Logical reasoning PrepTest 125 · Section 2 · Question 4

Incorrect. Tempting! This answer would appear to fall into the first category we came up with for our anticipation, and if you left it on your first pass, you'd be in good company. However, there's a key issue with this answer—it doesn't establish overall sugar consumption. If the high-honey group eats more or the same amount of sugar via honey than other people eat from other sources, it doesn't matter if they eat little other sugar. Their overall sugar consumption would be the same or higher than others, and thus there wouldn't be an explanation for their lower cavity rate.

Incorrect. There's no indication in the stimulus that the form of sugar consumption matters to dental health.

Incorrect. While dental hygiene habits could feature in a correct answer, it would need to tie those habits to the different groups. Without knowing whether honey eaters are more or less likely to have good habits, we can't say that this answer resolves the paradox. If their habits are generally worse, it would actually make the paradox bigger.

Incorrect. The stimulus never talks about refined and unrefined sugar, so this answer is out of scope. It's also about a number of health problems, not just (or necessarily) oral health issues.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Facts

Question Type:
Paradox

Stimulus Summary:
Honey has a lot of sugar. Sugar causes cavities. It's therefore surprising that those who eat a lot of honey have fewer cavities than average.

Answer Anticipation:
As with all Paradox questions, it's important to define the paradox in order to find the answer that resolves it. Here, since sugar causes cavities and honey is high in sugar, it would be expected that eating a lot of honey would result in cavities. However, in reality, those who consume a lot of honey have fewer cavities than others.

And looking at that framing for the paradox, we can see that a common trend in Paradox questions is present here—a reliance on comparisons. Here, the argument compares those who eat a lot of honey with those who don't on both honey consumption and number of cavities.

Paradoxes based on comparisons usually have correct answers that bring up other relevant comparisons. Looking at what is compared here, we can anticipate two general answers:
(1) A relevant difference between those who eat a lot of honey and those who don't that would explain why the former, despite eating a lot of sugar in honey, have fewer cavities
(2) A relevant difference between honey and other sugar-containing foods that would explain why honey—despite its high sugar content—causes fewer cavities than other sugary foods

Answer Explanation:
This answer highlights a relevant feature of honey that explains why those who eat it have fewer cavities than those who don't. If honey itself (or, at least, the bacteria in it) fights tooth decay, then it'd be expected that those who eat it have better dental health than would otherwise be expected.

Key Takeaway:
Make sure to clearly define the paradox in Paradox questions! And be on the lookout for comparisons—if the paradox is related to a comparison drawn between two things, the correct answer is likely going to feature an explicit or implicit comparison between these elements that can help to explain the discrepancy (or, less commonly, the unexpected similarity).