#19 - Editorial: It is clear that if this country's

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Must Be True-SN. The correct answer choice is (E)

The editorial presented in the stimulus contains a number of premises, but does not contain a conclusion. This is a common question format for Must Be True questions, and the correct answer choice is often (but not always) the conclusion that follows naturally from the premises.

There are two premises here, one in each sentence of the stimulus. The first ties the universities’ moral and intellectual responsibilities to the bestselling publications in their bookstores. It is in “If . . . Then” format, which makes picking the sufficient and necessary conditions easy. We can diagram the premise as follows:

(1)

• Living up to Moral
  AND Frivolous Bestsellers
  Living up to Intellectual

The second sentence then basically says “but, the bestsellers are frivolous.” This is:

• (2) Frivolous Bestsellers

We can take the contrapositive of (1) and come up with:

(3)

• Living up to Moral
  Frivolous Best sellers OR
  Living up to Intellectual

Now, we can combine (2) and (3) to get:

• (4) Living up to Moral OR Living up to Intellectual

Answer Choice (A) ties the individual’s responsibility to what they buy, not the university’s. It is possible for the university to be doing a bad job, but the individuals to be fine.

Answer Choice (B) does not fall out from the stimulus: while it may be true that it is irresponsibility to carry these publications, the stimulus does not address it.

Answer Choice (C) makes a simple by mistaking the fact that there are more of those two magazines sold than any others with the idea that there are more sold than all others. There may be hundreds of magazines that each sell one copy and these two only sell two copies. In this case, they would be bestsellers, but would still account for a small portion of sales.

Answer Choice (D), like (A), confuse the individual’s responsibilities with the universities’.

Answer Choice (E): This is the correct answer choice. The stimulus says they’re not living up to at least one of their responsibilities, not that they’re failing to live up to both of them. So, either the universities are not living up to their moral responsibilities, intellectual responsibilities, or they are living up to neither. This is Answer Choice (E).

[ellenb]

Dear Powerscore,

I want to make sure that I understand why answer choice C is wrong.
I understood that it is basically making the flaw, saying since it sells the best, it means that it sells the most, which might not necessariy be the case. For example, if we have at a market strwaberies being one of the most popular things being sold at a market, it does not mean that everyone is buying it. It just means that it is more popular than other items. People get more of it, so popularity does not necessarily mean a great quantity purchased.
Please let me know if I sort of got it, or if you have another example similar to it.

Thanks in advance!

Ellen

[Steve Stein]

Hi Ellen,

Sound like you've basically got it; a #1 title does not have to have been purchased by a majority of the population.

In this example, the top two best sellers are Gossip Review and TV Today. Let's say 100 people buy publications, and 90 of them buy 90 different books respectively.

If the remaining 10 buyers purchase a copy of Gossip Review and TV Today, that would make those two titles the most popular in the store, despite having been purchased by a small minority of the store's patrons.

I hope that's helpful! Please let me know whether this is clear--thanks!

~Steve

[lstevens]

Hi,

I am confused as to why answer choice "B" is wrong. In the stimulus it stated that "best-selling publications in most university bookstores are frivolous ones like TV Today and Gossip Reviews". Would you please advise?

Thanks,
-Linda

[KelseyWoods]

Hi Linda,

Thanks for you question! As for answer choice (B), the stimulus doesn't actually address whether it is wrong or right for university bookstores to carry those publications. The stimulus is more concerned with the fact that those publications are the bestselling ones and how this reflects on the universities. The author is not saying that the universities have failed their moral and intellectual responsibilities by selling those publications. It may have more to do with the fact that the universities are not encouraging students to be more intellectual so that they seek out other, less frivolous publications so that the frivolous ones wouldn't be the highest sellers. Perhaps the university bookstores shouldn't offer those frivolous publications at all, but the stimulus does not directly address that one way or the other.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[Alex3505]

Hi,

I'm not sure why C is wrong and E is the correct answer. The stimulus stated that TV Today and Gossip Review ( they are also frivolous) are the best-selling publications in most ( not all ) university bookstores. If those publications are the "best-sellers" doesn't that mean that the sell more( at some universities than others)? How else would they become "best-sellers" if they didn't sell a significant amount.

I see that E is the stronger answer out of the two, but I'm not sure what makes C wrong.

Thank you in advance !

[Jonathan Evans]

Hi, Alex,

Good question! You appear to have a good grasp of the question task: find a statement in the answer choices that must be true on the basis of information in the stimulus. Good job!

Let's assess precisely what we know from the stimulus. As described in the explanation above:

• If universities meeting (1) moral & (2) ethical responsibilities best-selling publications are frivolous

We know from the contrapositive of this statement that:

• best selling publications are frivolous universities (1) meeting moral responsibilities OR (2) meeting ethical responsibilities

We also know that these two statements are indeed the top two selling publications.

However, consider in detail the statement in answer choice (C); note what is quantified in this statement. Is this a statement about the sales of publications themselves or about something else?

In fact, this statement is about an action of the majority of people who purchase publications in the bookstores. What do we know about the shopping habits of publication-purchasers? We know that their most-often-bought publication is TV Today followed by Gossip Review, but do we know that most of these people bought either one of these publications? Not necessarily!

By analogy, consider a menu with ten items on it, including pizza, burgers, and eight different kinds of fruit.

Pizza and burgers might be the top selling items, but perhaps fewer than half the customers bought pizza or a burger. Perhaps the majority bought only one of the kinds of fruit, even though more pizza and burgers were sold than any one kind of fruit.

Does this make sense?

We have solid evidence for answer choice (E) from the conditional above.

I hope this helps!

[Alex3505]

So answer choice C : Most people who purchase publications at university bookstores purchase either TV Today or Gossip Review
Is wrong because I cannot assume the behavior of the shopper ? That those publications are popular among most, but that does not necessarily mean that more (quantity) of those publications were sold?
Sorry, I guess I'm having a hard time deciphering between a publication being a "best -seller" and not physically selling more copies than other publications in the bookstore.

[Jonathan Evans]

Alex, thank you for the follow-up question! Here's a possible illustration of publication sales at these bookstores:



Note that every other individual publication sold might sell fewer copies than either TV Today or Gossip Review but in the aggregate everything else adds up to more than either or both of these publications.

Further, we have no particular information about statistics about what publication buyers bought. We could probably safely assume (although not prove) that a great many publication shoppers bought either or both of these publications.

However, it is possible (though highly unlikely) that perhaps only a small group of shoppers bought thousands of these publications. Thus, the majority of shoppers need not have bought either of these publications.

While this particular scenario does not exactly pass the smell test, it is in keeping with the "which of the following must be true" directions.

Thus, there are at least two possible reasons why (C) is not very well supported by the stimulus. Thank you again for following up. Does this help?

[oadeboy1]

Can you please check out my logic and answer my question below.

Living up to Moral
AND -----------------------> NEGATED Frivolous Bestsellers
Living up to Intellectual


Contrapositive
Frivolous Bestsellers -----------------------> NEGATED Living up to Moral
OR
NEGATED Living up to Intellectual


It appears that E is the necessary condition of the contrapositive. However, answer E does not mention the sufficient. Why is that?