"good" knewton CR

[bblast]

Mayor: The city council wants to remove all public pay telephones from the city's downtown district, because these telephones are eyesores. The council claims that the pay telephones are no longer necessary, because almost everyone who works or shops downtown owns a personal cellular telephone. But downtown is also home to a significant number of residents who do not own cellular phones. Therefore, in order to provide these residents with access to telephones, some public pay telephones are still necessary in the downtown district.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the mayor's argument?


(A) Cellular telephones are frequently rendered useless because their batteries tend to die quickly.

(B) Public pay telephones usually provide poorer reception at a greater cost than personal cellular telephones.

(C) Phone company data indicates that most of the telephone calls placed in the city originate in the downtown district.

(D) Virtually every downtown residence is equipped with a telephone.

(E) Prank emergency calls from downtown pay phones cost the city more than one million dollars each year.

D

[GmatKiss]

Mayor: The city council wants to remove all public pay telephones from the city's downtown district, because these telephones are eyesores. The council claims that the pay telephones are no longer necessary, because almost everyone who works or shops downtown owns a personal cellular telephone. But downtown is also home to a significant number of residents who do not own cellular phones. Therefore, in order to provide these residents with access to telephones, some public pay telephones are still necessary in the downtown district.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the mayor's argument?

We are looking for a factor which favors to remove all public paying telephones!


(A) Cellular telephones are frequently rendered useless because their batteries tend to die quickly.
(Talks about cellphones alone -Out of scope )

(B) Public pay telephones usually provide poorer reception at a greater cost than personal cellular telephones. Contender (Compares PPT with cellphones, but does not answer our need!)

(C) Phone company data indicates that most of the telephone calls placed in the city originate in the downtown district. ( The calls need not always be from the public paying telephones)

(D) Virtually every downtown residence is equipped with a telephone. WINNER ( Gives us a strong statement which says, every person has a telephone at home! So what's the need for public paying telephone? )

(E) Prank emergency calls from downtown pay phones cost the city more than one million dollars each year. - contender, but we are not sure if one million dollars, is considered huge in the budget of the city.

pls discuss

IMO:D

[saketk]

Mayor: The city council wants to remove all public pay telephones from the city's downtown district, because these telephones are eyesores. The council claims that the pay telephones are no longer necessary, because almost everyone who works or shops downtown owns a personal cellular telephone. But downtown is also home to a significant number of residents who do not own cellular phones. Therefore, in order to provide these residents with access to telephones, some public pay telephones are still necessary in the downtown district.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the mayor's argument?


(A) Cellular telephones are frequently rendered useless because their batteries tend to die quickly.

(B) Public pay telephones usually provide poorer reception at a greater cost than personal cellular telephones.

(C) Phone company data indicates that most of the telephone calls placed in the city originate in the downtown district.

(D) Virtually every downtown residence is equipped with a telephone.

(E) Prank emergency calls from downtown pay phones cost the city more than one million dollars each year.

pls discuss

Hi-- We can safely eliminate A,C, and E. All these statements are irrelevant. To weaken the Mayor's argument we must show that although Downtown residents do not own a cellular telephone, they have some other means (like personal telephones at home) and therefore do not require public telephone...

This information is provided by option D.

Although option B is a contender- Although it provides us the information about the poor service of the public telephone,but it does not provide any support to weaken the conclusion that phones are not required at all...

[taneja.niks]

What is the answer??? B looks better to me the only thing with D is it says "Telephone" but the stimulus is all abt pay phone or cellular phone....

[prateek_guy2004]

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the mayor's argument?

Guys isint this ques asking about the weakening part.....Mayor is in favor of removing all public pay telephones..and ques asks to weaken his conclusion

[spoiler](A) Cellular telephones are frequently rendered useless because their batteries tend to die quickly.

I dont know if i am not getting the ques???????[/spoiler]

[taneja.niks]

Th mayor is not in the favor of removing the pay phones it is the cit council that is in the favor of it.... I think so atleast

[prateek_guy2004]

Well the statements starts with mayor but the conclusion says that there should be some telephones......Blah Blah

I dont know little confuse about this 1

[David@VeritasPrep]

First of all, I am not sure about the title. This seems like a decent question to me.


prateek -

The mayor is saying, "some public pay telephones are still necessary in the downtown district."

As GMATKiss mentions above, we are trying to weaken this argument. So we are going to take the answer that points to the opposite of this. In other words we want the answer that says "we can get rid of all pay phones in the downtown district."

Now, it will help to understand why the mayor thinks we still need pay phones. The Most Important Premise that the mayor relies on is "downtown is also home to a significant number of residents who do not own cellular phones."

So we need to find something that allows people who do not have cell phones, to still have access to a phone. Choice D is the correct answer because it gives you a reason to know that even those people in downtown who have no cell phone still have a regular phone at home.

Taneja - I see what you mean about just saying "phone" but in this context D is not mentioning a cell phone or a pay phone but a "home phone" that is the regular phone wired to the house.

B is not as good because we are attempting to simply provide residents with "access to telephones" not with better sound quality or something.

[czarczar]

Conclusion is : in order to provide these residents with access to telephones, some public pay telephones are still necessary in the downtown district.

Virtually every downtown residence is equipped with a telephone. Conclusion, falls apart.

[bblast]

Thank you David for the thoughts. The title was probably stemmed from a reaction to the fact that I missed this question.

[prateek_guy2004]

David@VeritasPrep

Thank you for showing the right approach now i get this ques.....

[artistocrat]

I read the Mayor's conclusion as there is a scarcity of phones that needs to be addressed. The solution: pay phones. If there is an abundance of phones available to downtown residents at their home address, then it weakens the force of the conclusion. Experts, am I on the right track here?

If you read the conclusion as relating to costs and utility, then B would be tempting.

Just my humble opinion.