Logical reasoning PrepTest 111 · Section 3 · Question 24

Question prompt

Tony: A new kind Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: C

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

Argument or Facts

Argument/Facts

Valid or Flawed

Flawed/NA

Question Type

Strengthen Questions

Stimulus Summary

T: New tapes last half as long but cost a third as much, so video rental stores should buy movies on the new tapes.
A: The tape cost is about 5% of total cost, with most of the price being royalties, and they’d have to pay the latter on additional copies.

Answer Anticipation

We’re switching gears now and trying to find an answer that would serve as a solid rebuttal for Tony against Anna’s reply. You can view this as either a Strengthen question for Tony’s argument, or a Weaken question for Anna’s reply. We think it’s better to view it as a Weaken question, though, since it’s specifically asking for a counter to Anna’s rebuttal.
There, Anna weighs the relative costs to the movie rental store of buying tapes to rent. The cost of the cassette itself is only about 5% of the total paid. The majority is licensing fees, which would need to be paid on any new copies that are purchased when the old ones wear out.
So Tony needs to address these relative costs and the economics to the store. He could highlight that the royalty fee wouldn’t add much additional cost - maybe it’s the case that the vast majority of tapes stop being popular well before they’d wear out even on the less durable cassettes, and so that second royalty fee would never be paid. Or maybe there’s another significant cost that would be less with the new tapes - after all, we’ve only accounted for 55% of the cost. Maybe the remaining 45% would be lower with the new cassettes, thus leading to an economical option.
Anything that suggests the new tapes are a better deal, or the royalties aren’t as big of a deal as Anna suggests, will serve as a solid rebuttal here.

Answer choices

  1. A
    The price that video Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A is not credited
    This comparison is out of scope. What matters is the costs of the new versus the old cassettes, not what the stores pay versus what consumers pay.
  2. B
    A significant proportion of Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B is not credited
    This answer establishes that the video store should expect to replace cassettes, which means they’d be paying the royalties out twice and thus Anna’s rebuttal is legitimate. In strengthening her rebuttal, this answer does the opposite of what we’re looking for.
  3. C
    The royalty fee included Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C matches the stem
    This answer establishes that the royalty costs for the new cassettes will be less, making the double-paying of it less of a concern than Anna makes it out to be. It strengthens Tony’s argument that the new cassettes will be economical and weakens Anna’s that they won’t be by showing that a cost Anna brings up will be much lower than anticipated.
  4. D
    Given a choice, customers Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D is not credited
    Neither speaker brings up the rental cost, let alone puts forward that it may be more than half the purchase cost, so this answer is out of scope.
  5. E
    Many of the movies Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited
    If anything, this answer suggests that the tapes would wear out after fewer rentals, since there are multiple viewings per rental (and only one fee paid), thus calling the economics of switching to a less durable tape into question. That lines up with Anna’s response, not Tony’s argument, so this answer is incorrect.

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 Credited 76%
  4. D 2%
  5. E 1%

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