All practice questions

Consider the following argument:

To revitalize its struggling economy, the town council of Bellville plans to offer substantial tax incentives to attract major tech companies. The council reasons that because tech companies employ high-earning professionals, the relocation of these companies will bring new wealthy residents to Bellville. These new residents will spend their money at local businesses, thereby providing the significant economic boost the town needs.

Statement to evaluate:
The argument necessarily assumes that the high-earning professionals employed by these tech companies will spend a larger percentage of their income at local Bellville businesses than the town's current residents do.

Urban Planner: To reduce our municipality's soaring electricity expenses, we should replace all conventional streetlamps in the downtown district with genetically engineered bioluminescent flora. These plants emit a steady glow without drawing any power from the grid. Therefore, implementing this replacement will drastically lower the downtown district's overall operational budget while preserving the area's nighttime usability.

Evaluate the argument by applying the Variance Test. Match each hypothetical factual discovery about the bioluminescent flora (left) to its corresponding logical impact on the planner's conclusion (right).

Scenario: A local government introduced a generous financial subsidy for homeowners who install advanced solar panels, aiming to decrease the region's overall residential reliance on the municipal power grid. Within a year, 40 percent of households installed the subsidized panels, which generate significantly more electricity than a typical household consumes during daylight hours. Surprisingly, utility records show that the total amount of electricity drawn from the municipal grid by residential neighborhoods actually increased during that same year.

Statement: The apparent discrepancy is logically resolved by the fact that the solar panels only generate electricity during daylight hours, meaning that participating households must still draw all of their electricity from the municipal grid during the evening and night.

Match each argumentative scenario with the universal principle that, if valid, most helps to logically justify its conclusion.

Consumer Psychologist: A recent study of a large online retailer compared two groups of customers: those who manually selected individual items for a monthly delivery and those who paid a 15 percent premium for a "curated" box, where the retailer selected items on their behalf from the same inventory. The customers receiving the curated boxes reported significantly higher overall satisfaction with their purchases. Clearly, the psychological relief of avoiding decision fatigue—the mental exhaustion that comes from making numerous choices—is the primary reason for this higher satisfaction.

Which one of the following, if true, most strengthens the consumer psychologist's argument?

Urban planner: Over the last decade, the percentage of City M's residents who commute by bicycle has tripled. During this exact same timeframe, the total number of traffic accidents involving bicycles in the city has only doubled. Therefore, the comprehensive network of protected bicycle lanes installed a decade ago has successfully achieved its goal of making bicycle commuting safer per rider.

Which one of the following is an assumption on which the urban planner's argument depends?

Public Health Official: To combat the rising rates of childhood obesity, the city should implement a ban on the sale of sugary drinks in all public schools. Similar bans have been successful in neighboring municipalities. While some argue that students will simply purchase these drinks from stores near the schools during the day, our data shows that most students do not leave the school campus during school hours. Therefore, the ban will significantly reduce the overall daily sugar intake of the city's schoolchildren.

Which one of the following is an assumption required by the public health official's argument?

A county introduced a new telemedicine hotline designed to divert patients with minor ailments away from the county's emergency rooms. Records show that the hotline successfully resolved over 10,000 minor ailment cases last year that would otherwise have resulted in emergency room visits. Nevertheless, the total number of patients visiting the county's emergency rooms for minor ailments was 20 percent higher last year than the year before the hotline was introduced. Which one of the following, if true, most helps to resolve the apparent discrepancy described above?

To improve efficiency, a national bank implemented an automated chatbot on its website to handle basic customer service inquiries, such as password resets and balance checks. Prior to the chatbot's implementation, these routine inquiries accounted for the vast majority of customer service interactions. One year after the chatbot's deployment, a performance review revealed that the average time a human customer service representative spends on a single customer interaction has increased by nearly 60 percent, even though the representatives are using the exact same software tools and handling procedures as before.

Which of the following, if true, most helps to resolve the apparent discrepancy in the information above?

A new highway bypass has been proposed to reduce traffic congestion in the city center. However, constructing the bypass would require demolishing several historic buildings in the downtown district. Since the city's traffic congestion could also be significantly reduced by expanding the existing public transit system, the city council must reject the proposal for the new highway bypass.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify the argument's conclusion?

Match each flawed argument with the sufficient assumption that logically guarantees its conclusion. Consider contrapositives and conditional translations carefully.

If a job applicant has a master's degree, they will be offered a second interview. Therefore, since Emily was offered a second interview, she must have a master's degree.

Which of the following contains a flawed pattern of reasoning most similar to that in the argument above?

Consider the following argument:

'Technological optimists argue that artificial intelligence will solve our most pressing economic inequalities by creating unprecedented abundance. However, historically, major technological shifts have always temporarily displaced workers and widened wealth gaps before new economic structures could distribute the benefits. Since we cannot afford another period of extreme wealth polarization, we must heavily restrict the deployment of advanced AI systems.'

This argument's reasoning is flawed primarily because it presumes, without providing justification, that heavily restricting advanced AI systems is the only way to prevent extreme wealth polarization during this technological transition.

Anthropologist: Excavations at the ancient, strictly sedentary settlement of Kaelen have uncovered ceremonial vessels containing trace residues of the cacao plant. The Kaelen people are known to have had no contact with migratory groups. Because the cacao plant is native exclusively to regions located over five hundred miles south of Kaelen, the settlement's inhabitants must have maintained direct, long-distance trade networks extending into those southern regions to acquire the beans.

Which one of the following is an assumption required by the anthropologist's argument?

Industry Analyst: Over the past fiscal year, the average cost to manufacture an electric vehicle (EV) battery fell by 20 percent. During the same period, the retail prices of EVs remained stagnant, yet the average profit margin per vehicle for EV manufacturers declined. Given that the battery constitutes the single largest share of an EV's total component costs, the financial savings from the cheaper batteries must have been completely negated by a substantial surge in the procurement costs of the EVs' non-battery components.

Which of the following would it be most useful to know in order to evaluate the argument?

Mayor: Our municipality is facing a critical energy shortage and must rapidly increase its power generation capacity. Critics oppose the construction of a new nuclear power facility, citing safety concerns and the high cost of waste disposal. However, if we do not construct the nuclear facility, we will be forced to rely exclusively on imported fossil fuels, which will drastically increase our greenhouse gas emissions and violate our climate commitments. Therefore, the critics are wrong, and we must proceed with the nuclear facility.

Which of the following most accurately describes a logical flaw in the mayor's argument?

Match each stimulus argument (Left) with the necessary supporter assumption (Right) required to logically bridge the gap between its premise and its conclusion. Note that all arguments relate to the fictional ecology of Vespera Valley, requiring careful attention to the specific logical structure of each rather than shared vocabulary.

Read the following argument carefully:

A translation of a literary work can preserve the original text's aesthetic impact only if it abandons strict literal accuracy. Any translation that abandons strict literal accuracy necessarily introduces the translator's own cultural biases. Furthermore, the introduction of the translator's own cultural biases invariably distorts the original author's philosophical intent. Therefore, any algorithmic translation system designed to maximize fidelity to the original author's philosophical intent will fail to evoke an emotional response in its readers.

Evaluate the logical validity of the following claim:
The argument's conclusion logically follows if it is assumed both that any translation avoiding the distortion of the author's philosophical intent is one designed to maximize fidelity to that intent, and that failing to preserve a literary work's aesthetic impact guarantees a failure to evoke an emotional response in its readers.

Match each flawed argument below to the abstract description that most accurately identifies its logical error.

Political Analyst: Historical data from our city's elections over the past five decades demonstrates a remarkably consistent pattern. To win the mayoral election, a candidate must secure the official endorsement of the city's largest and most influential labor union. Mayor Thorne, despite some early campaign missteps, managed to secure this critical endorsement just last week. Therefore, despite the current competitiveness of the race, it is virtually certain that Mayor Thorne will win reelection in the upcoming cycle.

Determine whether the following analytical statement accurately describes the logical flaw committed in the stimulus:

The political analyst's reasoning is vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that it infers that a condition is necessary for a particular outcome from the fact that this condition is sufficient to produce that outcome.