Q13 - Buying elaborate screensavers - programs that

[ohthatpatrick]

What does the Question Stem tell us?
Principle (Match the reasoning)

Break down the Stimulus:
Screensavers are intended to save money by protecting monitors from damage and saving elecriticty. They may actually COST money because of the time employees waste looking at / playing with them.

Any prephrase?
We need something where you take an action with one goal in mind (screensavers save money?), but it results in the opposite screensavers ultimately lose money), because of some secondary issue (employees enjoy playing with them) that isn't directly part of what the action was supposed to do.

Correct answer:
D

Answer choice analysis:
A) Probably not. The intent of this action was to satisfy student preferences. On that level, it seems to have succeeded.

B) This seems like the flipside of the original stimulus.

C) Maybe? Was the original intent of having the pizza delivered to save time? If so, then this is a backfire.

D) This looks good. "Complicated" security matches well with "elaborate" screensavers. We're hoping to save money in theft, but we actually lose money in customer goodwill.

E) This is comparing two different options, not talking about the upside down backfire of choosing one thing.

Takeaway/Pattern: This is an uncommon question stem, but when they refer to the principle "illustrated" in the above stimulus, it means there was NOT an explicit principle given. So we have to first abstract away from the topic of the argument in order to get a portable template of what we're looking for. It's worth not putting in too much energy (trying to make an answer match up) on the first pass, because we might find an answer that clearly matches if we've surveyed all five.

#officialexplanation

[irini101]

I narrow down to C and D then choose D, but I am not quite sure why D is flawed:

I think the abstract of the stimulus is: a new measure is taken, saves X (electricity and protection) but wastes Y (employee time).

C: measure: order pizza
save: nothing
waste: time
flawed because it saves nothing and does not convey two different things(only talk about time) in the stimulus as electricity vs. employee time


D: measure: hotel security system
save: lost by theft
waste: cutomer goodwill

Any thought would be appreciated!

[ohthatpatrick]

D isn't flawed. It's the correct answer, and I think you nailed the explanation.

You must have just looked up the answer key incorrectly.

Sect 2, #13 is (D).

[graftedinspiration]

I overthought this: Ordering pizza may take longer because delivery boys "cannot resist spending time" on distractions along the way. The idea of distractions along the way came from me rather than the test. Thus I talked myself into the wrong answer.

Keep it simple, stupid. D -- "cost more...than it saves..." *forehead slap*