PrepTest 132

Incorrect. These statements both use a most equivalent, and the two premises don't share a specific term, so we can rule this out.

Incorrect. The second premise here is a certain relationship—the most valuable antiques "are" authenticated, not "tend to be" or "are generally."

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Parallel Reasoning

Stimulus Summary:
City with healthy economy-most-Plenty of job openings
City with high-tech-most-Healthy economies
Therefore: Job-seekers should move to cities with high-tech businesses

Answer Anticipation:
This argument has a lot of quantifier and logical force language that we can look to match in the answer choices. "[T]ypically" is a word of probability; same with "tend to"—this is why we diagrammed it as "most."

The conclusion here makes a recommendation that assumes a large amount of overlap between the two sets that are discussed in the stimulus, suggesting that cities with high-tech businesses also have a lot of job openings, but that's a quantifier flaw. While we can make an inference from two most statements, they have to share the same first term—we can't chain them together, as it tries to do here. The correct answer should use similar language in the conclusion—"should" or "ought"—and rely on a flawed assumption about overlapping sets from the stimulus.

So short version? Look for two most premises that would chain together (if that were logically valid), and a should conclusion that relies on them being combined.

Answer Explanation:
Antique dealer-most-Carry authenticated antiques
Authenticated antiques-most-Valuable
Therefore: If you want valuable antiques, shop at antique dealers.
This answer has the same set of quantified premises that chain together and a recommendation based on that flawed combination, so it's the correct answer.

Key Takeaway:
Parallel Reasoning questions that have quantifiers in the argument—even less common ones—give you a great baseline to eliminate from. Ditto argument's that use "should" or "ought" in the conclusion. Noting these types of statements that need to match up in the correct answer for this question type can be a game-changer for finishing them accurately and on time.

Incorrect. The conclusion here isn't a recommendation/"should" statement, but rather a quantified statements. The premises also don't match up (a "[m]any" and an "always" statement).

Incorrect. That "Many" up front is a mismatch, and we've already found an answer that looks good, so we'd eliminate it at that point!