#20 - Productivity is average output per worker per unit of

[lilmissunshine]

Hello,

I picked (E) at first. Is it wrong because high-tech equipment is not mentioned in the formula and thus cannot directly contribute to increase in productivity? Could someone explain why (B) is the correct answer?

Many thanks!

[James Finch]

Hi Lil Miss Sunshine,

It sounds like you may missed the conditional relationship that is given in the stimulus. The second sentence tells us that high productivity is impossible without adequate training of workers; using the Unless Equation, we can diagram that out to:

High Productivity (HP) Adequate Training of Workers (ATW)

Then the stimulus concludes that high-tech equipment is not a necessary condition for high productivity. But we haven't been told anything about high-tech equipment or its relationship to adequate training of workers, so we can't preclude the possibility that having high-tech equipment (HTE) is a necessary condition for adequate training of workers, or:

ATW HTE

which when combined with our other conditional would give us:

HP ATW HTE

or more importantly:

HP HTE

Of course we don't know this to be true, but it remains a possibility, so while the conclusion could be true, it could also be false. Answer choice (B) correctly identifies this possibility, while (E) deals with a different scope from the stimulus ("contributing to increases in productivity" versus being a necessary condition for high productivity).

Hope this clears things up!