#23 - Candidate: The government spends $500 million more

[ihsan.ag]

Hello,

I am really having trouble understanding the correct answer to this question. If the musician spends more time on the guitar than she does on the saxophone and the saxophone brings on more performances- wouldn't the correct answer have to include something like shifting from saxophone to guitar to get more guitar performances. I don't understand why the musician would shift from guitar to saxophone if they are already getting performances for that.

PLEASE HELP

Thank you,

Ihsan

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Remember Ishan that we aren't trying to fix these answer choices, we are trying to mimic the error in the stimulus.

In the stimulus, we have the government spends more on highway than anti-smoking, but more people die from smoking than highway accidents. So the government would do better to take money away from highway safety (where they spend money now) and move it over to smoking (where they see more deaths). This is a problem because we don't know that extra money will have impact on smoking deaths AND it's possible that moving the money away from highway safety could lead to more deaths there.

Answer choice (B) mirrors this. It says that a musician spends more time on guitar than saxophone. But she is hired more for saxophone performances. This mirrors the government spending more on highway than anti-smoking, but more people die from smoking. Then it says she would increase her engagements by spending more time on saxophone and less time on guitar. This mirrors the stimulus recommending shifting funding from highways to anti-smoking. Just like the stimulus, we don't know that putting more resources (time) into saxophone and less into guitar will result in more bookings. She might already have had all the saxophone bookings her area would need. She might get fewer bookings for guitar if she doesn't practice enough. This mirrors the stimulus fairly closely.

Hope that helps!

[BMM2021]

Hi,

I may be missing something obvious, but could the reason why Answer E is not correct be explained? It reads a lot like answer B to me, and it seems like the same assumption - switching focus to the realm in which there is apparently higher demand would be a beneficial thing - holds for this option too.

Thanks for any help.

[Robert Carroll]

BMM2021,

I think the problem with answer choice (E) is this - how much are banks lending at high interest rates vs low interest rates? The stimulus makes it clear where government spending is going, and suggests changing that by taking some away from one destination and moving it to another destination. Answer choice (B) indicates how much practice a professional devotes to one instrument vs another. Answer choice (E) doesn't give us any idea of how much banks are lending at one rate vs another, so talking about a "shift" really doesn't explain what that answer is doing. When that answer says "more loans at low rates and fewer loans at high rates", we don't even know if that would be a "shift" in lending, because we don't know what they're already doing.

Robert Carroll

[mhlsat]

Hi! The reason I removed B) as an option is because I thought that the sentence "A certain professional musician spends several times as many hours practicing guitar as she spends practicing saxophone." meant that the musician spends AS MUCH TIME playing guitar as they spend playing saxophone, not more than the other.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi mhlsat

Several times as many means that it has to be multiples of the number of hours. If it was the same number it would say the same number, or at least as many, or similar language that allows it to be the same number instead of many more.

Hope that helps!