PrepTest 154, Section 1, Question 22
Newspaper: Increases in produce prices apparently have led(37 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(8 more words not shown)
- AIncreases in produce(15 more words not shown)
- BThe average personal(16 more words not shown)
- CCommunity gardens report(14 more words not shown)
- DPersonal gardens are(5 more words not shown)
- EA large retail(9 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
How expensive would carrots have to get before you started growing them yourself? A garden takes work. Higher prices might persuade some people, but others might garden because they enjoy it, not because they're trying to save money.
The newspaper's evidence is that the two biggest seed retailers each increased sales by about 19 percent during a year of rising produce prices. Accept those reported changes. Do they establish the newspaper's explanation?
What if the companies improved their marketing? Or imagine they offered unusual blue carrots that people wanted to grow and show off at a dinner party. The attraction could be novelty, not the supermarket price.
Perhaps a gardening creator became popular and encouraged people to try the hobby. Those are possible stories, not facts about the seeds or the companies.
What we’re looking for
My initial prediction for the weaken question is another explanation for the higher seed sales: something that makes people want to garden without higher produce prices causing it. Keep that prediction flexible. The facts we've actually been given are the companies' sales increases and the rise in produce prices. We still have to evaluate the larger story the newspaper builds from them.
Working the answers
- A
This explains why produce became more expensive. But the disputed connection is whether those higher prices explain the increased gardening the newspaper infers. Fuel costs could drive produce prices up whether or not those prices caused anyone to plant a garden. A explains a fact we're accepting instead of undermining the inference from it.
- B
Garden size compared with decades ago doesn't explain last year's seed-sales increases or show why people planted gardens last year. A smaller average garden could coexist with more gardeners, fewer gardeners, or the same number. The comparison doesn't challenge the newspaper's proposed explanation.
- C
Longer waiting lists suggest more interest in getting a garden plot. That fits the newspaper's picture of increased gardening rather than casting doubt on it. It doesn't tell us why the interest increased, so it doesn't support the alternative explanation I initially expected.
- D
We aren't told that last year was an economic downturn. A spike in produce prices alone doesn't establish that. Nor does this general observation show that some factor other than produce prices explains these particular companies' sales. We would have to add missing facts to make D an alternative account.
- ECorrect
This challenges an earlier step than my predicted alternative cause. Perhaps the market didn't grow at all. The two surviving companies could simply have gained customers from the company that closed.
Imagine McDonald's goes out of business and Wendy's and Burger King each sell more burgers afterward. That doesn't automatically mean people are eating more fast food. Some customers may simply be buying at Wendy's or Burger King what they used to buy at McDonald's. Two companies' growth can reflect a shift in market share rather than growth of the whole market.
The same could happen with seed sales. The closed retailer's customers go elsewhere, boosting the two largest retailers without any overall increase in seeds bought or gardens planted. So the evidence doesn't establish the apparent gardening surge as securely as it first seemed. E needn't tell us a different reason people started gardens; it questions whether these sales figures show that more gardening happened in the first place.
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