Logical reasoning PrepTest 104 · Section 4 · Question 7

Question prompt

If you know a Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: D

The notes below walk through why it fits the stem and how to eliminate the rest.

Argument or Facts

Argument

Valid or Flawed

Flawed

Question Type

Errors in Reasoning Questions / Sufficient & Necessary Questions

Stimulus Summary

Know a lot about history → Easy to impress smart people
~Read a lot of history books → ~Know a lot about history
Therefore - ~Read a lot of history books/~Know a lot about history → ~Easy to impress smart people

Answer Anticipation

Note that this question stem specifically asks for a possibility the argument overlooks - we’ll come back to that to phrase our anticipation in a specific manner after we figure out the flaw here!
And in figuring out the flaw, there’s a huge hint - the conditional logic. In general, when there’s a lot of conditional logic in an Errors in Reasoning question, there is a Sufficient/Necessary flaw.
Here, the individual conditional statements are relatively straightforward in that they all use “if” as their indicator word. Check your diagram against ours to make sure they match!
With that done, we can see that the second premise lines up with the conclusion, but the first premise doesn’t chain with the second premise or line up with the conclusion. Rather, it’s the negation of the conditional that would allow a chain to be formed and the conclusion to be validly drawn.
To look at this another way (that’ll line up better with our opening note about the question), the argument assumes that since knowing a lot about history guarantees you can impress smart people, that not knowing a lot about history guarantees you can’t impress them. And to rephrase it to line up with the question stem, that overlooks the possibility that someone who doesn’t know a lot about history can still impress smart people (maybe by showing off knowledge of particle physics).

Answer choices

  1. A
    many intellectuals are not Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A is not credited
    What matters to the argument is whether knowing a lot about history impresses intellectuals - that doesn’t require them to be widely read/know a lot about it!

  2. B
    there are people who Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B is not credited
    The argument establishes that those who know a lot about history do impress intellectuals. This answer thus isn’t something the argument overlooks - it’s something the argument rules out.

  3. C
    it is more important Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited
    The relative importance of impressing different groups is out of scope of the argument.

  4. D
    there are other easy Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D matches the stem
    This answer matches our anticipation. The argument assumes that since knowing history impresses smart people, that not knowing history prevents you from impressing smart people. That ignores the possibility (left open by the premise) that there are other ways to impress those intellectuals, as this answer choice states.

  5. E
    people who are not Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited
    The ease of impressing non-intellectuals is out of scope of the argument.

What this tests

Question analytics

Based on historical answer selection rates for this question.

Answer choice distribution

  1. A 10%
  2. B 11%
  3. C 1%
  4. D Credited 77%
  5. E 1%

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