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GMAT

GMAT - Critical Reasoning - Test 16

in Critical Reasoning

Read the passage and choose the option that best answer the question.

1. The Asian American History Association receives approximately 1,000 proposals each year from individuals who wish to present papers at its annual meeting. The association's officers would like to ensure constant standards of quality in the presentations from year to year. The officers have therefore decided to accept for presentation each year only the best 300 papers selected on the basis of the quality of the proposals submitted. Of the following, the best criticism of the officers' plan is that the plan assumes that

A. Professional associations cannot accept all papers submitted for presentation at their annual meetings.
B. The total number of proposals submitted to the association will remain at approximately 1,000 in future years.
C. Each proposal submitted to the association deserves to be considered a serious candidate for presentation.
D. It is difficult to judge the quality of a paper on the basis of the proposal alone.
E. The best 300 papers submitted to the association for presentation will be of the same quality from year to year.

2. The president of a consulting firm analyzed the decisions made about marketing by her clients and concluded that the decisions were correct only about half of the time. The conclusion above depends on the presupposition that

A. companies can be successful even when about half of the decisions they make about marketing prove to be wrong
B. companies hiring her consulting firm make no more incorrect marketing decisions than do companies in general
C. executives consistently making correct marketing decisions rarely enlist the aid of a consulting firm
D. marketing decision are just as likely to be correct as they are to be incorrect
E. it is possible to classify a marketing decision properly as being either right or wrong

3. Defense Department analysts worry that the ability of the United States to wage a prolonged war would be seriously endangered if the machine-tool manufacturing base shrinks further. Before the Defense Department publicly connected this security issue with the import quota issue, however, the machine-tool industry raised the national security issue in its petition for import quotas. Which of the following, if true, contributes most to an explanation of the machine-tool industry's raising the issue above regarding national security?

A. When the aircraft industries retooled, they provided a large amount of work for tool builders.
B. The Defense Department is only marginally concerned with the effects of foreign competition on the machine-tool industry.
C. The machine-tool industry encountered difficulty in obtaining governmental protection against imports on grounds other than defense.
D. A few weapons important for defense consist of parts that do not require extensive machining.
E. Several federal government programs have been designed which will enable domestic machine-tool manufacturing firms to compete successfully with foreign toolmakers.

4. Some communities in Florida are populated almost exclusively by retired people and contain few, if any, families with small children. Yet these communities are home to thriving businesses specializing in the rental of furniture for infants and small children. Which of the following, if true, best reconciles the seeming discrepancy described above?

A. The businesses specializing in the rental of children's furniture buy their furniture from distributors outside of Florida.
B. The few children who do reside in these communities all know each other and often make overnight visits to one another's houses.
C. Many residents of these communities who move frequently prefer renting their furniture to buying it outright.
D. Many residents of these communities must provide for the needs of visiting grandchildren several weeks a year.
E. Children's furniture available for rental is of the same quality as that available for sale in the stores.

5. Corporate officers and directors commonly buy and sell, for their own portfolios, stock in their own corporations. Generally, when the ratio of such inside sales to inside purchases falls below 2 to 1 for a given stock, a rise in stock prices is imminent. In recent days, while the price of MEGA Corporation stock has been falling, the corporation's officers and directors have bought up to nine times as much of it as they have sold. The facts above best support which of the following predictions?

A. The imbalance between inside purchases and inside sales of MEGA stock will grow even further.
B. Inside purchases of MEGA stock are about to cease abruptly.
C. The price of MEGA stock will soon begin to go up.
D. The price of MEGA stock will continue to drop, but less rapidly.
E. The majority of MEGA stock will soon be owned by MEGA's own officers and directors.

6. George Bernard Shaw wrote: ?That any sane nation, having observed that you could provide for the supply of bread by giving bakers a pecuniary interest in baking for you, should go on to give a surgeon a pecuniary interest in cutting off your leg is enough to make one despair of political humanity.? Shaw's statement would best serve as an illustration in an argument criticizing which of the following?

A. Dentists who perform unnecessary dental work in order to earn a profit
B. Doctors who increase their profits by specializing only in diseases that affect a large percentage of the population
C. Grocers who raise the price of food in order to increase their profit margins
D. Oil companies that decrease the price of their oil in order to increase their market share
E. Bakers and surgeons who earn a profit by supplying other peoples' basic needs

7. Human beings can see the spatial relations among objects by processing information conveyed by light. Scientists trying to build computers that can detect spatial relations by the same kind of process have so far designed and built stationary machines. However, these scientists will not achieve their goal until they produce such a machine that can move around in its environment. Which of the following, if true, would best support the prediction above?

A. Human beings are dependent on visual cues from motion in order to detect spatial relations.
B. Human beings can often easily detect the spatial relations among objects, even when those objects are in motion.
C. Detecting spatial relations among objects requires drawing inferences from the information conveyed by light.
D. Although human beings can discern spatial relations through their sense of hearing, vision is usually the most important means of detecting spatial relations.
E. Information about the spatial relations among objects can be obtained by noticing such things as shadows and the relative sizes of objects.

8. Some species of dolphins find their prey by echolocation; they emit clicking sounds and listen for echoes returning from distant objects in the water. Marine biologists have speculated that those same clicking sounds might have a second function: particularly loud clicks might be used by the dolphins to stun their prey at close range through sensory overload. Which of the following, if discovered to be true, would cast the most serious doubt on the correctness of the speculation described above?

A. Dolphins that use echolocation to locate distant prey also emit frequent clicks at intermediate distances as they close in on their prey.
B. The usefulness of echolocation as a means of locating prey depends on the clicking sounds being of a type that the prey is incapable of perceiving, regardless of volume.
C. If dolphins stun their prey, the effect is bound to be so temporary that stunning from far away, even if possible, would be ineffective.
D. Echolocation appears to give dolphins that use it information about the richness of a source of food as well as about its direction.
E. The more distant a dolphin's prey, the louder the echolocation clicks must be if they are to reveal the prey's presence to the hunting dolphin.

9. In the course of her researches, a historian recently found two documents mentioning the same person, Erich Schnitzler. One, dated May 3, 1739, is a record of Schnitzler's arrest for peddling without a license. The second, undated, is a statement by Schnitzler asserting that he has been peddling off and on for 20 years. The facts above best support which of the following conclusions?

A. Schnitzler started peddling around 1719.
B. Schnitzler was arrested repeatedly for peddling.
C. The undated document was written before 1765.
D. The arrest record was written after the undated document.
E. The arrest record provides better evidence that Schnitzler peddled than does the undated document.

10. A report on acid rain concluded, ?Most forests in Canada are not being damaged by acid rain.? Critics of the report insist the conclusion be changed to, ?Most forests in Canada do not show visible symptoms of damage by acid rain, such as abnormal loss of leaves, slower rates of growth, or higher mortality.? Which of the following, if true, provides the best logical justification for the critics' insistence that the report's conclusion be changed?

A. Some forests in Canada are being damaged by acid rain.
B. Acid rain could be causing damage for which symptoms have not yet become visible.
C. The report does not compare acid rain damage to Canadian forests with acid rain damage to forests in other countries.
D. All forests in Canada have received acid rain during the past fifteen years.
E. The severity of damage by acid rain differs from forest to forest.