PrepTest 133, Section 2, Question 24

What we’re looking for

Working the answers

• A

  The two initial triggers are an economy that doesn't improve and a failure to add police officers; either would increase crime. The next statement offers a way economic improvement could allow more police to be hired. It then concludes that crime won't increase.

  Our argument concludes that the undesirable outcome is unavoidable. A tries to conclude that it will be avoided. It also never establishes that the economy actually improves or that the available officers are actually hired. This is not a choice between two routes that both lead to the same bad result.

• B

  The opening rule says either unchanged funding or failed teacher recruitment is enough for worse performance. B then explicitly says recruitment will fail, so worse performance follows directly.

  That is a straightforward application of one trigger. It doesn't show that avoiding one trigger necessarily brings about the other. We don't need both funding and recruitment problems for B's conclusion; one is sufficient. That makes its reasoning different from the two-branch argument about pesticides.

• C
  Correct

  Walk through both possibilities for demand. If demand for consumer goods does not decline, the first rule gives us rising inflation. If demand does decline, the second statement says interest rates rise—and higher interest rates also lead to rising inflation under the first rule.

  So declining demand doesn't escape the outcome; it takes us to the other trigger. This matches the intended pesticide reasoning: not expanding use leads directly to more malaria, while expanding use leads through warming to more malaria. Rising interest rates correspond to continued warming; demand not declining corresponds to pesticide use not expanding; inflation rising corresponds to malaria increasing.

• D

  This brings in reduced aerosol use as a third factor that prevents both named triggers: continued warming and unreduced ozone depletion. It then concludes that skin cancer won't increase. Our argument instead claims the triggers can't both be avoided and concludes that the increase is inevitable. D also assumes preventing these two causes rules out every cause of the increase, which the stated rule doesn't establish.

• E

  Here the stated rule promises continued extinction when deforestation and uncurtailed chemical use occur together. Population growth is then used to establish that both will occur. The rule does not say extinction is impossible otherwise; it simply gives this combined situation as enough for the outcome. Our argument instead gives two alternative triggers, either enough on its own, and reaches the result by considering both possible branches. Supplying both facts for one combined condition is a different structure.