Q19 - If temperatures had dropped below freezing

by **mshinners** Fri Dec 31, 1999 8:00 pm

Question Type:
Match the Reasoning

Stimulus Breakdown:
Temp. under 0 → Dead impatiens
Dead impatiens → No more blooming
Blooming
Therefore, temp. not under 0

Answer Anticipation:
Yes, that's in Celsius. We're metric here! Just be glad I didn't go Kelvin.

The structure is a conditional chain. The final necessary condition is then asserted negated, and the initial sufficient condition is concluded, also negated.

In other words, we have two conditional statements that chain together, and the argument uses the contrapositive to prove something happened.

A → B
B → C
-C
Therefore, -A

Correct answer:
(A)

Answer choice analysis:
(A)
Highly Adaptable → Thrive in new environ
Thrive → Adverse effect
No adverse effect
Therefore, not highly adaptable

Perfect. If you're tight on time, you might want to pick this and move on.

(B)
Thrives → Adaptable
Adapt → Adverse effect
Therefore, if…

And we can eliminate at this point. As soon as I see the conclusion is a conditional statement, I'd eliminate the answer because my stimulus featured a non-conditional conclusion.

(C) Introduced → Adverse effect, but only if…

I'm out of this answer at this point. That first statement is a complex conditional that isn't matched in the original argument.

(If you're interested, I'd diagram this statement using two conditionals:
Intoduced + Adapts well → Adverse Effect
-Adapt well → -Adverse Effect)

(D) I wouldn't diagram this after seeing the "should" in the first statement, as normative statements are logically relevant and should match. After skimming the rest and seeing "probably" in the conclusion, I'd be 100% certain of my elimination.

(E) Similar to (D), this answer has "should" all over the place, as well as a "likely" thrown in. Those inclusions make this answer a mismatch.

Takeaway/Pattern:
The answer shouldn't just be evaluated to see what they're missing that the original argument has; they should also be evaluated for what they have that the original argument didn't.

#officialexplanation