only 1 copy of movie x, because people wanted to watch movie x but not all of them can get a DVD copy so they'll compromised for watching it on tapes. Hence rise in the sale of cassette is not because of campaign but because of lack of DVD available in the market. Hope it helps

D is a trap - it says one month before the campaign began where as the conclusion is based on the fact after 6 months of the campaign.

SO C is correct.