Q24 - Columnist: On average, about 70 percent

[jblim1324]

A quick question for the Manhattan staff!

I am not sure how to negate (C): would the negation of (C) be "In none of the developing countries, tourists obtain most of their accommodations and other services from local people" or "In at least some developing countries, tourists do not obtain most of their accommodations and other services directly from local people"?

I negated it as the former ("in none of the developing countries...") and it seemed to make (C) a stronger answer than the second way of negating (C).

Which one is the right method to negate in this case?

[ohthatpatrick]

Hey, watch out for that question number. You had this listed as #6. Took some hunting to figure out what you were actually asking about.

If you have a claim that says "For some X's, Y applies", then the negation is saying
IT IS FALSE TO SAY THAT "For some X's, Y applies".

What do you take that refutation to mean?
Y doesn't apply to ANY X's
or
For some X's, Y does NOT apply

Hopefully you are choosing the former.

If I say
"At least some of my family members have seen MOST episodes of 'Breaking Bad'",
it doesn't contradict that thought to say that
"at least some of my family members have NOT seen most episodes of 'Breaking Bad'".

A negation, which WOULD contradict, would be to say "NONE of my family members have seen MOST episodes of 'Breaking Bad'."

Why are you negating (C), though? Do you use the Negation Test on Inference questions? (Most people only use it for Necessary Assumption)

=== complete explanation of Q24 ====

Question Type: Inference

Task: read INFORMATION, not an argument. Read the facts and see if you can put two or more of them together to yield an inference.

Tendencies: most Inferences come through CONDITIONAL or CAUSAL wording. Others come from COMPARATIVE, QUANTITATIVE, or DEFINITIONAL wording.

analysis of the paragraph
Well, nothing conditional. But there IS some CAUSAL and QUANTITATIVE stuff.

Pause after reading the first two sentences and figure out what sort of QUANTITATIVE inference you could make.

On average, 70% of tourism profits in developing countries goes to foreigners, not locals.
+
As the country becomes a more established tourist area, the proportion exported this way increases.
================
As the country becomes a more established tourist area, OVER 70% of tourism profits goes to foreigners, not locals.

The last sentence gives us a CONTRAST word, "However". Tourists CAN try to change those numbers by spending more money on locals.

Hmmm ... don't see a way to join that with either of the first two facts.

=== answer choices ===
cheat code -- Tons of Inference answer choices are immediately sketchy if they have STRONG, CONDITIONAL, or COMPARATIVE wording.

(A) CONDITIONAL ... sketchy. It also contains a NORMATIVE word "should". Were any of these statements OPINIONS? Nope. No way to support an opinion then.

(B) "at least some" is weak, but "MOST of the profits" is strong. Can we justify that MOST, more than 50%, go to foreigners?

Yes! This is exactly what we inferred. More than 70% goes to foreigners. Keep this.

(C) Same as (B). We need to see if we can say more than 50% of accommodations/services are from locals. Well, first of all they never talked about accommodations or services. (by contrast, with B, they DID talk about profits). Secondly, this goes against the gist of the facts we heard. Why would we assume/invent the idea that some places are skewed towards local businesses?

(D) "progressively poorer" is TOO STRONG / OUT OF SCOPE / COMPARATIVE. Just because a higher % of tourist money goes to foreigners, we can make a leap that the local people are, as a whole, becoming a poorer nation.

(E) "don't contribute in ANY way" is TOO STRONG


(B) is our answer.

[can_I_ever_reach_a_170?]

Hello!
I liked everything in B, except the first “most.” I felt that was a little too strong.
The stimulus is talking about developing countries and a developing country that becomes a more established tourist destination.
I just thought what if the developing country in the stimuls didn’t necessarily fall into the group of developing contries that are most established as tourist destinations.
I would like to know what I’m missing or not seeing.

[ohthatpatrick]

The 2nd sentence gives you a rule of thumb you can apply to the novel topic of "most established tourist destinations".

The rule is ...
the more established, the higher a proportion of revenue gets exported to foreign owners.

So what do we know about "the most established tourist destinations"?
they have the highest proportion of revenue exported to foreign owners

If the average is 70% goes to foreign owners, then the countries with the HIGHEST proportion have to be higher than 70%.

Does that make sense?

[can_I_ever_reach_a_170?]

Thank you ohthatpatrick!
On my second read after a couple days, it makes sense.