Logical reasoning PrepTest 107 · Section 1 · Question 1

Question prompt

Politician: The funding for Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: A

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

Argument or Facts

Argument/Argument

Valid or Flawed

Flawed/Flawed

Question Type

Point at Issue Questions

Stimulus Summary

P: Smoking causes expensive health problems, so the health-awareness campaign should be funded with a cigarette tax.
S: Fatty foods also cause expensive health problems, but it wouldn’t be fair to fund the campaign with a fatty food tax.

Answer Anticipation

Whenever the second speaker in a Point at Issue question starts with “But…” it’s important to figure out what that speaker is pivoting away from.
Here, the Smoker pivots to an analogous situation to the Politician - the Smoker discusses fatty foods, whereas the Politician discusses smoking. However, despite the similarities between the two, the Smoker says that it would be unreasonable to make those who buy fatty foods fund the health-awareness program with a tax.
That’s a common method of reasoning (which we’ll talk about in the next question) - using an analogous situation to show that an opposing point’s logic, applied in a similar context, leads to an undesirable or illogical conclusion.
Since the Smoker disagrees with the Politician’s logic, believing it leads to a ridiculous conclusion, we should look for an answer highlighting that. Here, that means an answer stating that it’s unreasonable to make smokers pay for the health-awareness campaign just because smoking causes health issues.

Answer choices

  1. A
    whether the politician's proposal Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A matches the stem
    This answer doesn’t get into the reasoning, but it does get at the divergent conclusions. The Politician believes that it’s reasonable to fund a health-awareness campaign with a tax on cigarettes. The Smoker believes that it’s unreasonable based on the fact that the logic leading to that proposal could justify an unreasonable argument about making those who buy fatty foods funding it. Since the Politician believes his proposal is reasonable and the Smoker believes it is unreasonable, this is the correct answer.
  2. B
    whether smokers are more Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B is not credited
    Awareness is out of scope of an argument over whether it’s reasonable to fund a health program with taxes on certain unhealthy habits.
  3. C
    whether the effects of Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited
    The Politician doesn’t discuss fatty foods, so he can’t compare the two. The Smoker treats the health hazard of the two unhealthy habits as comparable, so she doesn’t debate whether one is a greater health hazard than the other - as long as they’re close enough, her rebuttal works.
  4. D
    whether it is unreasonable Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D is not credited
    There’s no discussion of who benefits from this program, so this answer is out of scope.
  5. E
    whether the proposed increase Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited
    The discussion is over reasonableness, not efficiency, so this answer is out of scope.

What this tests

Question analytics

Based on historical answer selection rates for this question.

Answer choice distribution

  1. A Credited 80%
  2. B 2%
  3. C 3%
  4. D 7%
  5. E 8%

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