Logical reasoning PrepTest 118 · Section 4 · Question 22

Incorrect. In order to reach the conclusion, the correct answer will need to be a conditional, not a quantified statement, so we can eliminate this answer as soon as it starts with "Few."

Incorrect. In order to reach the conclusion, the correct answer will need to be a conditional, not a quantified statement, so we can eliminate this answer as soon as it starts with "Few."

Incorrect. Played on radio → Believed to sell well. So close, but a reversal of what we're looking for!

Incorrect. In order to reach the conclusion, the correct answer will need to be a conditional, not a quantified statement, so we can eliminate this answer as soon as it starts with "Most."

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen with Sufficient Premise

Stimulus Summary:
Transferred to CD → Believed to sell well
Classic jazz-most-not Played on radio
Therefore: Classic jazz-most- not Transferred to CD

Answer Anticipation:
First, note the way we diagrammed the "few" sentence. "Few" means that some do, but most don't. (Compare this to "A few," which just means that some do.)

With that out of the way and the statements diagrammed, we need to start lining them up so we can work with them. Using the conclusion as a guide for what terms we're trying to line up, we can see that we need to take the contrapositive of the first conditional to get terms to match:

not Believed to sell well → not Transferred to CDClassic jazz-most-not Played on radio

With the two premises lined up, we can start to think about how to combine them to reach the conclusion. To get a most inference, we need to combine a most statement with a conditional in the following form: A-most-B; B → C. (If that's not second nature, start studying quantifiers more!) We have A-most-B and C → D here, so we need to connect B and C—not Played on radio → not Believed to sell well. With that gap filled, we have:

Classic jazz-most-not Played on radio
(not Played on radio → not Believed to sell well)
not Believed to sell well → not Transferred to CD
Therefore: Classic jazz-most-not Transferred to CD

So the correct answer will either be that conditional or its contrapositive (Believed to sell well → Played on radio).

Answer Explanation:
not Played on radio → not Believed to be profitable. This answer matches our anticipation, completing the connections needed to infer the conclusion based on the conditional and quantified statement from the stimulus.

Key Takeaway:
Questions that ask you to make inferences from quantified statements tend to be Must Be True questions, but they also show up in Strengthen with Sufficient Premise questions . . . and they can be difficult. To get these correct quickly, you really need to know the rules on how these inferences are formed. If you haven't already, work on them until it's second nature—it should take a couple hours, but it'll be worth a couple questions on the exam. And since you'll get those questions right quickly with a firm understanding of how to work with them, you'll be ahead of the curve.