#14 - The only way that bookstores can profitably sell books

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Cannot Be True—SN. The correct answer choice is (D)

Here we have a series of conditional statements which link together quite nicely:

Bookstores can profitably sell books at below market price only if they get a discount from the publisher:

• Profit below mkt price discount from pub

Bookstores cannot get discounts unless they generate a high sales volume:

• discount from pub high sales volume

If they are to achieve such high sales volume, bookstores must either cater to the masses, or have exclusive access, or both:

• Cater to masses
  
  high sales volume or
  
  Exclusive access

Linking these conditional statements together, we get the following:

Cater to masses

Profit below mkt price discount from pub high sales volume or

Exclusive access

The contrapositive of this long conditional statement is as follows:

cater to masses

and high sales volume discount from pub profitably sell below mkt
price
exclusive access


The question provides additional information (that a given bookstore does not cater to the masses), and then asks which of the answer choices cannot be true based on the conditional reasoning from the stimulus . Thus, the correct answer choice will be the only one which is unaligned with the sufficient necessary diagrams above.

Correct answer choice (D) is the only one which cannot be true, based on the contrapositive diagramed above. We already knew that this bookstore was not catering to the masses. If, as this choice provides, the store also lacks exclusive access to a specialized market, we can draw all of the following conclusions:

• high sales volume discount from pub profitably sell below mkt price

[Basia W]

Hello,

I had a question about conditionally diagramming the first sentence: shouldn't it be "discount from publishers" profitably sell books since "only" is qualifying "bookstores that can profitably sell"?

Thank you,

best,

Basia

[David Boyle]

Hello,

I had a question about conditionally diagramming the first sentence: shouldn't it be "discount from publishers" profitably sell books since "only" is qualifying "bookstores that can profitably sell"?

Thank you,

best,

Basia

Hello Basia,

No, "only way" points to "discount". So the arrow is from "profitably sell" to "discount", not the other way around.

Hope this helps,
David

[reop6780]

The correct answer is D while I did not see any appealing answer.

The stimuli is the sequence of conditionals: pro. sell -> Discount -> Volume -> Mass. OR Exclusive.

Answer D states NO Exclusive but pro. sell.

If it stated that Neither Exclusive nor Mass but pro. sell, I would be definitely convinced that it was the correct answer.

Since pro. sell CANNOT occur with the negated condition of Mass Or Exlusive.

However, D did not negate the condition completely by negating Exclusive only, and I thought pro. sell COULD happen.

Did I draw any conditions wrong?

[Nicholas Bruno]

Hi!

So let's start from the beginning on this question and maybe it will make more sense than me trying to discuss each of the SN relationships you discuss.

The key is the last sentence: "To generate such volume, bookstores must either cater to mass tastes or have exclusive access to a large specialized market, such as medical textbooks, or both"

So you have:

Generate Volume Cater to mass tastes OR exclusive access

The question stem says the bookstore does not cater to mass tastes. Thus, in order to generate volume (and thus, get discounts/make a profit), the bookstore would need to have exclusive access.

D contradicts this: D says that the bookstore does not have exclusive access but still gets profits. That contradicts with the stimulus. Thus, it cannot be true.

I hope that helps!

[na02]

I'm confused as to why answers A B and C are incorrect.

I get that E is "could be true" because if it's ~cater AND ~exclusive access --> ~discount

However, if ~ cater, but ~exclusive access is not given, wouldn't that mean the following conditionality (e.g., ~high sales volume --> ~discount --> ~profit below market) wouldn't occur? Because for that negated conditionality to happen, BOTH cater AND exclusive access have to be ~ ?

I originally chose C but am really confused as to what it's saying: If it says "or else" does it mean that if "the bookstore has exclusive access" happens and then "gets discount" or is it saying it "doesn't get discount"?
Very confused... would appreciate help!

Many thanks!

[Robert Carroll]

na,

As you said, the negation of exclusive access is not given. So we don't know whether it's true or false. Because of this, we don't know whether the contrapositive of the long conditional statement gets "triggered" so that we can start inferring things from it. We don't know, so we can't make any such assumptions. For the contrapositive to get "triggered" we'd need to know both negations on the sufficient side, but they're not "necessary" as necessary conditions - for this conditional to get off the ground, we'd need to know them both (because of the "and") but this is, after all, only one conditional. And even if they were necessary...remember, we don't know whether exclusive access is true or false. So we can't get anywhere with it.

Answer choice (C) is just an "or" statement: exclusive access OR discount from publishers. Well, it's perfectly possible that they have exclusive access, and it's perfectly possible that they don't get discounts from publishers, so this statement could be true. That makes it incorrect for this Cannot Be True question.

Robert Carroll

[msomorin]

Hi there,

Would someone be able to provide an explanation on why answer choice D is correct? I got the answer right by coming to the conclusion that the contrapositive of the final sentence requires a bookstore either catering to mass tastes or have exclusive access to a large specialized market, such as medical textbooks, or both in order to generate high sales volume. However, if the bookstore is does not cater to mass tastes then answer choice D cannot be true but I would like to check my work.

[Stephanie Oswalt]

Hi there,

Would someone be able to provide an explanation on why answer choice D is correct? I got the answer right by coming to the conclusion that the contrapositive of the final sentence requires a bookstore either catering to mass tastes or have exclusive access to a large specialized market, such as medical textbooks, or both in order to generate high sales volume. However, if the bookstore is does not cater to mass tastes then answer choice D cannot be true but I would like to check my work.

Hi msomorin!

Thanks for your post! I have moved your question to the thread discussing this. Please review the above explanation and discussion, and let us know if that helps! Thanks!