#19 - People who have habitually slept less than six hours

[Jonathan Evans]

Hi, Elana,

"Never" is a little bit of overkill here for the stimulus; it's not wrong, but it's just a hair stronger than the circumstances in the stimulus. However, let's try narrowly to identify the important stuff you'd need to do to get this right.

I would settle for a description like the following:

• When a group that's not doing an action starts doing this action, good stuff usually happens. So most members of this group that haven't been doing this action could expect good stuff to happen if they do this action.

Let's match up (A) and (B).

1. More or less totally syncs up.
2. As you noted, "certain small companies" is too small a subset to provide the appropriate support. We need to know what "usually" happens, not what "sometimes" happens. The conclusion also doesn't sync up because it's unclear whether the companies in question had been advertising on the internet.

Thus, the issue doesn't hinge on "never" or just "not recently"/"not much" but instead on the quantity support in the premise of (B) and the lack of distinction about the companies in the conclusion of (B). With all this in consideration, (A) is the best match.

I hope this helps!

[harvoolio]

So very simply (B) is the equivalent of saying "Most small companies can benefit by getting a computer" whereas (A) says "Most small companies without a computer can benefit by getting a computer" and hence is the right answer? Thanks.

[Adam Tyson]

I think that's a solid analogy here, harvoolio. It's the difference between the entire group (most small companies) and that subset of the group that shares the crucial characteristic (most small companies that don't have computers/haven't advertised on the Internet). Well done!

[sumzsl]

Hi,

I was between A and B but ultimately chose B. The stimulus went from "People who have habitually slept X" to "most people who sleep X." The habitually was removed from the conclusion so I had assumed that the "certain" in B accounted for this shift.

But the second half of the conclusion says that they can probably cause the anxiety to fall by "beginning to sleep at least 8 hours." So by saying that they are beginning to sleep 8hrs does that mean that they never slept 8hrs before so they do habitually sleep 6 or under? i am still confused by how certain doesn't equate to the habitually in the stimulus.


I thought that the conclusions in A and B were very similar:
A: most X that had never advertised can probably improve by doing Y
B: most X can probably improve by starting to do Y

If they are starting to do something, doesn't that imply that they had never done it before? Just like in the stimulus where them beginning to sleep 8+ implies that they hadn't slept 8+ before goes along with the premise of habitually.

The only reason I can see for eliminating B is the never. The stimulus said that people habitually did X but that doesn't mean they didn't occasionally get 8+ hours. So never in B seemed extreme.

That one word alone can be enough to eliminate an incorrect AC but I want to make sure that I fully understand all the ways in which one answer is correct over another.

Thank you!

[KelseyWoods]

Hi Sumzsl!

You're right that answer choices (A) and (B) are very similar! As previous posts have pointed out, however, there are some key differences.

"Certain" does not equate to "habitually" in the stimulus. Actually, the term "certain" causes some problems for us because it makes it not match the stimulus premise very well. "Certain" implies that not all, and maybe not even most, small companies that have never previously advertised on the Internet found their financial situations improve after doing so. "Certain" basically only tells us that some of these companies that have never previously advertised on the Internet find improvement after doing so without giving us any specifics about why it's these "certain" small companies vs. all of them. Basically, we don't know what makes these companies part of the "certain" companies that see improvement. "Habitually" is a much more specific term. It tells us that the people in this group usually sleep less than 6 hours a night. Think about how it would be different if the stimulus started with "Certain people who have habitually slept less than 6 hours a night...". We wouldn't know what distinguished these "certain" people from other people who also habitually sleep less than 6 hours a night.

Answer choice (B) falls apart even more in the conclusion and that is evident in the differences between (A) and (B). Answer choice (A) uses the phrase "most small companies that have never advertised on the Internet" which is similar to "most people who sleep less than six hours a night." Answer choice (B), on the other hand, just refers to "most small companies." It does not specify that it should be most small companies that have never advertised on the Internet.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[sdb606]

Answer choice (B), on the other hand, just refers to "most small companies." It does not specify that it should be most small companies that have never advertised on the Internet.

How could B make sense if it included companies that have previously advertised? If it had said, "So most small companies, including those that have previously advertised on the internet, can probably improve their financial situations by starting to advertise on the Internet," that would make no sense. If I said I started smoking, one would reasonably assume I had never smoked before. If I had smoked before, I would have had to say, I started smoking again. The only way to read B without contradictions is to assume B refers only to companies that have never advertised on the internet previously.

(I get how "certain" makes it wrong. Not sure about the last sentence in B though.)

[ashpine17]

So when A says "a small company" am I supposed to take that to be equivalent to "people who?" like a general rule instead of talking about one single company?

[evelineliu]

Hi Ash,

Yes, "a small company" refers to small companies generally, and we know this because later it says "its financial situation generally improves." It is parallel to "people who habitually sleep less than 6 hours a night."

Hope that helps!
Eveline