#8 - The years 1917, 1937, 1956, 1968, 1979, and 1990 are

[Joel T]

Hi there,

I had trouble with this one. I originally picked answer A.

I started by the "Match the Conclusion" approach and eliminated answer choices B & C.

I then moved on and tried the "Match the Premise" approach and focused in on the second and third premise which I diagramed as:
Heavy Sunspot Activity (SA) Increased Positively Charged Ions (II)
II People Anxious + People Irritable

That wasn't much help and I then eliminated E because I didn't think that large windows resulted in exposure to abundant natural light.

Between A and D, I then I felt A was more like the stimulus and selected that.

Upon review, I realize A doesn't have enough variables (Predicted the Outcome and Watching the Birds).

Any help on the how I could better attack this question would be appreciated!

[James Finch]

Hi Joel,

It looks like your approach was largely correct, but inconsistently applied. Matching the Conclusions alone should be enough to eliminate answer choices (B), (C) and (D), as they all contain certain conclusions while the stimulus's conclusion is probabilistic, and makes (A) appear shaky, as it claims a single unknown cause for two separate effects, based on their correlation, while the stimulus has a single root cause that begins a causal chain of:

Sunspots Positively Charged Ions Irritable People Popular Uprisings

(E) mirrors this same structure, with the exact same scope in the conclusion as the stimulus ("likely to be a partial cause", with a chain of:

Corner Office More Windows More Sunlight More Productivity

The key is recognizing in the stimulus first the scope of the conclusion, then the causal chain. Matching these against the answer choices, and only (E) works.

Hope this clears things up!