Logical reasoning PrepTest 127 · Section 1 · Question 25

Question prompt

It is difficult to 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

Facts

Valid or Flawed

NA

Question Type

Cannot Be True Questions

Stimulus Summary

Humid climate → Difficult to grow cacti
Cold climate → Difficult to grow orange trees
Country --most--> Easy to grow cacti OR Easy to raise orange trees

Answer Anticipation

This question is a Cannot be True question, which means that we’re looking for an answer that contradicts the information in the stimulus. When there are conditional statements, that generally means an answer that establishes a sufficient condition while also stating the necessary condition isn’t present.
However, when there are conditionals and quantified statements, it’s usually the combination - if one exists - that is contradicted.
So can we make an inference here?
Well, first off, let’s consider just the conditionals. Can they be combined? They can’t - they don’t share a term.
What about the conditionals and the quantified statement? The conditionals talk about it being difficult to grow something, whereas the quantified statement talks about it being easy to grow something. These terms are related, but they’re opposites. Let’s take the contrapositives of the conditionals to see if we can get an inference going:
~Difficult to grow cacti → ~Humid climate
~Difficult to grow orange trees → ~Cold climate
With these laid out, we can see that there’s actually a bit of overlap here. ~Difficult and Easy aren’t the same concept - after all, something could be neither difficult nor easy. And thus something not being difficult doesn’t guarantee it’s easy. However, something being easy does guarantee that it’s not difficult (Easy → ~Difficult), so there is some overlap here - we know that:
Easy to grow cacti → ~Difficult to grow cacti → ~Humid climate
Easy to grow orange trees → ~Difficult to grow orange trees → ~Cold climate
Can we use these chains to make an inference with the quantified statement?
Country --most--> Easy to grow cacti OR Easy to raise orange trees
We can - a most with a second half that lines up with the sufficient part of a conditional can form an inference. It’s also the exception to our general quantifier rules where the resulting inference is a most statement:
Country --most--> ~Humid climate OR ~Cold climate
What would contradict this? If most of the country is both humid and cold. Let’s find that answer.

Answer choices

  1. A
    Half of the country Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A matches the stem
    Right off the bat, we get the answer that matches our anticipation. If half of the country is both humid and cold, then in half of the country, it’s difficult to grow either cacti or orange trees. That means it can’t be easy to grow either one or the other in most of the country, thus contradicting the stimulus.
  2. B
    Most of the country Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B is not credited
    This definitely makes it possible that most of the country is able to grow orange trees easily, so it’s not contradicting the stimulus.
  3. C
    Some parts of the Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited
    We only learn about most of the country, so some of the country isn’t mentioned in the stimulus and thus this answer could be true.
  4. D
    It is not possible Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D is not credited
    This could be true. It’s easy to grow either cacti or orange trees in most of this country. That could mean it’s easy to grow orange trees in most of the country, and hard to grow cacti everywhere - that would still allow the statement from the stimulus to be true.
  5. E
    Most parts of the Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited
    This would mean that it’s hard to grow cacti in most parts of the country, but it could be easy to grow orange trees in most of it still, thus allowing the last statement of the stimulus to be true still.

What this tests

Question analytics

Based on historical answer selection rates for this question.

Answer choice distribution

  1. A Credited 58%
  2. B 2%
  3. C 16%
  4. D 19%
  5. E 5%

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Discussion

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