In the city of Cantville

[jantika]

In the city of Cantville, a high school earns the "Young Women in Science" award for a given year if at least ten of its female students participate in that year's state science exposition. Last year, 80 percent of all high schools in Cantville's District 1 earned this award, while only 63 percent of all high schools in the city's District 2 earned the same award. Furthermore, these percentages have remained at or near those respective levels throughout the entire twelve years since the award was instituted. It is clear, then, that the high schools in District 1 do a better job of encouraging girls to pursue science than do the high schools in District 2.

Which of the following is assumed in the argument above?
A) Students in District 1 have more free time to pursue science projects than do students in District 2.
B) The overall population of District 1 is not substantially larger than that of District 2.
C) The average high school in in District 2 does not have more students than does the average high school in District 1.
D) District 1 does not have significantly fewer all-male high schools than does District 2.
E) School is the primary source of encouragement for students' pursuit of science.

[jantika]

Can someone help me with this? I did narrow down to C and D but choose C because I felt D is deviating the topic.
Stem states 80% of District1 and 63% of District2... So District1 encourages girls more.... higher percentage doesn't mean that higher number of people right? What is district1 has only 100 students - 80 people are encouraged... and district2 has 1000students - 630 people are encouraged..... By stating District1 encourages girls better we are making an assumption that both the schools districts have approximately equal number (or district2 less number) of students enrolled.
I agree with option D too but instead of assuming something in this argument, it is strengthening this argument.

I am still not getting the logic to solve here. Can someone please expplain? Thank you.

[RonPurewal]

Note that the award is given to individual schools. It's not given to districts. It seems you're not taking this into account. It matters.

[RonPurewal]

Remember, one convenient (and VERY powerful) way to solve assumption problems is to negate the assumption (i.e., say that it's not true), and see what happens. If the argument loses its validity when you do that, then you've found an assumption. If not, you haven't.

Choice C is actually the worst possible scenario: If you negate it -- the schools in district 2 have more kids than the schools in district 1 -- then the argument becomes even more compelling, since now the district 1 schools are not only winning the award more often, but doing so with fewer students (which makes the threshold of 10 students -- not a percentage -- harder to attain). Woops.

Think about what happens to the argument if choice D is false, i.e., if district 2 is loaded with all-boys' schools and district 1 has relatively few of them. (As an extreme illustration, if 37% of the schools in district 2 are all male, then the award is going to every single school that has girls.)

[anindame]

Can someone please clarify?

If I negate option D, and say District 1 has significantly fewer all-male high schools than does District 2, it is possible that-

District 1- All male school = 20, Total schools = 100
District 2- All male school = 60, Total schools = 500

In this case, option D is negated yet the argument stands.

Am I missing something?

[tim]

The argument does not stand when we negate the assumption. If all we have to go on is that district 1 has significantly fewer all-male high schools (those numbers you added are not established facts), it is no longer *clear* (that's the word in the conclusion) that district 1 does a better job of encouraging girls to pursue science.

[andrewthai2000]

I chose answer choice E.
To negate the assumption: School is not the primary source of encouragement for students' pursuit of science.
The schools in District 1 may have parents who encourage their daughters to study the sciences, while District 2 has parents who discourage them from pursuing such fields.
If this were the case, I believe E would make sense.

[cgentry]

AndrewThai2000,

What does it mean if school is not the "primary" source of encouragement? Does that mean that the schools don't encourage the female students' pursuit of science?

Most importantly, does "not the primary source of encouragement" mean that it's no longer clear that District 1 schools do a better job of encouraging the female students than District 2 schools?

Even if school is not the primary source of encouragement, the original argument might still stand. The test of the answer choice in an assumption question is whether the negated choice destroys the validity of the original argument.