Q22 - Art critic: All of Dolores Albarran's oil paintings

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Inference (Must Be True)

Stimulus Breakdown:
ALL: All of her oil are highly original. (her oil --> highly original).
MOST: Most of her oil are not critcally acclaimed or popular.
ALL: All of her highly original came late in career.
MOST: Most of her abstract works are not highly original.

Answer Anticipation:
We've got some synthesizing to do. Prioritize ALL statements (i.e. Conditional logic).

There's a conditional chain:
Her oil --> highly original --> late in career.

Do our MOST statements trigger anything on that conditional chain?
Most of her oil is not popular.
All of her oil is highly original and late.
So there's a lot of overlap of her art that is not popular, not acclaimed, late in her career, and highly original.

Most of her abstract is not highly original. That triggers the contrapositive of the conditional chain: If most of her abstract stuff is not highly original, then most of her abstract stuff is not late in her career and not oil paintings.

Correct Answer:
D

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This says, "Most of her unpopular work was not original." We know about MOST of her oil, and MOST of her abstract, but not about MOST of her unpopular.

(B) This says, "Most of her late work was not abstract" We know about MOST of her oil, and MOST of her abstract, but not about MOST of her late work.

(C) Same as B. We can't say anything about most of her late work.

(D) YES, we do know that most of her abstract is not highly original, not late, and not oil.

(E) This says, "Most of her critically acclaimed work was not original". We only know about "most of her oil" and "most of her abstract".

Takeaway/Pattern: When we're doing Inference - Must Be True, we're primarily expecting Conditional and Quantified language. This one had All, Few, No, Few. Negative phrasings should always be cleaned up into their positive equivalents.
No A's are B = All A's are not-B.
Few A's are B = Most A's are not-B.
Not all A's are B = Some A's are not-B.

Both conditionals and most statements are not reversible. Many incorrect answers are "cheating", because they're starting with the wrong idea. When an answer offers a conditional or most statement, pause after the first idea and just check, "Do I have any facts with that idea on the Left side?" If not, stop reading that answer.

#officialexplanation

[DanielL790]

Is few to be understood as not most in all cases? I originally diagrammed as

Critically Acclaimed or Popular <--(Some)--> Oil Painting --> Original
Abstract <--Some--> Original --> Late Career

thinking few meant some

and picked the wrong answer (B)

[EddieM609]

@DanielL790, I think "few" does indeed have to mean "not most." Anytime I can think of when someone says, "Few X are Y," they would have to mean fewer than 50% of X are Y. And that's definitely what it means in this case! Few ends up being the opposite of most, so that we can know that MOST of her abstract paintings are not highly original, and thus not oil paintings.