Q12 - To cut costs, a high school...

[steves]

For Q12, I was undecided between (B) and (D), after eliminating (A)--the correct answer. Ideally, I was looking for an assumption along the lines of "if a student visits the nurse, they are ill." I was concerned that (A) would not confirm that any of the extra visits to the nurse were due to illness or related to the A/C system.

For (B), I equated "suffering" with "ill" which now could be out of scope.

I liked (D), as it get us where we need to be (18 percent humidity increases illness). Is (D) wrong because it is sufficient rather than necessary? Or, perhaps a conclusion rather than an assumption?

[rinagoldfield]

Steves, it sounds like you are approaching this question in just the right way, and your analysis of the answers is on point.

Let’s start with the argument core:
Following the decrease in humidity, there were more visits to the school nurse
-->
A decrease in humidity can make people ill

This argument contains two main assumptions. The first, which you noticed, was the equivalency between visiting the nurse and being ill. Yet maybe there was a big test that caused lots of students to fake illness. This assumption is indeed necessary.

There is a second big assumption here. This argument erroneously collapses causation and correlation. The author assumes that because the visits happened after the humidity decrease, the humidity must have CAUSED the visits. But maybe this is not necessarily the case! Maybe the extra visits were caused by a chicken pox outbreak.

(A) gets at the first flaw. Let’s try negating it – NONE of the visits were due to illness. If this were the case, then the argument would fall apart.
(B) Discusses what is true of MOST of the students. We don’t care about MOST students, just the ones who went to the nurse. Plus (B) brings in a new term, suffering.
(C) is irrelevant. It talks about viruses, which is more specific than the illness discussed in the argument.
(D) is sufficient but not necessary. We only need to know that humidity causes some degree of illness, not the exact percentages and probabilities.
(E) Is irrelevant. Cut costs? Who cares.

[dontmesswmeow]

I was initially thinking between (A) and (D) and then I chose (A) eventually and got this wrong.

Come to think of it,

I was not really focusing on that I need to find 'NECESSARY ASSUMPTION' specifically. I was just looking for assumption that would bridge the gap between the premise and conclusion given---as I've been solving problems on principle questions recently and so my ability to shift gears kind of went dull which shouldn't be the case from here on.

So I was trying to fill the gap as much as possible which is the case for (D) but it was too much. (D) is sufficient but it doesn't have to be like that . In the end, it is not required to fill the whole gap or distance between the premise and conclusion. (A) is required, though.

But my thinking process was like, okay, it's good if (A) is the case for this argument. BUT, it seems (D) seems more perfect to fill the whole gap, which wasn't asked by the question. UGH.

Takeaway: let's reeeeeeeead the question please (thinking out loud to myself)