The Alphabet

GRE Big Book Critical Reasoning Test 23

Jimmy Wang
07/17/2024

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.

Many farmers in the United States are turning away from synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, whose costs are rising rapidly, and choosing systems of organic farming designed to replenish nutrients in the soil. Studies indicate that although in some instances crop yields are lower in the years immediately after a farmer converts from a chemical to an organic system, the farmer’s net income in each of those years is nevertheless likely to be higher.

#1

Which of the following, if true, would help explain why the farmer's annual net income is likely to be higher following conversion to an organic system?

Farmers for whom environmental concerns are paramount are willing to take financial losses to avoid synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

Many farmers who have purchased equipment used in chemical farming feel that they have irrevocably committed themselves to using synthetic fertilizers and pestiCides.

By growing nitrogen-fixing plants alongside a cash crop over a period of years, a farmer can usually increase crop yield dramatically.

The most successful systems of organic farming are intended to ensure the continued productivity of farmland.

The amount of money the farmer loses by reducing crop yield is generally less than the amount the farmer saves in production costs by switching from chemical farming to an organic system.

For some years health authorities have believed that people with high blood pressure (hypertension) should restrict their salt intake. Recently scientists found in a large, well-designed study that those with chronic hypertension consume less salt than do their counterparts with normal blood pressure.

#2

If it is true that a diet relatively high in salt is causally linked to the onset of hypertension, which of the following, if true, most plausibly accounts for the new findings?

Only a minority of those with hypertension have been properly diagnosed.

Excess salt intake is dangerous to health.

Hypertension occurs most frequently in those who have a family history of hypertension.

Chronic hypertension is not a serious problem in the population studied.

Most people with chronic hypertension have intentionally restricted their salt intake.

A successful defense against attack by ballistic missiles would have to be controlled by a large-scale computer system.

A defense against attack by ballistic missiles, to be successful, would have to work on first use, and a full preliminary test would be impossible.

Despite careful planning, every large-scale computer system has on use proved to have flaws that in some situations would cause serious failure.

#3

If the statements above are true, which of the following conclusions is best supported by them?

Methods for reducing errors in constructing large-scale computer systems will not be found.

If care is taken in planning the computer system to be used for defense against attack by ballistic missiles, there is a high probability that the defense system will be successful if and when it is needed.

A defense against attack by ballistic missiles cannot be assured of success the first time it is used.

A defense against ballistic missile attack will not work successfully when it is first called on.

Some means for control other than a large-scale computer system will have to be found for a system for defense against ballistic missiles.

For acrylic, a clear rigid plastic, to be cast, fairly complex molecules must be induced to link up, in a process called polymerization. Polymerization is exothermic; i.e., its net effect is that each time molecules link, a small quantity of heat is generated. In addition, the rate of linking speeds up as temper- ature increases.

#4

Which of the following can be inferred from the passage above?

Unless the heat that results from the linking of molecules is drawn ofT promptly, there will be a heat buildup at an accelerating rate as acrylic is cast.

If air temperatures are kept steady when acrylic is cast, the rate at which the molecules link remains constant.

Once the process of polymerization has been induced, it cannot be slowed before all possible links among molecules have been formed.

In the casting of thin sheets of acrylic, which lose heat quickly to the surrounding air, polymerization proceeds much faster than it does in the casting of thick pieces.

The method used to trigger the process of polymerization is a sharp increase in the temperature of the surrounding air.

A steady decline in annual movie-ticket sales is about to begin. More than half of the tickets sold last year were sold to the age group, under twenty- five years of age, representing twenty-seven percent of the population. However, the number of individuals under twenty-five will steadily decline during the next decade.

#5

Which of the following, if true, casts most doubt on the prediction above regarding future movie-ticket sales?

Movie-ticket sales tend to increase as the size of the work force increases, and the size of the work force will increase annually during the next decade.

Experts that people under twenty-five years of age will continue to account for more than half of the total number of tickets sold in each of the next ten years.

Medical advances have lowered the mortality rates for those who are forty to sixty years of age.

Many people gradually lose interest in going to the movies after they reach twenty-five years of age.

The number of movie theaters has been increasing, and this trend is expected to continue during the next ten years.

Any lender about to make a loan wishes to know the real rate of interest; i.e., ,the contractual rate of interest less the rate of inflation. But what rate of inflation to use, past or expected? Past inflation is the better choice, because we have specific firm figures for.it so that the real rate of interest will also emerge as a specific figure.

#6

Which of the following, if true, is the strongest point that an opponent of the position above might make in arguing that the rate of expected inflation is the proper figure to use?

Since the contractual interest is future income to a prospective lender, it is more appropriate to adjust that income in terms of inflation expected for the future.

The official rate of past inflation is a figure that depends on what commodities, in what proportions, determine the official price index.

Since estimating the rate of expected inflation presupposes careful economic analysis, lenders might derive coincidental benefits from doing such an estimate.

The rate of expected inflation will differ little from the rate of past inflation when inflation is steady.

No official rate of past inflation is computed for any period shorter than a month.