CR PROBLEM - Q3

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CR PROBLEM - Q3

by confuse mind » Mon Aug 13, 2012 6:06 pm
There are about 75 brands of microwave popcorn on the market; altogether, they account for a little over half of the money from sales of microwave food products. It takes three minutes to pop corn in the microwave, compared to seven minutes to pop corn conventionally. Yet by weight, microwave popcorn typically costs over five times as much as conventional popcorn. Judging by the popularity of microwave popcorn, many people are willing to pay a high price for just a little additional convenience.
If the statements in the passage are true, which one of the following must also be true?
(A) No single brand of microwave popcorn accounts for a large share of microwave food product sales.
(B) There are more brands of microwave popcorn on the market than there are of any other microwave food product.
(C) By volume, more microwave popcorn is sold than is conventional popcorn.
(D) More money is spent on microwave food products that take three minutes or less to cook than on microwave food products that take longer to cook.
(E) Of the total number of microwave food products on the market, most are microwave popcorn products.
[spoiler]
IMO - C OA - D[/spoiler]
Source: — Critical Reasoning |

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by alex.gellatly » Mon Aug 13, 2012 7:20 pm
confuse mind wrote:There are about 75 brands of microwave popcorn on the market; altogether, they account for a little over half of the money from sales of microwave food products. It takes three minutes to pop corn in the microwave, compared to seven minutes to pop corn conventionally. Yet by weight, microwave popcorn typically costs over five times as much as conventional popcorn. Judging by the popularity of microwave popcorn, many people are willing to pay a high price for just a little additional convenience.<--This is our conclusion. Our task is to find which must be true given this statement.
If the statements in the passage are true, which one of the following must also be true?
(A) No single brand of microwave popcorn accounts for a large share of microwave food product sales. This cannot be inferred
(B) There are more brands of microwave popcorn on the market than there are of any other microwave food product. This cannot be inferred
(C) By volume, more microwave popcorn is sold than is conventional popcorn. Although the statement states that microwave popcorn is popular and people will pay more for it, we cannot infer that more is sold than conventional. The statement gives no indication or data to support this. Perhaps restaurants, movie theaters, and ect, still use conventional popcorn(and more of it). We simply don't know.
(D) More money is spent on microwave food products that take three minutes or less to cook than on microwave food products that take longer to cook. This clearly restates the conclusion. If people pay more money for faster and more convenient popcorn, then they will do this with other products as well.
(E) Of the total number of microwave food products on the market, most are microwave popcorn products. The statement states that little over half of the money from microwave sales comes from popcorn, we don't know how many products there are.
[spoiler]
The correct answer is D
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by confuse mind » Wed Aug 15, 2012 6:01 am
confuse mind wrote:There are about 75 brands of microwave popcorn on the market; altogether, they account for a little over half of the money from sales of microwave food products. It takes three minutes to pop corn in the microwave, compared to seven minutes to pop corn conventionally. Yet by weight, microwave popcorn typically costs over five times as much as conventional popcorn. Judging by the popularity of microwave popcorn, many people are willing to pay a high price for just a little additional convenience.
If the statements in the passage are true, which one of the following must also be true?
(A) No single brand of microwave popcorn accounts for a large share of microwave food product sales.
(B) There are more brands of microwave popcorn on the market than there are of any other microwave food product.
(C) By volume, more microwave popcorn is sold than is conventional popcorn.
(D) More money is spent on microwave food products that take three minutes or less to cook than on microwave food products that take longer to cook.
(E) Of the total number of microwave food products on the market, most are microwave popcorn products.
[spoiler]
IMO - C OA - D[/spoiler]

I got it correct later on!

This is an inference question and thus may not even touch the conclusion in the inference(correct answer).
This is what exactly happening here.

Conclusion - many people are willing to pay a high price for just a little additional convenience

It says Many and thus we have no statistics to infer C.

The first line -
There are about 75 brands of microwave popcorn on the market; altogether, they account for a little over half of the money from sales of microwave food products

helps to infer D.

Another inference which I can make as an example:

More money is spent on microwave food products that take 4 minutes or less to cook than on microwave food products that take longer to cook.

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by crisro » Wed Aug 15, 2012 7:55 pm
they account for a little over half of the money from sales of microwave food products
That's what option D is saying.

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by hjafferi » Wed Aug 22, 2012 7:03 am
Rushed this question. Got it wrong. Chose C

Agree with explanation by Alex. Answer should be D