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ohthatpatrick
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Re: Q23 - Most of the mines

by ohthatpatrick Fri Dec 31, 1999 8:00 pm

What does the Question Stem tell us?
Inference (must be true)

Break down the Stimulus:
Read for Conditional / Causal / Comparative / Quantitative. The first sentence has "most" and the second has "every". The latter is conditional, so let's start there. If you're one of M's gold mines, you've definitely violated environmental regulations at some point. Meanwhile, most of M's mines in V have never violated an environmental regulation. What is that friction telling us? Most of M's mines in V aren't GOLD mines.

Any prephrase?
The answer will probably play off the available inference that most of M's mines in V are not gold mines.

Answer choice analysis:
A) Out of scope comparison. We know nothing about other companies.

B) We don't have any way of tallying up # of gold vs. # of V.

C) Is this the same as our prephrase? "Most of M's mines in V aren't GOLD mines". No this is "Most of M's gold mines aren'ts V mines."

D) Bingo.

E) No way to judge "the world".

The correct answer is D.

Takeaway/Pattern: Inference tests our ability to combine multiple facts. Conditional statements, when they occur, are the most important starting point. Once you clarify or diagram how the rule works (and its contrapositive), look for facts you can apply the rule to or look for other conditional statements that can be chained to this conditional. The contrapositive of the conditional statement in the 2nd sentence is "If you haven't violated ER's, then you're not one of M's gold mines". We have a fact that Most of M's mines in V haven't violated ER's, so we can apply the rule and derive that these mines aren't gold mines.

#officialexplanation
 
atzhang6v6
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Q23 - Most of the mines

by atzhang6v6 Sat Jul 02, 2016 10:49 am

Im not sure why C is wrong...if every gold mine that M operates throughout the world violates regulations and most of the mines(include gold mines) M operates in V never violates regulations doesnt what C say correct?
 
aaronwfrank
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Re: Q23 - Most of the mines

by aaronwfrank Mon Aug 28, 2017 8:30 pm

atzhang6v6 Wrote:Im not sure why C is wrong...if every gold mine that M operates throughout the world violates regulations and most of the mines(include gold mines) M operates in V never violates regulations doesnt what C say correct?


Took me a minute to figure this out, but since it's the only appealing choice other than the correct answer (D), I'll try and explain why it's wrong.

Ultimately, this comes down to your understanding of most and every. The problem with C is we have no idea how many gold mines Moradco operates. They could have 2. They could have 100.

But what if there are only 2 gold mines in the world operated by Moradco, and they're both in Velyena. If Moradco has 100 copper mines in Velyena and only 2 gold mines (which violate regulations), answer choice C does not necessarily follow and it's much more likely that D is correct.

These two answers are basically a reversal of the elements. Hope that helps.