#13 - Pollution is a problem wherever there are people who

[Jon Denning]

Complete Question Explanation

We’ve got a Parallel question here, so let’s break down this stimulus first to see what we’re working with, and then match an answer.

The first sentence creates a chain of facts:

People indifferent to environment Pollution Nature’s balance harmed [I removed the
“problem” part from pollution, since pollution itself was all I needed to create the connection from people’s
indifference to nature’s balance]

From that the author draws a conclusion:

People indifferent to environment Nature’s balance harmed

Which is of course a fine argument! To tie the first term to the last is entirely allowed when the arrows all point in that direction, so we’ve got a valid form of reasoning on our hands here. What we should then expect from the right answer is a three-part premise that forms a uni-directional chain, and then a conclusion that drops the middle term. Should be easy enough...

Part of what gives some people pause is the use of terms like “whenever” (stimulus) and “any” and “every” (answer choices), and recognizing that those are all synonymous indicators. But if you think about it they do all tell you the same thing: each of them is an “all” type statement, where it treats a condition as being wholly/universally indicative of something else. An entirety, in other words. “Any time [or every time] there are people who are indifferent...” and “Whenever a desert contains chocolate...” would be the same thing as the originals (note that I’ve swapped the indicator ideas around from stim to answers and vice versa).

So that’s a common question people have, but I’m happy to report that as those words are being used here we can treat them all as interchangeable

With that in mind, let’s run through the answers to see what each gives us:

(A) This is the correct answer choice. The first sentence sets up the chain as needed:

chocolate high calories fattening

Then the second sentence, the conclusion, connects the first and last piece:

chocolate fattening

(B) The first sentence here fails to arrange the arrows in the proper direction:

chocolate high calories fattening

So this answer is incorrect.

(C) Again, we find our arrows in the first sentence to be misaligned:

chocolate high calories fattening

(D) The first sentence in (D) is fine:

chocolate high calories fattening

However the conclusion commits the classic Mistaken Reversal and is thus not a match:

fattening chocolate

(E) The presence of the word “many” in (E) softens the absolute nature of the relationship between “high in calories” and “fattening,” so this answer is out.


Hope that helps!

[mshaheen14]

Hi,

I initially skipped this question because it looked very time-consuming and decided I would come back to it at the end of the section. When I did end up coming back to it I was crunched for time and wasn't able to diagram the stimulus and all the answer choices.

This leads me to the question if in parallel reasoning questions dealing with conditionality it is always essential to diagram to get the correct answer. Do any of the other methods discussed in Lesson-8 produce the right answers as they seem to be much less time consuming than diagramming every answer choice and the stimulus.

Thank you!

[KelseyWoods]

Hi mshaheen14!

In general, you do not have to diagram every answer choice in a Parallel question. I would recommend always diagramming the stimulus if it contains conditional reasoning. This makes it clear what you're looking for in the answer choices and can help you go through them faster. But once you have your stimulus diagram, you may find it easy enough to eliminate answer choices that do not match simply by reading them. Typically, what I do is read through all of the answer choices, eliminate any that I can right away, and leave ones I might need to diagram as contenders. Then, once I have my contenders, I diagram whichever one I have the best feeling about first to check it. If it matches, great. If not, I try one of the others.

But, for this question, diagramming answer choices A-D probably is the quickest way to determine the differences between them. They shouldn't take that long to diagram because the indicators are clear and consistent--it's mainly just the conditions that are switched around. The Premise/Conclusion tests get rid of E quickly because "many" is not as absolute as we have in the stimulus. But there's not a quick and easy way to get around the diagrams for A-D.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey