1.Child’s World, a chain of toy stores, has relied on a “supermarket concept” of computerized inventory control and customer self-service to eliminate the category of sales clerks from its force of employees. It now plans to employ the same concept in selling children’s clothes.
The plan of Child’s World assumes that
(A) supermarkets will not also be selling children’s clothes in the same manner
(B) personal service by sales personnel is not required for selling children’s clothes successfully
(C) the same kind of computers will be used in inventory control for both clothes and toys at Child’s World
(D) a self-service plan cannot be employed without computerized inventory control
(E) sales clerks are the only employees of Child’s World who could be assigned tasks related to inventory control
2.Continuous indoor fluorescent light benefits the health of hamsters with inherited heart disease. A group of them exposed to continuous fluorescent light survived twenty-five percent longer than a similar group exposed instead to equal periods of indoor fluorescent light and of darkness.
The method of the research described above is most likely to be applicable in addressing which of the following questions?
(A) Can industrial workers who need to see their work do so better by sunlight or by fluorescent light?
(B) Can hospital lighting be improved to promote the recovery of patients?
(C) How do deep-sea fish survive in total darkness?
(D) What are the inherited illnesses to which hamsters are subject?
(E) Are there plants that require specific periods of darkness in order to bloom?
3.Millions of identical copies of a plant can be produced using new tissue-culture and cloning techniques.
If plant propagation by such methods in laboratories proves economical, each of the following, if true, represents a benefit of the new techniques to farmers EXCEPT:
(A) The techniques allow the development of superior strains to take place more rapidly, requiring fewer generations of plants grown to maturity.
(B) It is less difficult to care for plants that will grow at rates that do not vary widely.
(C) Plant diseases and pests, once they take hold, spread more rapidly among genetically uniform plants than among those with genetic variations.
(D) Mechanical harvesting of crops is less difficult if plants are more uniform in size.
(E) Special genetic traits can more easily be introduced into plant strains with the use of the new techniques.
4.Which of the following best completes the passage below?
Sales campaigns aimed at the faltering personal computer market have strongly emphasized ease of use, called user-friendliness. This emphasis is oddly premature and irrelevant in the eyes of most potential buyers, who are trying to address the logically prior issue of whether______
(A) user-friendliness also implies that owners can service their own computers
(B) personal computers cost more the more user-friendly they are
(C) currently available models are user-friendly enough to suit them
(D) the people promoting personal computers use them in their own homes
(E) they have enough sensible uses for a personal computer to justify the expense of buying one
5.A weapons-smuggling incident recently took place in country Y. We all know that Y is a closed society. So Y’s government must have known about the weapons.
Which of the following is an assumption that would make the conclusion above logically correct?
(A) If a government knows about a particular weapons-smuggling incident, it must have intended to use the weapons for its own purposes.
(B) If a government claims that it knew nothing about a particular weapons-smuggling incident, it must have known everything about it.
(C) If a government does not permit weapons to enter a country, it is a closed society.
(D) If a country is a closed society, its government has a large contingent of armed guards patrolling its borders.
(E) If a country is a closed society, its government has knowledge about everything that occurs in the country.
6.Banning cigarette advertisements in the mass media will not reduce the number of young people who smoke. They know that cigarettes exist and they know how to get them. They do not need the advertisements to supply that information.
The above argument would be most weakened if which of the following were true?
(A) Seeing or hearing an advertisement for a product tends to increase people’s desire for that product.
(B) Banning cigarette advertisements in the mass media will cause an increase in advertisements in places where cigarettes are sold.
(C) Advertisements in the mass media have been an exceedingly large part of the expenditures of the tobacco companies.
(D) Those who oppose cigarette use have advertised against it in the mass media ever since cigarettes were found to be harmful.
(E) Older people tend to be less influenced by mass-media advertisements than younger people tend to be.
7.People tend to estimate the likelihood of an event’s occurrence according to its salience; that is, according to how strongly and how often it comes to their attention.
By placement and headlines, newspapers emphasize stories about local crime over stories about crime elsewhere and about many other major events.
It can be concluded on the basis of the statements above that, if they are true, which of the following is most probably also true?
(A) The language used in newspaper headlines about local crime is inflammatory and fails to respect the rights of suspects.
(B) The coverage of international events in newspapers is neglected in favor of the coverage of local events.
(C) Readers of local news in newspapers tend to overestimate the amount of crime in their own localities relative to the amount of crime in other places.
(D) None of the events concerning other people that are reported in newspapers is so salient in people’s minds as their own personal experiences.
(E) The press is the news medium that focuses people’s attention most strongly on local crimes.
8.By analyzing the garbage of a large number of average-sized households, a group of modern urban anthropologists has found that a household discards less food the more standardized—made up of canned and prepackaged foods—its diet is. The more standardized a household’s diet is, however, the greater the quantities of fresh produce the household throws away.
Which of the following can be properly inferred from the passage?
(A) An increasing number of households rely on a highly standardized diet.
(B) The less standardized a household’s diet is, the more nonfood waste the household discards.
(C) The less standardized a household’s diet is, the smaller is the proportion of fresh produce in the household’s food waste.
(D) The less standardized a household’s diet is, the more canned and prepackaged foods the household discards as waste.
(E) The more fresh produce a household buys, the more fresh produce it throws away.
Questions 9-10 are based on the following.
In the past, teachers, bank tellers, and secretaries were predominantly men; these occupations slipped in pay and status when they became largely occupied by women. Therefore, if women become the majority in currently male-dominated professions like accounting, law, and medicine, the income and prestige of these professions will also drop.
9.The argument above is based on
(A) another argument that contains circular reasoning
(B) an attempt to refute a generalization by means of an exceptional case
(C) an analogy between the past and the future
(D) an appeal to popular beliefs and values
(E) an attack on the character of the opposition
10.Which of the following, if true, would most likely be part of the evidence used to refute the conclusion above?
(A) Accountants, lawyers, and physicians attained their current relatively high levels of income and prestige at about the same time that the pay and status of teachers, bank tellers, and secretaries slipped.
(B) When large numbers of men join a female-dominated occupation, such as airline flight attendant, the status and pay of the occupation tend to increase.
(C) The demand for teachers and secretaries has increased significantly in recent years, while the demand for bank tellers has remained relatively stable.
(D) If present trends in the awarding of law degrees to women continue, it will be at least two decades before the majority of lawyers are women.
(E) The pay and status of female accountants, lawyers, and physicians today are governed by significantly different economic and sociological forces than were the pay and status of female teachers, bank tellers, and secretaries in the past.
11.An electric-power company gained greater profits and provided electricity to consumers at lower rates per unit of electricity by building larger-capacity more efficient plants and by stimulating greater use of electricity within its area. To continue these financial trends, the company planned to replace an old plant by a plant with triple the capacity of its largest plant.
The company’s plan as described above assumed each of the following EXCEPT:
(A) Demand for electricity within the company’s area of service would increase in the future.
(B) Expenses would not rise beyond the level that could be compensated for by efficiency or volume of operation, or both.
(C) The planned plant would be sufficiently reliable in service to contribute a net financial benefit to the company as a whole.
(D) Safety measures to be instituted for the new plant would be the same as those for the plant it would replace.
(E) The tripling of capacity would not result in insuperable technological obstacles to efficiency.
Questions 12-13 are based on the following.
Meteorologists say that if only they could design an accurate mathematical model of the atmosphere with all its complexities, they could forecast the weather with real precision. But this is an idle boast, immune to any evaluation, for any inadequate weather forecast would obviously be blamed on imperfections in the model.
12.Which of the following, if true, could best be used as a basis for arguing against the author’s position that the meteorologists’ claim cannot be evaluated?
(A) Certain unusual configurations of data can serve as the basis for precise weather forecasts even though the exact causal mechanisms are not understood.
(B) Most significant gains in the accuracy of the relevant mathematical models are accompanied by clear gains in the precision of weather forecasts.
(C) Mathematical models of the meteorological aftermath of such catastrophic events as volcanic eruptions are beginning to be constructed.
(D) Modern weather forecasts for as much as a full day ahead are broadly correct about 80 percent of the time.
(E) Meteorologists readily concede that the accurate mathematical model they are talking about is not now in their power to construct.
13.Which of the following, if true, would cast the most serious doubt on the meteorologists’ boast, aside from the doubt expressed in the passage above?
(A) The amount of energy that the Earth receives from the Sun is monitored closely and is known not to be constant.
(B) Volcanic eruptions, the combustion of fossil fuels, and several other processes that also cannot be quantified with any accuracy are known to have a significant and continuing impact on the constitution of the atmosphere.
(C) As current models of the atmosphere are improved, even small increments in complexity will mean large increases in the number of computers required for the representation of the models.
(D) Frequent and accurate data about the atmosphere collected at a large number of points both on and above the ground are a prerequisite for the construction of a good model of the atmosphere.
(E) With existing models of the atmosphere, large scale weather patterns can be predicted with greater accuracy than can relatively local weather patterns.
14.Of the countries that were the world’s twenty largest exporters in 1953, four had the same share of total world exports in 1984 as in 1953. Theses countries can therefore serve as models for those countries that wish to keep their share of the global export trade stable over the years.
Which of the following, if true, casts the most serious doubt on the suitability of those four countries as models in the sense described?
(A) Many countries wish to increase their share of world export trade, not just keep it stable.
(B) Many countries are less concerned with exports alone than with he balance between exports and imports.
(C) With respect to the mix of products each exports, the four countries are very different from each other.
(D) Of the four countries, two had a much larger, and two had a much smaller, share of total world exports in 1970 than in 1984.
(E) The exports of the four countries range from 15 percent to 75 percent of the total national output.
Questions 15-16 are based on the following.
In the United States, the Postal Service has a monopoly on first-class mail, but much of what is sent first class could be transmitted electronically. Electronic transmittal operators argue that if the Postal Service were to offer electronic transmission, it would have an unfair advantage, since its electronic transmission service could be subsidized from the profits of the monopoly.
15.Which of the following, if each is true, would allay the electronic transmittal operators’ fears of unfair competition?
(A) If the Postal Service were to offer electronic transmission, it could not make a profit on first-class mail.
(B) If the Postal Service were to offer electronic transmission, it would have a monopoly on that kind of service.
(C) Much of the material that is now sent by first-class mail could be delivered much faster by special package couriers, but is not sent that way because of cost.
(D) There is no economy of scale in electronic transmission—that is, the cost per transaction does not go down as more pieces of information are transmitted.
(E) Electronic transmission will never be cost-effective for material not sent by first-class mail such as newspapers and bulk mail.
16.Which of the following questions can be answered on the basis of the information in the passage above?
(A) Is the Postal Service as efficient as privately owned electric transmission services?
(B) If private operators were allowed to operate first-class mail services, would they choose to do so?
(C) Do the electronic transmittal operators believe that the Postal Service makes a profit on first-class mail?
(D) Is the Postal Service prohibited from offering electronic transmission services?
(E) Is the Postal Service expected to have a monopoly on electronic transmission?
17.Lists of hospitals have been compiled showing which hospitals have patient death rates exceeding the national average. The data have been adjusted to allow for differences in the ages of patients.
Each of the following, if true, provides a good logical ground for hospitals to object to interpreting rank on these lists as one of the indices of the quality of hospital care EXCEPT:
(A) Rank order might indicate insignificant differences, rather than large differences, in numbers of patient deaths.
(B) Hospitals that keep patients longer are likely to have higher death rates than those that discharge patients earlier but do not record deaths of patients at home after discharge.
(C) Patients who are very old on admission to a hospital are less likely than younger patients to survive the same types of illnesses or surgical procedures.
(D) Some hospitals serve a larger proportion of low-income patients, who tend to be more seriously ill when admitted to a hospital.
(E) For-profit hospitals sometimes do not provide intensive-care units and other expensive services for very sick patients but refer or transfer such patients to other hospitals.
18.Teresa: Manned spaceflight does not have a future, since it cannot compete economically with other means of accomplishing the objectives of spaceflight.
Edward: No mode of human transportation has a better record of reliability: two accidents in twenty-five years. Thus manned spaceflight definitely has a positive future.
Which of the following is the best logical evaluation of Edward’s argument as a response to Teresa’s argument?
(A) It cites evidence that, if true, tends to disprove the evidence cited by Teresa in drawing her conclusion.
(B) It indicates a logical gap in the support that Teresa offers for her conclusion.
(C) It raises a consideration that outweighs the argument Teresa makes.
(D) It does not meet Teresa’s point because it assumes that there is no serious impediment to transporting people into space, but this was the issue raised by Teresa.
(E) It fails to respond to Teresa’s argument because it does not address the fundamental issue of whether space activities should have priority over other claims on the national budget.
19.Black Americans are, on the whole, about twice as likely as White Americans to develop high blood pressure. This likelihood also holds for westernized Black Africans when compared to White Africans.
Researchers have hypothesized that this predisposition in westernized Blacks may reflect an interaction between western high-salt diets and genes that adapted to an environmental scarcity of salt.
Which of the following statements about present-day, westernized Black Africans, if true, would most tend to confirm the researchers’ hypothesis?
(A) The blood pressures of those descended from peoples situated throughout their history in Senegal and Gambia, where salt was always available, are low.
(B) The unusually high salt consumption in certain areas of Africa represents a serious health problem.
(C) Because of their blood pressure levels, most White Africans have markedly decreased their salt consumption.
(D) Blood pressures are low among the Yoruba, who, throughout their history, have been situated far inland from sources of sea salt and far south of Saharan salt mines.
(E) No significant differences in salt metabolism have been found between those people who have had salt available throughout their history and those who have not.
20.The following proposal to amend the bylaws of an organization was circulated to its members for comment.
When more than one nominee is to be named for an office, prospective nominees must consent to nomination and before giving such consent must be told who the other nominees will be.
Which of the following comments concerning the logic of the proposal is accurate if it cannot be known who the actual nominees are until prospective nominees have given their consent to be nominated?
(A) The proposal would make it possible for each of several nominees for an office to be aware of who all of the other nominees are.
(B) The proposal would widen the choice available to those choosing among the nominees.
(C) If there are several prospective nominees, the proposal would deny the last nominee equal treatment with the first.
(D) The proposal would enable a prospective nominee to withdraw from competition with a specific person without making that withdrawal known.
(E) If there is more than one prospective nominee, the proposal would make it impossible for anyone to become a nominee.