#12 - Worldwide, more books were sold last year

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Must Be True—#%. The correct answer choice is (A)

Here, the stimulus contains a fact set discussing the sale of cookbooks last year. We are told that
more cookbooks were sold last year than in any previous year, and that most of those books were not
intended for beginner cooks. In fact, more professional cooks purchased cookbooks than ever before.
At the same time, one of the books available on every continent was The Problem-Free Cookbook, a
book intended for beginners.

This is a Must Be True question, and it is clear that LSAC intended us to be confused by the
difference between books that were purchased and books that were available for purchase. The
majority of the cookbooks sold last year were not for beginner cooks. All we know about the
beginner book, The Problem-Free Cooking, is that it was available on every continent. That does not
mean that it was actually purchased anywhere.

When prephrasing for a Must Be True question, we first look to see if there is an inference to be
made from a combination of facts in the stimulus. In this case, there is an inference possible from
a combination of facts in the stimulus. Since there were more cookbooks sold in any previous year,
and since most of the cookbooks sold were not intended for beginners, and since there were few
cookbooks written for beginners, it is reasonable to infer that last year there were more cookbooks
written for professionals sold than ever before.

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice because it contains an inference available
from a combination of the facts in the stimulus, as described above.

Answer choice (B): This answer choice is incorrect because it mistakes the availability of beginner-level
cookbooks for the purchase of beginner-level cookbooks.

Answer choice (C): Here, the answer choice is wrong because we do not know anything at all about
the purchase of beginner level cookbooks. Although we cannot say that the sales of those books were
higher last year, we also cannot say that they were lower, either.

Answer choice (D): While it is true that the majority of the cookbooks sold last year were not
intended for beginners, we cannot identify the skill level of the people who purchased them. So, this
statement that the majority of those books were purchased by professional cooks has no basis in the
stimulus.

Answer choice (E): This answer choice tests the distinction between the availability of books and the
purchase of books. We know that The Problem-Free Cooking was available on every continent, but
we do not know anything about how many copies of that book were actually purchased.

[mokkyukkyu]

Hi,

This stimulus was kind of hard to understand...
I eliminated the others to arrive at A,
but at first I was not sure between A and C.
In the stimulus, it says "there were more cookbooks sold" and we can be sure this means more cook books than any previous years because of the first sentence right?
What makes C wrong is the part "lower" right?
So we cannot be sure whether it is lower, because although it says ""most of the cookbooks sold were not intended..." we dont know the exact number, so it could be "higher" instead of "lower." Its just "most...were not."
Is this correct? Sorry if my question does not make sense.

Thanks!

[Jonathan Evans]

Mokkyukkyu,

You are correct: we know nothing about the relative number sold of cookbooks intended for beginners. The number could have been higher; it could have been lower; it could have been zero; it could have been the most ever.

The only thing we know is that however many cookbooks for beginners were sold, more cookbooks not for beginners were sold. Moreover, we know that last year also had the highest total number of cookbooks sold. Therefore you can combine the first two statements to arrive at the valid inference that more non-beginner cookbooks were sold last year than in any previous year. Must Be True questions almost always involve an inference at which you arrive by combining two (or more) statements. There will likewise almost always be extraneous junk. Try to discern which statements can be combined to arrive at a new, valid inference.

[dbpk]

Hello,

I was wondering how exactly the combination of the first two sentences allows you to infer that there were more cookbooks sold than in any previous year. How do you know it is not the case that the general number of books sold last year increased more than ever before, and the sale of cookbooks also saw an increase but not more than in any previous year?

Thank you!

[AthenaDalton]

Hi dbpk,

Thanks for your question! For the sake of simplicity in answering this one, I'll be referring to "beginner" cookbooks and "advanced" cookbooks, even though the stimulus uses slightly different language.

Answer choice (A) tells us that there were more advanced cookbooks sold last year than in any previous year.

One way to reach this inference is from looking closely at the third sentence, which tells us that "for the first time ever" most of the cookbooks sold were advanced cookbooks. So we know that this year, a record-breaking majority of the cookbooks sold were advanced, and not beginner, cookbooks.

Next consider sentences one and two: that more books were sold last year than in any previous year and that, in particular, there were more cookbooks sold. We don't know the numerical increase in cookbooks sold, but we do know that they led the overall increase in cookbook sales this year to break book sale records. So we can safely infer that a lot more cookbooks were sold this year than usually occurs.

The final step is to make a bit of an inferential jump. We know this year was a record-breaking year for advanced cookbooks (as a percentage of all cookbooks). And we also know that the number of cookbooks sold increased a lot this year. We can infer from these two datapoints that more advanced cookbooks were sold this year than in previous years.

I hope this helps clarify things for you. Good luck studying!

Athena

[ashpine17]

Is B a must be false or a could be true? Best-selling means sold the most copies, right? Doesn't that mean this would be a must be false since most of the books sold last year were not for beginners? or is it a could be true because maybe most of the books sold within the subset of books for beginners was one book while it was direct opposite for the /Beginner books

[Adam Tyson]

Answer B could be true, ashpine. The one best-selling book could have been intended for beginners while the majority of books sold were not. Using small numbers, the best-seller could have sold 100 copies, while two books not intended for beginners could have each sold 99 copies.