#10 - Toning shoes—walking shoes with a specially rounded

[Luke Haqq]

Hi bilingli!

To start, there's a bit of speculation going on in the reasoning you provide. There'd need to be more traction and support for this in the stimulus, or a lengthier unpacking of it in the answer choice, for it to resolve the paradox.

More to the point, the paradox is about major leg muscles. The paradox is specifically that the toning shoes themselves don't increase the amount of exercise that major leg muscles receive, yet people who use them still experience strengthening their leg muscles.

Answer choice (A) is about small, underused muscles, and thus on its own is not directly related to the paradox at hand that deals with major leg muscles. It's possible that the two could be related, but again this would need to be spelled out in the answer choice or stimulus.

[lsc2024]

The reason I didn't like this one, is because the stimulus itself say "...major leg muscles of people walking in toning shoes receive no more exercise that those of" other people, in ordinary shoes. So, if walking is considered exercise (as it often is), but neither party's leg muscles gets more exercise than the other, then what else could it be? If it's the case that toning shoe people's leg muscles strengthen due to the shoe, but not because of more exercise, then the cause cannot be that toning shoe people walk more. I chose B, since it is not referring to any kind of exercise, and seems like a plausible explanation. Anyone want to point to where I went wrong in my logic?

[Adam Tyson]

Looks like you are misinterpreting that claim, lsc2024. When they tell us that "the major leg muscles of people walking in toning shoes receive no more exercise than those of people walking in ordinary walking shoes," that's looking at the effect of walking in one or the other type of shoe on that person's muscles. Walking 100 yards in special shoes does exactly the same thing as does walking the same 100 yards in regular shoes. But it tells us nothing about how much walking those people do! The toning shoes aren't doing anything extra to exercise the muscles, but the person wearing those shoes might do something different than someone wearing regular shoes.

[miriamson07]

I initially eliminated answer choice C because I interpreted the phrase "major leg muscles of people walking in toning shoes receive no more exercise than those of people walking in ordinary walking shoes" differently.

This is how I interpreted it: major leg muscles of people walking in toning shoes are not exercised more than major leg muscles of people walking in ordinary shoes.

To me, it seems that the original phrase can be interpreted in two ways.
1) the way I interpreted i t
2) the EFFECT (on major leg muscles) of walking in toning shoes is no more than the EFFECT of walking in ordinary shoes.

My question is, is it technically correct to interpret the phrase the way I did? In which case, I would need to be able to see the second interpretation as well in order to select the right answer?

Thanks! I want to make sure that I'm not interpreting the English incorrectly. If it's the case that my interpretation is valid too, I know I just need to work on seeing multiple interpretations.

[Jeff Wren]

Hi miriamson,

The wording that you cited is indeed tricky and did confuse many test takers.

The statement "the major leg muscles of people walking in toning shoes receive no more exercise than those (meaning major leg muscles) of people wearing ordinary walking shoes" is comparing the rate of muscle exercise per unit of walking. In other words, it's comparing how much the leg muscles are worked out while walking as a rate rather than the total amount.

For example, if I said "the major leg muscles of people walking with ankle weights receive more exercise than those (meaning major leg muscles) of people not wearing ankle weights," this would mean walking with ankle weights causes the muscles to be exercised more per unit of walking (i.e. per step, per mile, etc.). However, the total amount that any individual exercises their muscles would vary depending on how much walking or other exercise that person does.

The stimulus is not saying that "people who walk in toning shoes exercise their major leg muscles no more than people who walk in ordinary running shoes." If that had been the intent of the statement, it would have been worded differently, comparing the people performing the exercise rather than the muscles receiving the exercise, and likely would have used the words "on average."