When people engage

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When people engage

by akhpad » Mon Oct 17, 2011 9:41 pm
Source: GMAT Prep

When people engage in activities that help others, their brain releases endorphins, the brain's natural opiates, which induce in people a feeling of well-being. It has been suggested that regular release of endorphins increases people's longevity. And a statistic on adults who regularly engage in volunteer work helping others shows that they live longer, on average, than adults who do not volunteer. However, that statistic would be what we would expect even if volunteering does not boost longevity, because ________________________

Which of the following most logically completes the argument?

A. In the communities studied, women were much more likely to do regular volunteer work than men were, and women tend to live longer than men do.
B. The number of young adults who do regular volunteer work is on the increase
C. The feelings of well-being induced by endorphins can, at least for a time, mask the symptoms of various conditions and diseases, provided the symptoms are mild.
D. It is rare for a person to keep up a regular schedule of volunteer work throughout his or her life.
E. Some people find that keeping a commitment to do regular volunteer work becomes a source of stress in their lives.

Analysis:
statistic: adults who regularly engage in volunteer work helping others live longer, on average, than adults who do not volunteer.
However, above statics sill true even if volunteering does not boost longevity.

volunteer work (VW) leads to Live longer (LL)
However, that statistics occurs even if volunteer work (VW) does not lead to Live longer (LL)

So, there may be some other reason. I am unable to fit option A here.

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by pemdas » Mon Oct 17, 2011 11:25 pm
though easy one, i believe the corner stone in this q. is slight paradox effect
inside of this q. you may observe longevity is concluded as the result of endorphins

to prove conclusion, an author uses example (evidence) when people help others and how long they live

the evidence object is longevity and subject is volunteering
READ FROM HERE ==> volunteering may lead to longer lives not necessarily because of longevity

LONGEVITY=result of endorphins

what to look in here: volunteering results in longer lives but does not lead to longevity (or fails to prove the conclusion in the way it was suggested, i.e. this is weak evidence)

choice A nails it ==> volunteering led to longer lives because of women living longer than men. Somehow it comes the endorphins are not THE ONLY accountable for longevity. Women just live longer ...

it took me 2 min-s to analyze the stimulus and i opted A after a quick review of B-E
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by lunarpower » Tue Oct 18, 2011 2:32 am
basically, here's what going on here.

* the passage has noticed a CORRELATION between volunteerism and long life.

* the passage is questioning the notion that volunteerism CAUSES longer life.

takeaway:
in any passage that takes CORRELATION and concludes CAUSATION, that connection can be destroyed if either:
(a) the causation actually runs the other way around (i.e., the passage concludes that X causes Y, but in actuality Y causes X);
(b) the two correlated things are both results of some third, not considered, confounding factor.

as an example of (b):
there is a strong correlation between the # of churches and the # of murders in american cities: the more churches, the more murders.
however, there is no causation at work here (churches don't cause murders, and murders don't cause the building of churches), because both of these factors are caused by a third factor: the SIZE of the city. (IE larger cities have both more churches and more murders.)

--

in this case, the GMAT of the volunteers is the "third, not considered, thing" that destroys the hypothesis of causal connection between volunteerism and long life.

hope that helps.
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by akhpad » Tue Oct 18, 2011 7:28 am
Thanks Ron.

I saw this explanation on MGMAT forum sometime back.

I believe that I was taking option A differently.
FACT 1: women were much more likely to do regular volunteer work than men were
FACT 2: women tend to live longer than men do
These two are separate facts. Option A says that women live longer and do more volunteer work but volunteer work has nothing to do with living longer.

Can we re-write A as below?
Women who do more regular volunteer work than men do tend to live longer. Is it still same as option A? I was confused here only.

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by briology » Tue Oct 18, 2011 8:18 am
Can we re-write A as below?
Women who do more regular volunteer work than men do tend to live longer. Is it still same as option A? I was confused here only.
Phrased this way, I don't think A works anymore. Your re-phrase qualifies women as women WHO do more volunteer work than men tend to live longer. Meaning, not just any woman, but a woman who volunteers more often than men (in general) will live longer. Written this way, volunteering more could still be the source of 'living longer'. Hope this helps.

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by lunarpower » Sun Oct 23, 2011 11:49 pm
briology wrote:
Can we re-write A as below?
Women who do more regular volunteer work than men do tend to live longer. Is it still same as option A? I was confused here only.
Phrased this way, I don't think A works anymore. Your re-phrase qualifies women as women WHO do more volunteer work than men tend to live longer. Meaning, not just any woman, but a woman who volunteers more often than men (in general) will live longer. Written this way, volunteering more could still be the source of 'living longer'. Hope this helps.
this is spot on; i don't have much to add. nicely done.

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here's an analogy of the current problem:

Among children aged 2-10 years old, larger foot size correlates very closely to larger vocabulary. However, even if learning more words doesn't make children's feet grow, we would still expect this effect, because....

the correct answer (a) corresponds to something like In the age range 2-10, children's feet continue to grow as they get older; also, children continue to acquire vocabulary words as they get older.
--> the whole point is that these effects are independent of each other! because they both correlate to increased age, foot size and vocabulary size will be artificially correlated to each other as well (even though there is obviously no causal relationship between foot size and vocabulary size).
same thing in the problem at hand.
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by andy2 » Tue Jul 14, 2015 3:46 am
Dear Ron,
So, I understand that I need to look for some evidence which proves that something else besides the volunteering lead to the longivity. So option A as an answer is still confusing because it looks like option A says that women lives longer than men because women do more regular volunteer work. But we are looking for something that 's isolated from the volunteering. Can you please how it fits as an correct answer? Should I just ignore the first part hat women do more regular volunteering than men?


A. In the communities studied, women were much more likely to do regular volunteer work than men were, and women tend to live longer than men do.

Thanks in advance
Andy

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by andy2 » Tue Jul 14, 2015 3:46 am
Dear Ron,
So, I understand that I need to look for some evidence which proves that something else besides the volunteering lead to the longivity. So option A as an answer is still confusing because it looks like option A says that women lives longer than men because women do more regular volunteer work. But we are looking for something that 's isolated from the volunteering. Can you please how it fits as an correct answer? Should I just ignore the first part hat women do more regular volunteering than men?


A. In the communities studied, women were much more likely to do regular volunteer work than men were, and women tend to live longer than men do.

Thanks in advance
Andy

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by lunarpower » Fri Jul 17, 2015 11:18 am
interesting... resurrecting a thread that's almost 4 years old!
andy2 wrote:So option A as an answer is still confusing because it looks like option A says that women lives longer than men because women do more regular volunteer work.
nope.

first, you should IMMEDIATELY reject this interpretation, because this is not how the GMAT operates.
we're trying to show that this is NOT a cause/effect relationship.
so, NO answer choice will state (DIRECTLY) that it IS a cause/effect relationship.

this is just how the test works:
if your goal is to show 'X' thing, then ...
...NO answer choice will directly tell you 'X',
and
...NO answer choice will directly tell you 'Not X'.


--

what you're getting wrong here is that choice A consists of two completely separate observations.
note that the statements are connected just by 'and'.
NOT 'and thus'
NOT 'and so'
NOT 'therefore'
and so on.

if two statements are connected by plain 'and', the implication is that they are NOT cause and effect--just as in SC problems.
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by lunarpower » Fri Jul 17, 2015 11:19 am
if you are still confused, just replace 'volunteer' with 'wear dresses', and that should make the logic easier to understand.

i will explain in more detail below.
but, BEFORE YOU SCROLL DOWN TO THE NEXT POST, actually make that substitution (take out 'volunteer' and put in 'wear dresses') in the passage and in choice A. then think through the logic and see whether it makes more sense.
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by lunarpower » Fri Jul 17, 2015 11:23 am
here's how the problem works if you make the substitution i described above.

* people who wear dresses live longer than people who don't. (this is a statistical FACT. we want to explain it.)

* it's doubtful that wearing dresses actually extends a person's life span, so we need another explanation.
in my example this is simple common sense-obviously your clothes don't make you live longer; it would be ridiculous to think they do (and that's why this analogy should be easier to understand!).
in the original this is less obvious, because the whole endorphin explanation is actually somewhat plausible (= it's not totally ridiculous).
regardless, 'we're looking for an alternate explanation' is common to both.

* oh hey, MOST people who wear dresses are... WOMEN.

* WE KNOW, SEPARATELY, that women tend to live longer FOR REASONS THAT ARE NOT STATED HERE.
these reasons may not even be known at all... but that's not the point.
the point is that 'women live longer' is given as a separate fact in choice A.

* and there's your alternate explanation.
it's not 'dresses cause longer life'.
rather, both 'dresses' and 'longer life' are associated with being a woman.
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by andy2 » Fri Jul 17, 2015 5:01 pm
Hi Ron,
I can't thank you enough for your kind explanation.
I think I understand now. I should be take what's written as it is ("and" in this case) and should not translate my own.

Thanks!
Have a great day
Andy

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by andy2 » Fri Jul 17, 2015 6:21 pm
Hi Ron,
Please excuse me for bothering you again with this topic.
But when I just thought I understood this, another question just hit me.
If I replace "dress" with "regular volunteering", it makes total sense that they are two unrelated factors. Dress and longivity.
But in the stimulus, it seems like it is explaining that "helping others (volunteering) -> endorphins -> longevigy".

So in the option B), "wome are more likely to do the regular volutneering work" automatically makes me think women will have more endorphins, which will eventaully lead women to live longer.
But should I ignore the relationship form the stimulus ("volunteering->endorphins->longivity") to infer my own translation and just focus on "and" in the option B) to separate two events just because it did not say "thus" or "becasue"?

Please shed some light.
Always thanks for :)

Regards
Andy

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by lunarpower » Thu Jul 23, 2015 11:21 pm
andy2 wrote: But should I ignore the relationship form the stimulus ("volunteering->endorphins->longivity")
of these two 'arrows', only the first is actually substantiated by the passage.

as far as the second arrow, note that the passage says...
It has been suggested that regular release of endorphins increases people's longevity

...in other words, 'Some people say endorphins make you live longer.'

now, think about WHY someone would mention that 'someone else says' something. (hint: it's NOT because the speaker subscribes to the same idea.)
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by lunarpower » Thu Jul 23, 2015 11:30 pm
more directly...

in EVERYDAY CONVERSATION, Some people say... is almost invariably** followed by something with which the speaker DOES NOT agree. (at the very least, the speaker will generally entertain the possibility that whatever 'some people say' is false.)

if this is not obvious, just think of specific examples, and it should become apparent quickly.

e.g.,
if i start off with
Lots of people say that eating fruit is 'good for you'
then...
...you would DEFINITELY expect me to start talking about some situation(s) in which it's a BAD idea to eat fruit.
...if i expressed agreement with that idea, you'd be confused. (if i believed this were true, i'd just say Eating fruit is good for you-there would be no need to appeal to the perspective of some vaguely defined 'other person').

just keep in mind that these passages will present ideas just as in normal human conversation.
you will NEVER see a 'trick question' in which the transitions make you think 'X' but then they give you 'not X'.
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