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GRE Big Book Critical Reasoning Test 20

Jimmy Wang
07/09/2024

GRE Critical Reasoning

Directions

Critical Reasoning questions test the ability to understand, analyze, and evaluate arguments. Some of the abilities tested by specific questions include identifying the roles played by specific phrases or sentences in an argument, recognizing the point of an argument, recognizing assumptions on which an argument is based" drawing conclusions and forming hypotheses, identifying methods of argumentation, evaluating arguments and counter-arguments, and analyzing evidence.

Each of the Critical Reasoning questions is based on a short argument, a set of statements, or a plan of action. For each question, select the best answer of the choices given.

Injections of small quantities of a drug, the active ingredient of which is a human hormone, have been shown to reverse very high blood pressure rapidly and without causing undesirable side effects. However, high blood pressure is a condition that must be treated for a patient’s entire lifetime, and because the frequency of injections that wouJd be necessary renders the drug unsatisfactory for such long-term treatment, doctors continue to treat patients with injections of other medications.

#1

Which of the following can be properly concluded from the statements above?

The human body can be stimulated to produce the hormone whenever blood pressure reaches dangerously high levels.

Less-frequent injections of the drug in larger doses would provide a satisfactory treatment for very high blood pressure.

When the drug is administered orally rather than by injection, it reverses very high blood pressure but also causes undesirable side effects.

Drugs that are administered orally can reverse very high blood pressure even more rapidly than can drugs taken by injection.

The beneficial effects of the drug in the doses in which it is administered are short-lived compared to the effects of some other injected medications.

The neurons in the human brain have a unique property: they are cells that, in adults, do not divide. This property makes them immune from cancer. If the mechanism that keeps neurons from proliferating can be found and transferred to other types of cells, the complete prevention of the cancers affiicting those cells will be possible.

#2

Which of the following, if true, would provide a good reason for not trying to prevent cancer by the method indicated above?

The process of normal cell division has been studied extensively and is well understood.

Most human tissue depends on the periodic division of cells for its health.

Some kinds of cancer whose causes are known can be prevented now, but there are few kinds for which it is practically feasible to eliminate the causes.

The human brain contains cell types other than neurons.

The mechanism that keeps neurons from proliferating in adults has never been known to fail.

Twenty percent of all energy consumed in the United States is consumed by home appliances. If appliances that are twice as energy-efficient as those currently available are produced, this figure will eventually be reduced to about ten percent.

#3

The argument above requires which of the following assumptions?

Home-appliance usage would not increase along with the energy efficiency of the appliances.

Home-appliance manufacturers now have the technology to produce appliances that are twice as energy-efficient as those currently available.

It would not be expensive to produce home appliances that are energy-efficient.

The cost of energy to the consumer would rise with increases in the energy efficiency of home appliances.

The percentage of energy consumed by home appliances will increase if existing appliances are not replaced by more energy-efficient models.

When a large bird, the dodo, still inhabited the island of Mauritius, one of its favorite foods was the fruit of a particular species of tree. After the dodo became extinct, new fruit trees of that species ceased to sprout on the island.

#4

Which of the following, if true, would most help to account for the phenomenon described above?

The dodo ate a variety of other fruits as well; trees producing these other fruits continued to flourish after the dodo’s extinction.

When the fruit of the tree was not eaten, it gradually decayed, and the seeds within the fruit were deposited in soil.

The dodo tended to live where the tree’s fruit was plentiful; it was in these areas that new fruit trees of that species sprouted before the dodo’s extinction.

Although other birds also ate the tree’s fruit, the dodo was the largest and thus required the greatest quantities of fruit.

The dodo’s digestive processes softened the seeds of the tree’s fruit before the dodo excreted the seeds; the seeds germinated only after being thus softened.

Mercury, one of the deadliest toxins, makes up approximately fifty percent of the amalgam used by dentists in silver fillings. The effects of acute mercury poisoning are well known – kidney failure, muscle tremors, memory loss, and even death. It is clear that responsible dentists should remove all of their patients’ silver fillings and replace them with fillings of plastic composites.

#5

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the author's argument?

Most dental insurance plans do not consider the replacing of silver fillings to be necessary .

A patient’s exposure to mercury from multiple silver fillings is at a harmless level.

Plastic composite fillings are more expensive than silver fillings.

Mercury is also present in certain seafoods. alcoholic beverages. and medications.

Most patients are satisfied with the durability of their silver fillings.

#6

Which of the following, if true, most strengthens the author's argument?

Some patients have more than one filling per tooth.

Silver fillings gradually corrode and small amounts of mercury leak from the amalgam.

Mercury poisoning produces a range of subtle but distinctive symptoms.

The materials for plastic composite fillings are readily available to dentists.

It is difficult to measure the amount of mercury in a person’s body.

# GRE Critical Reasoning

GRE Critical Reasoning

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