Q24 - Library preservationist: Due to the continual physical

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

Question Type:
Inference (Must Be True)

Stimulus Breakdown:
1) Med. + Significant -most-> Restored
2) Suspect Med -some- Restored
3) Restored → Safety guaranteed
4) Not frequently consulted → Not restored
4c) Restored → Frequently consulted (contrapositive to get terms to line up - now they all talk about "Restored")

(Numbered to make them easier to discuss below.)

Answer Anticipation:
There is a lot of overlap in that the statements all talk about documents being restored. Also, there are a lot of quantifiers floating around. Because of this, I'd get the statements written down on my page (see the Stimulus Breakdown) and then look for answer that can come from a combination. However, I wouldn't actually infer all the combinations ahead of time - if there are more than 2 or 3, I'll head straight to the answers.

Correct answer:
(A)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Bingo. This is 2 + 4.

(B) Degree. Only "most" of these documents will be restored, not all of them.

(C) Degree/reversal. This answer choice both reverses #3 and is too strong ("all" - if you reverse an "all" statement, it becomes a "some" statement).

(D) Comparative. The stimulus is binary (consulted vs. not; safety guaranteed vs. not), so an answer talking about "most" doesn't align. The most consulted manuscript could still be rarely consulted.

(E) Degree. Only "most" of these documents will be restored. Additionally, this reverses some of the statements it's trying to combine.

Takeaway/Pattern:
If there are many conditionals - especially when quantified - it's usually faster to go through the answers before attempting all of the inferences from the statements in the stimulus.

#officialexplanation