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CR 2 – Live Session – recently asked questions

(Paradox, Weaken, Strengthen, Flaw)
1. Despite the fact that the health-inspection procedures for catering establishments are more stringent than
those for ordinary restaurants, more of the cases of food poisoning reported to the city health department
were brought on by banquets served by catering services than were brought on by restaurant meals.
Which of the following, if true, helps explain the apparent paradox in the statement above?
A. A significantly larger number of people eat in restaurants than attend catered banquets in any given time
period.
B. Catering establishments know how many people they expect to serve, and therefore are less likely than
restaurants to have, and serve, leftover food, a major source of food poisoning.
C. No restaurant provides catering services for banquets.
D. The number of reported food-poisoning cases at catered banquets is unrelated to whether the meal is served
on the caterer’s or the client’s premises.
E. People don’t make a connection between a meal they have eaten and a subsequent illness unless the illness
strikes a group whose members are in communication with one another.
2. Construction contractors working on the cutting edge of technology nearly always work on a “cost-plus”
basis only. One kind of cost-plus contract stipulates the contractor’s profit as a fixed percentage of the
contractor’s costs; the other kind stipulates a fixed amount of profit over and above costs. Under the first
kind of contract, higher costs yield higher profits for the contractor, so this is where one might expect final
costs in excess of original cost estimates to be more common. Paradoxically, such cost overruns are actually
more common if the contract is of the fixed-profit kind.
Which one of the following, if true, most helps to resolve the apparent paradox in the situation
described above?
A. Clients are much less likely to agree to a fixed-profit type of cost-plus contract when it is understood that
under certain conditions the project will be scuttled than they are when there is no such understanding.
B. On long-term contracts, cost projections take future inflation into account, but since the figures used are
provided by the government, they are usually underestimates.
C. On any sizable construction project, the contractor bills the client monthly or quarterly, so any tendency for
original cost estimates to be exceeded can be detected early.
D. Clients billed under a cost-plus contract are free to review individual billings in order to uncover wasteful
expenditures, but they do so only when the contractor’s profit varies with cost.
E. The practice of submitting deliberately exaggerated cost estimates is most common in the case of fixed-profit
contracts, because it makes the profit, as a percentage of estimated cost, appear modest.
3. “Though they soon will, patients should not have a legal right to see their medical records. As a doctor, I see
two reasons for this. First, giving them access will be time-wasting because it will significantly reduce the
amount of time that medical staff can spend on more important duties, by forcing them to retrieve and return
files. Second, if my experience is anything to go by, no patients are going to ask for access to their records
anyway.”
Which one of the following, if true, establishes that the doctor’s second reason does not cancel out
the first?
A. The new law will require that doctors, when seeing a patient in their office, must be ready to produce the
patient’s records immediately, not just ready to retrieve them.
B. The task of retrieving and returning files would fall to the lowest-paid member of a doctor’s office staff.
C. Any patients who asked to see their medical records would also insist on having details they did not
understand explained to them.
D. The new law does not rule out that doctors may charge patients for extra expenses incurred specifically in
order to comply with the new law.
E. Some doctors have all along had a policy of allowing their patients access to their medical records, but those
doctors’ patients took no advantage of this policy.
4. Pamela: Physicians training for a medical specialty serve as resident staff physicians in hospitals. They work
such long hours—up to 36 consecutive hours—that fatigue impairs their ability to make the best medical
decisions during the final portion of their shifts.
Quincy: Thousands of physicians now practicing have been trained according to the same regimen, and
records show they generally made good medical decisions during their training periods. Why should what
has worked in the past be changed now?
Which one of the following, if true, is the most effective counter Pamela might make to Quincy’s
argument?
A. The basic responsibilities of resident staff physicians in hospitals have not changed substantially over the
past few decades.
B. Because medical reimbursement policies now pay for less recuperation time in hospitals, patients in
hospitals are, on the average, more seriously ill during their stays than in the past.
C. It is important that emergency-room patients receive continuity of physician care, insofar as possible, over
the critical period after admission, generally 24 hours.
D. The load of work on resident physicians-in-training varies according to the medical specialty for which each
is being trained.
E. The training of physicians should include observation and recognition of the signs indicating a hospitalized
patient’s progress or decline over a period of at least 36 hours.
5. Joshua Smith’s new novel was criticized by the book editor for The Daily Standard as implausible. That
criticism, like so many other criticisms from the same source in the past, is completely unwarranted. As
anyone who has actually read the novel would agree, each one of the incidents in which Smith’s hero gets
involved is the kind of incident that could very well have happened to someone or other.
Which one of the following is the most serious error of reasoning in the argument?
A. It relies on the assumption that a criticism can legitimately be dismissed as unwarranted if it is offered by
someone who had previously displayed questionable judgment.
B. It ignores the fact that people can agree about something even though what they agree about is not the case.
C. It calls into question the intellectual integrity of the critic in order to avoid having to address the grounds on
which the criticism is based.
D. It takes for granted that a whole story will have a given characteristic if each of its parts has that
characteristic.
E. It attempts to justify its conclusion by citing reasons that most people would find plausible only if they were
already convinced that the conclusion was true.
6. There are 1.3 billion cows worldwide, and this population is growing to keep pace with the demand for meat
and milk. These cows produce trillions of liters of methane gas yearly, and this methane contributes to global
warming. The majority of the world’s cows are given relatively low-quality diets even though cows produce
less methane when they receive better-quality diets. Therefore, methane production from cows could be
kept in check if cows were given better-quality diets.
Which one of the following, if true, adds the most support for the conclusion of the argument?
A. Cows given good-quality diets produce three times as much meat and milk than they would produce
otherwise.
B. Carbon and hydrogen, the elements that make up methane, are found in abundance in the components of all
types of cow feed.
C. Most farmers would be willing to give their cows high-quality feed if the cost of that feed were lower.
D. Worldwide, more methane is produced by cows raised for meat production than by those raised for milk
production.
E. Per liter, methane contributes more to global warming than does carbon dioxide, a gas that is thought to be
the most significant contributor to global warming.
7. If the flowers Mary received today had been sent by someone who knows Mary well, that person would have
known that Mary prefers violets to roses. Yet Mary received roses. On the other hand, if the flowers had been
sent by someone who does not know Mary well, then that person would definitely have sent a signed card.
Yet Mary received no card. Therefore, the florist must have made some sort of mistake: either Mary was
supposed to receive violets, or a card, or these flowers were intended for someone else.
Which one of the following statements, if true, most weakens the argument?
A. Roses are not a common gift item.
B. Most people feel that they are free to send flowers for a reason other than the desire to please.
C. Someone who does not know Mary well would be unlikely to send Mary flowers.
D. The florist has never delivered the wrong flowers to Mary before.
E. Some people who know Mary well have sent Mary cards along with flowers.
8. Tony: A new kind of DVD has just been developed. It lasts for only half as many viewings as the old kind does
but costs a third as much. Therefore, video rental stores would find it significantly more economical to
purchase and stock movies recorded on the new kind of DVD than on the old kind.
Anna: But the DVD itself only accounts for 5 percent of the price a video rental store pays to buy a copy of a
movie on video; most of the price consists of royalties the store pays to the studio that produced the movie.
So, the price that video rental stores pay per copy would decrease by considerably less than 5 percent, and
royalties would have to be paid on additional copies.
Which one of the following, if true, would contribute most to a defense of Tony’s position against
Anna’s reply?
A. The price that video rental stores pay for movies recorded on DVDs is considerably less than the retail price
of those movies.
B. A significant proportion of the movies on DVD purchased by video rental stores are bought as replacements
for worn-out copies of movies the stores already have in stock.
C. The royalty fee included in the price that video rental stores pay for movies on the new kind of DVD will be
one-fourth that included in the price of movies on the old kind.
D. Given a choice, customers are more likely to buy a movie on DVD than to rent it if the rental fee is more than
half of the purchase price.
E. Many of the movies rented from video rental stores, particularly children’s movies, average several viewings
per rental fee.
9. The fishing industry cannot currently be relied upon to help the government count the seabirds killed by net
fishing, since an accurate count might result in restriction of net fishing. The government should therefore
institute a program under which tissue samples from the dead birds are examined to determine the amount
of toxins in the fish eaten by the birds. The industry would then have a reason to turn in the bird carcasses,
since the industry needs to know whether the fish it catches are contaminated with toxins.
Which one of the following, if true, most strongly indicates that the government program would not
by itself provide an accurate count of the seabirds killed by net fishing?
A. The seabirds killed by net fishing might be contaminated with several different toxins even if the birds eat
only one kind of fish.
B. The fishing industry could learn whether the fish it catches are contaminated with toxins if very few of the
seabirds killed by the nets were examined.
C. The government could gain valuable information about the source of toxins by examining tissue samples of
the seabirds caught in the nets.
D. The fish caught in a particular net might be contaminated with the same toxins as those in the seabirds
caught in that net.
E. The government would be willing to certify that the fish caught by the industry are not contaminated with
toxins if tests done on the seabirds showed no contamination.
10. Audiences find a speaker more convincing if the speaker begins a speech by arguing briefly against his or
her position before providing reasons for accepting it. The reason this technique is so effective is that it
makes the speaker appear fair-minded and trustworthy. Therefore, candidates for national political office
who wish to be successful in winning votes should use this argumentative technique in their speeches.
Which one of the following, if true, most seriously limits the effectiveness of adopting the
argument’s recommendation?
A. Political candidates typically have no control over which excerpts from their speeches will be reported
by the news media.
B. Some people do not find arguments made by politicians convincing, since the arguments are often one-
sided or oversimplify the issues.
C. Some people decide which political candidate to vote for less on the basis of their opinions of the
candidate’s character than on the exact positions of the candidate.
D. People regard a political candidate more favorably if they think that the candidate respects an opponent’s
position even while disagreeing with it.
E. Political candidates have to address audiences of many different sizes and at many different locations in
the course of a political campaign.
11. Medieval Arabs had manuscripts of many ancient Greek texts, which were translated into Arabic when
there was a demand for them. Medieval Arab philosophers were very interested in Aristotle’s Poetics, an
interest that evidently was not shared by medieval Arab poets, because a poet interested in the Poetics
would certainly have wanted to read Homer, to whose epics Aristotle frequently refers. But Homer was
not translated into Arabic until modern times.
Which one of the following, if true, most strongly supports the argument above?
A. A number of medieval Arab translators possessed manuscripts of the Homeric epics in their original
Greek.
B. Medieval Arabic story cycles, such as the Arabian Nights, are not at all similar to parts of the Homeric
epics.
C. In addition to translating from Greek, medieval Arab translators produced Arabic editions of many works
originally written in Indian languages and in Persian.
D. Aristotle’ s Poetics has frequently been cited and commented on by modern Arab poets.
E. Aristotle’s Poetics is largely concerned with drama, and dramatic works were written and performed by
medieval Arabs.
12. In the country of Boldavia at present, only 1 percent of 80-year-olds are left-handed, whereas 10 percent
of 50-year-olds and 15 percent of 20-year-olds are lefthanded. Yet over the past 80 years, the proportion
of Boldavians who are born left-handed has not increased.
Which one of the following, if true, most helps to explain the variation in incidence of left-
handedness among Boldavians?
A. In Boldavia, men have a shorter average life expectancy than women, and left-handedness is less common
among women than among men.
B. In Boldavia, left-handed people are no more likely than right-handed people to be involved in accidents
C. Ambidexterity is highly valued in Boldavia.
D. The birthrate in Boldavia has decreased slowly but steadily over the course of the past 80 years.
E. Left-handed people have never accounted for more than 18 percent of the population of Boldavia.
13. Waste management companies, which collect waste for disposal in landfills and incineration plants,
report that disposable plastics make up an ever-increasing percentage of the waste they handle. It is clear
that attempts to decrease the amount of plastic that people throw away in the garbage are failing.
Which one of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?
A. Because plastics create harmful pollutants when burned, an increasing percentage of the plastics handled
by waste management companies are being disposed of in landfills.
B. Although many plastics are recyclable, most of the plastics disposed of by waste management companies
are not.
C. People are more likely to save and reuse plastic containers than containers made of heavier materials
like glass or metal.
D. An increasing proportion of non-plastic waste such as paper, glass, and metal cans that waste
management companies used to handle is now being recycled.
E. While the percentage of products using plastic packaging is increasing, the total amount of plastic being
manufactured has remained unchanged.
14. Samples from the floor of a rock shelter in Pennsylvania were dated by analyzing the carbon they
contained. The dates assigned to samples associated with human activities formed a consistent series,
beginning with the present and going back in time, a series that was correlated with the depth from which
the samples came. The oldest and deepest sample was dated at 19,650 years before the present, plus or
minus 2,400 years. Skeptics, viewing that date as too early and inconsistent with the accepted date of
human migration into North America, suggested that the samples could have been contaminated by
dissolved “old carbon” carried by percolating groundwater from nearby coal deposits.
Which of the following considerations, if true, argues most strongly against the suggestion of the
skeptics?
A. No likely mechanism of contamination involving percolating groundwater would have affected the
deeper samples from the site without affecting the uppermost sample.
B. Not every application of the carbon-dating procedure has led to results that have been generally
acceptable to scientists.
C. There is no evidence that people were using coal for fuel at any time when the deepest layer might have
been laid down.
D. No sample in the series, when retested by the carbon-dating procedure, was assigned an earlier date than
that assigned to a sample from a layer above it.
E. No North American site besides the one in Pennsylvania has ever yielded a sample to which the carbon-
dating procedure assigned a date that was comparably ancient.
15. Medical researcher: Records covering the last four years of ten major hospitals indicate that mothers who
had received adequate prenatal care were less likely to have low-birth-weight babies than were mothers
who had received inadequate prenatal care. Adequate prenatal care, therefore, significantly decreases
the risk of low-birth-weight babies.
Which one of the following, if true, most weakens the medical researcher’s argument?
A. The hospital records indicate that some babies that are born with normal birth weights are born to
mothers who had inadequate prenatal care.
B. Mothers giving birth to low-birth-weight babies are always classified by hospitals as having received
inadequate prenatal care.
C. The hospital records indicate that low-birth-weight babies were sometimes classified as having been
born prematurely.
D. Some babies not born prematurely, whose mothers received adequate prenatal care, have low birth
weights.
E. Women who receive adequate prenatal care, are less likely to give birth prematurely than are women
who do not receive adequate prenatal care.
16. In Debbie’s magic act, a volunteer supposedly selects a card in a random fashion, looks at it without
showing it to her, and replaces it in the deck. After several shuffles, Debbie cuts the deck and supposedly
reveals the same selected card, A skeptic conducted three trials. In the first, Debbie was videotaped, and
no sleight of hand was found. In the second, the skeptic instead supplied a standard deck of cards. For the
third trial, the skeptic selected the card. Each time, Debbie apparently revealed the selected card. The
skeptic concluded that Debbie uses neither sleight of hand, nor a trick deck, nor a planted “volunteer” to
achieve her effect.
Which one of the following most accurately describes a flaw in the skeptic’s reasoning?
A. The skeptic failed to consider the possibility that Debbie did not always use the same method to achieve
her effect.
B. The skeptic failed to consider the possibility that sleight of hand could also be detected by some means
other than videotaping.
C. The skeptic failed to consider the possibility that Debbie requires both sleight of hand and a trick deck to
achieve her effect.
D. The skeptic considered the possibility that Debbie was lying.
E. The skeptic failed to consider the possibility that Debbie’s success in the three trials was a mere
coincidence.
17. A recent study of 6,403 people showed that those treated with the drug pravastatin, one of the effects of
which is to reduce cholesterol, had about one-third fewer nonfatal heart attacks and one-third fewer
deaths from coronary disease than did those not taking the drug. This result is consistent with other
studies, which show that those who have heart disease often have higher than average cholesterol levels.
This shows that lowering cholesterol levels reduces the risk of heart disease.
The argument’s reasoning is flawed because the argument
A. neglects the possibility that pravastatin may have severe side effects
B. fails to consider that pravastatin may reduce the risk of heart disease but not as a consequence of its
lowering cholesterol levels
C. relies on past findings, rather than drawing its principal conclusion from the data found in the specific
study cited
D. draws a conclusion regarding the effects of lowering cholesterol levels on heart disease, when in fact the
conclusion should focus on the relation between pravastatin and cholesterol levels
E. fails to consider what percentage of the general population might be taking pravastatin
18. For years the beautiful Renaissance buildings in Palitito have been damaged by exhaust from the many
tour buses that come to the city. There has been little parking space, so most buses have idled at the curb
during each stop on their tour, and idling produces as much exhaust as driving. The city has now provided
parking that accommodates nine-tenths of the tour buses, so damage to Palitito's buildings from the
buses' exhaust will diminish significantly.
Which of the following, if true, most strongly supports the argument?
A. The exhaust from Palitito's few automobiles is not a significant threat to Palitito's buildings.
B. Palitito's Renaissance buildings are not threatened by pollution other than engine exhaust.
C. Tour buses typically spend less than 10% of the time they are in Palitito transporting passengers from
one site to another.
D. More tourists come to Palitito by tour bus than by any other single means of transportation.
E. Some of the tour buses that are unable to find parking drive around Palitito while their passengers are
visiting a site.
19. Environmentalist: The use of snowmobiles in the vast park north of Milville creates unacceptable levels
of air pollution and should be banned.
Milville business spokesperson: Snowmobiling brings many out-of-towners to Milville in winter
months, to the great financial benefit of many local residents. So, economic considerations dictate that we
should put up with the pollution.
Environmentalist: I disagree: A great many cross-country skiers are not able to visit Milville because of
the noise and pollution that snowmobiles generate.
Environmentalist responds to the business spokesperson by doing which of the following?
A. Challenging an assumption that certain desirable outcome can derive from only one set of circumstances
B. Challenging an assumption that certain undesirable outcome is inevitable
C. Maintaining that the benefit that the spokesperson desires could be achieved in much greater degree by
a different means
D. Claiming that the spokesperson is deliberately misrepresenting the environmentalist’s position in order
to be better able to attack it
E. Proving that an effect that the spokesperson presents as having benefited a certain group of people
actually benefited those people
20. Which of the following most logically completes the passage?
Appendicitis (inflammation of the appendix) is potentially fatal; consequently, patients with symptoms
strongly suggesting appendicitis almost always have their appendix removed. The appropriate surgery
is low-risk but is performed unnecessarily in about 20 percent of all cases. A newly developed internal
scan for appendicitis is highly accurate, producing two misdiagnoses for every 98 correct diagnoses.
Clearly, using this test, doctors can largely avoid unnecessary removals of the appendix without
performing any fewer necessary surgeries than before, since ____________.
A. the patients who are correctly diagnosed with this test as not having appendicitis invariably have medical
conditions that are much less serious than appendicitis
B. the misdiagnoses produced by this test are always instances of attributing appendicitis to someone who
does not have it
C. all of the patients who are diagnosed with this test as having appendicitis do, in fact, have appendicitis
D. every patient who is diagnosed with this test as having appendicitis has more than one of the symptoms
generally associated with appendicitis
E. the only patients who are misdiagnosed using this test are patients who lack one or more of the symptoms
that are generally associated with appendicitis
1. E
2. D
3. A
4. B
5. D
6. A
7. B
8. C
9. B
10. A
11. A
12. A
13. D
14. A
15. B
16. A
17. B
18. C
19. A
20. B