In an attempt to reduce misbehavior, the junior high school

[GMAT 2007]

In an attempt to reduce misbehavior, the junior high school principal has decided to make punishments stricter, including restricting students from having playtime outdoors. However, this action is clearly counter to the principal's goals, as students who frequently play outdoors are less likely to misbehave.

Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

(A) Not being able to play outdoors is unlikely to deter a junior high school student from misbehaving.
(B) Students who have been punished by not having playtime outdoors are less likely to misbehave again in future.
(C) Students who are well-behaved do not tend to make friends easily and are not more likely to play outdoors as a result.
(D) The principal's suggested policy will not be protested vehemently by local parents who want their children to play outdoors.
(E) Playtime outdoors has not been demonstrated to have positive effects on the physical development of schoolchildren.


The correct answer is (D). Please help understand the reasoning to eliminate an alternate model of causation.

Thanks
GMAT 2007

[GMAT 2007]

Oops. My bad - the correct answer is (C)

[StaceyKoprince]

Principal sets stricter punishments. Punishments include eliminating outdoor play. BUT (conclusion) the action won't achieve the goal b/c outdoor play means the students will be better behaved.

The author of the argument is assuming that IF students play outdoors, THEN the students will be less likely to misbehave. In other words, the author is assuming a cause-effect relationship here: Outdoor play leads to better behavior. One possible counter to this is that the cause-effect relationship is the other way around: for some reason, kids who are better behaved engage in outdoor play at a higher rate than those who misbehave. Jn other words, IF they are well-behaved, THEN they are more likely to play outside (or the reverse of the author's assumption). The author is assuming that this is NOT the case - hence, answer choice C, which says that students who are well-behaved are NOT more likely (than those who misbehave) to play outdoors

[Guest]

Ok... I am now extremely confused here since MGMAT teachers have different oppinion.......

Jad and Dan said in the below thread said that this question is "WRONG"

Aniri, your sharp eyes have found a mistake in our book! On behalf of the company, I apologize for the error. If you e-mail StudentServices@manhattangmat.com, (attn: Danielle), we'll send you a thank-you gift as a token of our appreciation.

As a MGMAT student I am extremely confused ....
Can someone urgently advise who is correct? Stacey's reasoning seems fine and also seem to fit well with what the book explains.

But Dan's reasoning seems also fine, although answer choice A seems more like a repeat of the premise (students who frequently play outdoors are less likely to misbehave)

Thanks and hope to hear from you soon

[Guest]

To be more specific here is the link

www.manhattangmat.com/forums/in-an-atte ... -t809.html

[NY]

MGMAT staff - Any update on this

[Guest]

I guess no one will respond back to this thread?

I was wishing to hear back something because this is related to a MGMAT official book which the MGMAT staffs published... and I am still confused how there can be a 2 different answer with different explanations? All I want to know is what is the correct answer...

[Guest]

In an attempt to reduce misbehavior, the junior high school principal has decided to make punishments stricter, including restricting students from having playtime outdoors. However, this action is clearly counter to the principal's goals, as students who frequently play outdoors are less likely to misbehave.

Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

(A) Not being able to play outdoors is unlikely to deter a junior high school student from misbehaving.
(B) Students who have been punished by not having playtime outdoors are less likely to misbehave again in future.
(C) Students who are well-behaved do not tend to make friends easily and are not more likely to play outdoors as a result.
(D) The principal's suggested policy will not be protested vehemently by local parents who want their children to play outdoors.
(E) Playtime outdoors has not been demonstrated to have positive effects on the physical development of schoolchildren.


The correct answer is (D). Please help understand the reasoning to eliminate an alternate model of causation.

Thanks
GMAT 2007

The other post said that they made a mistake and the answer is A.

EVIDENCE: The writer says that letting kids outdoors will make them behave well. (Letting them out makes good kids)

The principal decided to lock the kids indoors to make them behave well. (Locking them in makes good kids)

The principal: Goal is to make the kids good
(vs.)
The writer: Principal's decision to lock them in goes against principal's goal

How could the principal's decision to lock them inside go against his goal to make them good?
By assuming that his decision, locking kids inside, will not help make them good!


A) Not being able to play outdoors is unlikely to deter a junior high school student from misbehaving.
(Translate: Locking kids in will not change the bad kids)

[Guest]

(B) Students who have been punished by not having playtime outdoors are less likely to misbehave again in future.

(Future is out of the scope. This is a supporting piece of evidence for the principal's decision)

(C) Students who are well-behaved do not tend to make friends easily and are not more likely to play outdoors as a result.

Good students (have no friends and) like to be inside. A huge no-no on GMAT CR is interchanging correlation and causation. (Smart people like vodka so I will drink vodka to become smarter). Using this logic we cannot say that locking kids inside will cause them to have no friends and be good kids.

(D) The principal's suggested policy will not be protested vehemently by local parents who want their children to play outdoors. (Out of scope)

(E) Playtime outdoors has not been demonstrated to have positive effects on the physical development of schoolchildren. (Out of scope)

[Guest]

Looks like no authors / instructors are interested in this topic related to the text book...

[rfernandez]

We're sorry it's taken a while for one of us to chime in -- we've been inundated lately and are doing our best to get to all of our posts on our many forums.

Wish I could write in with a verdict -- I personally have not been aware of any discussions regarding this question, so I don't know how best to reconcile Jad's/Dan's posts with Stacey's. (I think C is the best answer, by the way.) I will raise awareness about these questions and someone will reply again shortly. Maybe a rewording of this problem is what is needed... we'll let you know.

Again, our apologies for the delayed response.

[StaceyKoprince]

To echo what Rey said, we are doing our best to answer an enormous volume of posts. We're also offering this service for free, so please don't accuse of not being interested in responding to your questions; we wouldn't spend our time doing this if we weren't interested. If we could spend all day doing nothing but answer students' questions and magically still pay our rent at the end of the month, we'd be happy to do so! As it stands, though, as long as we offer this service for free, we can only spend a limited amount of time answering questions, so it's going to take time (sometimes a long time) to get a response. And, as far as I'm aware, there's no other forum out there that guarantees you will get a free reply from an instructor, even if that reply takes a while.

I do apologize that it has taken us this long to get back to you. We have been inundated with posts for the past couple of months and it is, unfortunately, not unusual now for people to wait a long time for a response. We hope we'll be able to catch back up someday. :)

Also, if you are a student in one of our classes, you can always ask your instructor. If s/he doesn't know the answer, you can ask him/her to email the curriculum director, Chris Ryan, and he will get some kind of a response from the most appropriate person. This is likely to happen more quickly (than a forum response), since the request is coming from a student in the class.

Essentially, this problem is a problem. Both the given correct answer (C) and one of the given wrong answers (A) are sort of right and sort of wrong. Basically, there isn't one answer that is completely good for this problem. In my original response, I glossed over the mention of making friends, but as Jad points out in his response, that particular part of choice C is irrelevant. It doesn't matter that the rest of choice C works - that irrelevant part should disqualify it.

That problem was fixed in subsequent printings of the guide, and there's a very good chance it will be dropped entirely for the next edition. In other words, don't worry about this one - sometimes bad problems get through the quality control process!