Table Analysis

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Table Analysis

by DanaJ » Mon Mar 26, 2012 8:08 am
For info on IR, go to the official website: www.mba.com/the-gmat/nex-gen/integrated ... rmats.aspx

The instructions for this new question type are as follows:

Sort the table to organize the data so you can determine whether certain conditions are met. Each question will have statements with opposing answers (e.g., yes/no, true/false, inferable/not inferable); select one answer for each statement.

Check out one of the questions GMAC released on its website by going to this link: https://www.mba.com/the-gmat/nex-gen/sam ... 5?next=yes It's harder to copy-paste the text of this question in the forums because we can't use the sort function at the top. However, here's a screenshot of the screen:

Image

To answer this question, you need to first read the title of the table: Percentage of Population Visiting Selected Cultural Institutions, Single Year. The first column includes the names of various countries, while the next columns indicate the percentage of the population who's been to a library, zoo/aquarium etc. in the past year. The question asks you to evaluate whether some pieces of information are relevant or not in explaining the differences between countries in the table. That means you need to ask yourself: if this information is true, then does this help explain why X country has a higher/lower percentage than Y country?

1. The proportion of the population of Brazil that lives within close proximity to at least one museum is larger than that of Russia.

Seems like 7 + 4 = 11% Brazilians went to museums last year, while only 5 + 2 = 7% of Russians did that. Would proximity to a museum help explain the difference in percentage? The answer is YES, since being close to a museum makes it much more convenient to go there (less time traveling, less money spent on the trip to the museum). This means you need to tick the Would help explain button in front of that piece of information.

2. Of the countries/political unions in the table, Russia has the fewest natural history museums per capita.

Here, the answer is again YES, this would help explain the lower proportion. If there are few museums per capita in Russia, then it makes sense that a smaller proportion of people would visit. Again, select Would help explain.

3. Of the countries/political unions in the table, the three that spend the most money to promote their natural history museums are also those in which science is most highly valued.

This makes sense logically, but there's no real connection between this and the percentage of the population who visited museums. Spending money to promote natural history museums and valuing science could potentially generate more visits to museums, but at the same time there are scenarios where this doesn't pan out (i.e. marketing is expensive but ineffective; they value science but prefer to focus on other types of learning vs. visiting museums). This time around, select Would not help explain.

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by vishalwin » Sat Dec 05, 2015 8:53 pm
DanaJ wrote:
2. Of the countries/political unions in the table, Russia has the fewest natural history museums per capita.

Here, the answer is again YES, this would help explain the lower proportion. If there are few museums per capita in Russia, then it makes sense that a smaller proportion of people would visit. Again, select Would help explain.


Hi,

How can we say that "Russia has the fewest natural history museums per capita"?

We don't know the population of Russia and I think

natural history museums per capita = Total number of natural history museums in Russia/Total population

Can you Please explain.
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by DavidG@VeritasPrep » Sun Dec 06, 2015 10:04 am
vishalwin wrote:
DanaJ wrote:
2. Of the countries/political unions in the table, Russia has the fewest natural history museums per capita.

Here, the answer is again YES, this would help explain the lower proportion. If there are few museums per capita in Russia, then it makes sense that a smaller proportion of people would visit. Again, select Would help explain.


Hi,

How can we say that "Russia has the fewest natural history museums per capita"?

We don't know the population of Russia and I think

natural history museums per capita = Total number of natural history museums in Russia/Total population

Can you Please explain.
We're not asked to determine if it's true that Russia has the fewest museums per capita - you're right that we don't have enough information from the table to know one way or another. We're asked to assess potential explanations for why such a small percentage of Russians visit museums. So the relevant question here is if it were the case that Russia had the fewest museums per capita, would that help explain why such a small percentage of Russians visit museums? Yes, it would.
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