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GRE Big Book Critical Reasoning Test 29

Jimmy Wang
08/09/2024

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.

Because they were anxious to balance Wyoming’s population of 8,000 men and 2,000 women, the state’s lawmakers extended voting rights to women in Wyoming in 1869.

#1

Which of the following can serve as an assumption on which the lawmakers' decision was directly based?

Women were superior to men in the ability to make political decisions.

Women who were willing to endure frontier conditions deserved the right to vote.

Women who voted would be better citizens than those who did not.

Women would want to live in a place where they could vote.

Women would vote in ways that would make Wyoming a better place to live.

Researchers have discovered a new poison, bromethalin, that is lethal to all rats, even to those species that have become immune to other poisons, as well as to those rats that eat only the most minute quantities. Tests have demonstrated that rats will not learn to avoid bromethalin and that carcasses of rats killed by bromethalin pose no threat to the well-being of other animals.

#2

Which of the following statements, if true, would support the researchers' claim that carcasses of rats killed by bromethalin will not pose a threat to other animals?

Traces of bromethalin remain in the rat’s mouth and saliva after the rat eats the poison.

Animals, prompted by curiosity, often examine carcasses that appear in their territory.

Rats that consume bromethalin die immediately.

Certain animals are scavengers and feed habitually on refuse and dead flesh.

Chemicals in the digestive tract of dead rats quickly break bromethalin down into a nontoxic substance.

If carbon dioxide gas is generated in large enough quantities, it will collect in the atmo- sphere and cause an unwelcome warming effect on climate.

The decay of plants, including trees, generates carbon dioxide, but in forests such carbon dioxide is balanced by the carbon dioxide taken in by living plants, which give off oxygen.

The use in industry of fuels derived from plants generates a large amount of carbon dioxide; such fuels include wood, coal, and oil.

#3

If the statements above are true, which of the following can properly be concluded from them?

A society that uses plant-based fuels in industry will contribute a net surplus of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, unless the gas is reabsorbed in some way.

No matter which fuels are used by industry, there is bound to be an increase in the total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and a consequent unwelcome warming effect on climate.

An unwelcome warming effect on climate cannot be avoided, since carbon dioxide is given off by the natural processes of decay in plants.

Forests contribute as much carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as does the industrial use of fuel derived from plants.

All of the carbon dioxide that can be generated in an industrial society is attributable to plants, directly or indirectly.

The ratio of divorces to marriages has increased since 1940. Therefore, there must be a greater proportion of children living with only one natural parent than there was in 1940.

#4

Which of the following, if true, most strongly weakens the inference drawn above?

The number of marriages entered into by women twenty-five to thirty-five years old has decreased since 1940.

The proportion of children who must be raised by one parent because the other has has decreased since 1940 as a result of medical advances.

When there is a divorce, children are often given the option of deciding which parent they will live with.

Before 1940 relatively few children whose parents had both died were adopted into single-parent families.

Since 1940 the average number of children in a family has remained approximately steady and has not been subject to wide fluctuations.

Since the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, major airline companies in the United States have cut their’ employee ranks by more than 3,000 persons. Thus, although deregulated competition has afforded consumers dramatically lower fares, the economy of the United States has been, harmed by deregulation of the airlines.

#5

The argument above would be most seriously weakened if it were true that

airlines now fly a more restricted regular schedule of routes than they did in 1978, with the consequence that the industry is more highly concentrated and competitive than it was before 1978

fewer passengers now travel on commercial airlines than traveled on them in 1978, with the consequence that fewer employees are needed to operate the airlines than were needed in 1978

a poll of people in the United States expressed exceptionally strong support for airline deregulation

several major airlines now enjoy significantly higher profits and levels of employment than they did in the years preceding the Deregulation Act

smaller carriers of passengers have thrived as a result of deregulation and now provide more new jobs than the major airlines have eliminated since 1978

Last year, support for the social and behavioral sciences represented only about three percent of the government’s total budget for research funds in the United States. Thus, the particularly sharp reductions imposed on such programs this year seem dictated not by financial constraints but by social philosophy.

#6

Which of the following is an assumption on which the conclusion of the passage above is based?

The government funds allocated for research in the social and behavioral sciences are not sufficient for the work that needs to be done.

The current reductions will stop research in the social and behavioral sciences.

The social and behavioral sciences are as valuable as the physical and biological sciences.

Three percent is an insignificant portion of the government’s total budget for research funds.

Government funding is the primary source of research money in the United States.

# GRE Critical Reasoning

GRE Critical Reasoning

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