PrepTest 104, Section 4, Question 14
In 1712 the government of Country Y appointed(78 more words not shown)
If the statements in the(14 more words not shown)
- AMore books critical(16 more words not shown)
- BThe first censor(14 more words not shown)
- CMore book manuscripts(12 more words not shown)
- DThe second censor(19 more words not shown)
- EThe number of(15 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
A higher approval rate doesn't have to mean more books were approved. Here we're explicitly told the approved number stayed the same. So the number submitted must have changed.
Start by keeping approvals and rejections straight. The first censor rejected half, so approved half. The second rejected one quarter, so approved three quarters. How can half of one batch equal three quarters of another? The first batch has to be larger.
Use friendly numbers. Suppose each censor approved 60 manuscripts. For the first censor, those 60 are half of 120 submissions. For the second, they're three quarters of 80 submissions. Same 60 approvals, but 120 submissions to the first censor and only 80 to the second. These aren't the actual totals; they make the relationship easy to see.
What we’re looking for
The question asks what follows from the facts. Our prediction is that more manuscripts were submitted to the first censor. The approval rates and matching approved totals already settle the comparison.
Working the answers
- A
We don't have the before-and-after count of published books critical of the government. The appointment tells us what the censor was meant to prohibit, not how many critical books existed beforehand or how successfully that goal was achieved. Also, the passage's approval requirement applies to legally published books; this answer doesn't limit itself to legal publication. We can't establish its comparison.
- B
They approved the same number, not prohibited the same number. In our illustration, the first censor rejected 60 of 120 submissions, while the second rejected 20 of 80. More generally, the first rejects as many manuscripts as are approved; the second rejects only one for every three approved. With equal positive approval totals, the first censor therefore rejects more.
- CCorrect
The first censor needed a larger pool of submissions to produce the same number of approvals at a lower approval rate. Half of the larger first pool equals three quarters of the smaller second pool. The 120-versus-80 illustration is one example of the relationship the passage establishes.
- D
Different approval rates don't establish different judgments of the same manuscripts. Perhaps the censors used exactly the same standards, but writers submitted a less critical collection of manuscripts to the second censor. Nothing identifies a book that the second approved and the first would have regarded as critical of the government.
- E
Manuscripts aren't writers. One writer could produce many rejected manuscripts, or many writers could produce one each. Even knowing that the first censor rejected more manuscripts wouldn't tell us which period had more writers with unpublished work. This answer changes the thing being counted.
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