Q3 - The local fair held

[sumukh09]

E is correct because we have no information on how many amateurs entered the contests in previous years and also because we don't know how it compares to the number of photographers in the fair?

[fmuirhea]

I think it's useful to compare (E) to (A), as they both try to get at the idea of the number of amateurs vs. the number of professionals.

First, the situation we're looking to explain: amateurs (and not professionals) won most of the prizes in a local photography contest. Why might this be an odd situation? Well, we might expect that in a contest, professionals would prevail. Hence, we're looking to eliminate four answer choices that explain the success of amateurs.

The first thing that jumps out at me is the fact that we don't know the relative number of entries of amateurs vs. professionals. What if only one professional entered vs. 300 amateurs? Sheer numbers alone might explain the outcome. (A) brings up this possibility.

(E) tries to do something similar, but fails for the two reasons you noted: first, three times what? Three times a tiny number is still a relatively tiny number. More problematic still is the fact that even if (E) could pin down the number of amateur entries, it leaves completely unknown the number of professional entries, so we don't know the ratio between the two.

(B) explains a bias toward amateurs.
(C) explains a difference in the quality of work submitted (and it's reasonable to think that the contest was judging for quality).
(D) explains that the fair had more categories for amateurs than for professionals.

[rinagoldfield]

Perfect explanation, fmuirhea! I have nothing to add

[AshleyT786]

I thought E did provide a potential explanation as to why more amateurs won: because there were more entries from amateurs than in previous years. Why is this reasoning wrong?