GRE Critical Reasoning
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.
The burden of taxation on the back of a people is not unlike the burden of a weight on the back of a horse. Just as a small burden badly placed may distress a horse that could carry with ease a much larger burden properly adjusted, so a people may be impoverished and their power of producing wealth destroyed by taxation that, if levied another way, could be borne with ease.
#1
Artificial seaweed made of plastic has been placed on a section of coast in order to reverse beach erosion. The inventor of the seaweed has concluded that the recent buildup of sand on that section of coast proves that the artificial seaweed reverses beach erosion.
#2
Metropolis’ regulation limiting to four days the period during which milk can be sold to consumers after pasteurization is unreasonable. Under optimal conditions, pasteurized milk kept at 40 degrees Fahrenheit remains unspoiled for at least 14 days. If Metropolis’ current limitation were changed to eight days, milk prices would drop, but product quality would be unaffected.
#3
Company X recently bought Company Y. Since the two companies had previously been the only companies manufacturing cardboard containers, Company X now has a monopoly in this particular branch of industry and therefore will probably raise the price of its cardboard containers.
#4
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s) pose known dangers to public health. Only when the United States government imposes a specific ban on the industrial use of CFC’s will industry scientists make the alternatives to CFC’s cost-effective, and thus reduce public health hazards.
#5
Lobsters usually develop one smaller, cutter claw and one larger, crusher claw. To show that exercise determines which claw becomes the crusher, researchers placed young lobsters in tanks and repeatedly prompted them to grab a probe with one claw-in each case always the same, randomly selected claw. In most of the lobsters the grabbing claw became the crusher. But in a second, similar experiment, when lobsters were prompted to use both claws equally for grabbing, most matured with two cutter claws, even though each claw was exercised as much as the grabbing claws had been in the first experiment.