#15 - The better we understand the behavior and ecological

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[claudiagarin]

Why is A incorrect?

It seems like the contrapositive

Thanks.

[ToluOj]

Hi,

Could you please explain the #% component to this question? I completely missed it during the exam and during my review. The logic makes sense that it's harder to study something when there's growing scarcity, but it's not a conclusion I would've arrived at based on the sentences there.

Thanks,
Tolu

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Claudia and Tolu!

Claudia, the premises here are not conditional statements (instead they state correlations--"more this, more that"), so we don't have any contrapositives to look out for. The problem with answer choice A is that it's making a definitive statement about the future that the premises provide no basis for. The premises do not say how well we currently understand any particular endangered species, so we don't know how far we have to go (or if we have to get any more understanding than we have currently!) to save them from extinction. Without that information at least, there's no way to predict whether those species will become extinct.

Tolu, the numbers and percents here come from terms like "better chance" (a percentage-based notion that with better understanding comes a higher likelihood of saving an endangered species) and "more individuals" (meaning, a greater number of individuals). Answer choice C is tricky, but derived from the relatively simple notion that correlations run in both directions. Since more individuals studied means better understanding, fewer individuals available to study is likely to mean less (or at least a harder time!) understanding the species. That's all you really need to arrive at answer choice C.

I hope this helps!

[momgoingbacktoschool]

The way I've been able to decipher between A and C is that C is basically the less extreme version of A. A is too definitive to be correct.

[JocelynL]

I was between C & D. I ended up choosing C because the stimulus doesn't talk about "action" , which is mentioned in D. Is this an accurate way of reasoning?

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Jocelyn,

Yes, that's perfect! Answer choice D expresses a comparison that we have no basis for making, because we do not know (the stimulus doesn't say) how important "taking action" is when it comes to saving endangered species.

Nice work again!

[cargopants]

It took me some time to eliminate B as an option, it made me wonder whether understanding through studying individuals = understanding both ecological niche + behavior. But I could have eliminated B because it does not explicitly link both premises together (to complete the argument), and just because the premises have a correlation but does not mean the "continued reduction of wildlife habitat," will necessarily go so far as to make preservation impossible - is that correct?

[Adam Tyson]

That is correct, cargopants! "Impossible" is too strong a claim here, when all we know is that it might make things more difficult. Also, this answer is scrambling up two different ideas from the passage: we would benefit from understanding the geographical niche (the habitat, perhaps) and we would also benefit from studying more individuals. That does not mean we need to have more habitat in order to save the species.