Q1 - The cafeteria at Acme Company

[patrice.antoine]

I chose (A) thinking that those who chose mushroom casserole that day could very well not have been a customer but an employee, especially given that the conclusion is focused on pleasing its customers.

Why is (C) the better option?

[sumukh09]

A doesn't really tell us anything. We don't know what the proportion of Acme employees is nor do we know if they eat the casserole.

C is the better the answer here because it offers an alternative explanation than the one provided in the stimulus. More specifically that it was variety rather than the desire for casserole that explains why more customers chose the casserole dish. What this answer choice is trying to get at is if the cafeteria decides to replace a dish with casserole then that may affect people's choices about what they choose to eat since consistently serving one particular dish (casserole) may begin to bore people and so they would end up not choosing it. Thus, the result would be customers that are not so pleased.

[maryadkins]

Why (A) is wrong: say 20% of employees regularly eat at the cafeteria and everybody else eats out. They're the ones then who we're talking about--more of them chose mushroom casserole over the other dishes during those two days. Now imagine it's 80% of the company that eats in the cafeteria. Now, we're talking about those people--more of them chose mushroom casserole. Does the difference matter for the argument? No. The point of the argument is that of everybody who eats there--whether it's 5 people or 20 people--more of them chose mushroom casserole those two days so it should be served all the time. It doesn't matter how many total people are regularly eating in the cafeteria.

(B) is wrong because we're not concerned about ingredients.

(C) is right because the argument ignores this possibility. What if people chose the mushroom casserole because they like to change things up a bit? If that's true, then serving the casserole all the time means they'll stop picking it as much!

(D) is irrelevant. We're talking about main dishes.

(E) is like (D). We're talking about lunch.

[eve.lederman]

Just to talk aloud about (B)- that's the answer that I picked but looking back on it, i realized that we don't know if the other dishes that it didn't replace didn't also have a similar ingredient. so because we don't know if all the dishes had mushrooms, for instance, or if just the dish that the casserole replaced didn't also have mushrooms, we can't conclude that thats why more people picked mushrooms.