I bang my head on this one 100 times and left with no energy

[philanderer.lover]

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Although the discount stores in Goreville’s central shopping district are expected to close within five years as a result of competition from a SpendLess discount department store that just opened, those locations will not stay vacant for long. In the five years since the opening of Colson’s, a nondiscount department store, a new store has opened at the location of every store in the shopping district that closed because it could not compete with Colson’s.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?

A. Many customers of Colson’s are expected to do less shopping there than they did before the SpendLess store opened.

B. Increasingly, the stores that have opened in the central shopping district since Colson’s opened have been discount stores.

C. At present, the central shopping district has as many stores operating in it as it ever had.

D. Over the course of the next five years, it is expected that Goreville’s population will grow at a faster rate than it has for the past several decades.

E. Many stores in the central shopping district sell types of merchandise that are not available at either SpendLess or Colson’s.

[philanderer.lover]

Please explain this one....I just dont understand this one at all....although i read somewhere that this question is more of an analogy types weaking of argument....please help me

Regards,
Phil

[bashaji]

http://www.beatthegmat.com/goreville-co ... 27229.html

[RonPurewal]

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Although the discount stores in Goreville’s central shopping district are expected to close within five years as a result of competition from a SpendLess discount department store that just opened, those locations will not stay vacant for long. In the five years since the opening of Colson’s, a nondiscount department store, a new store has opened at the location of every store in the shopping district that closed because it could not compete with Colson’s.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?

A. Many customers of Colson’s are expected to do less shopping there than they did before the SpendLess store opened.

B. Increasingly, the stores that have opened in the central shopping district since Colson’s opened have been discount stores.

C. At present, the central shopping district has as many stores operating in it as it ever had.

D. Over the course of the next five years, it is expected that Goreville’s population will grow at a faster rate than it has for the past several decades.

E. Many stores in the central shopping district sell types of merchandise that are not available at either SpendLess or Colson’s.

the key to the argument is the assumption that the previous trend will continue -- that is, that new stores will continue to replace the old ones, just as they did before.
specifically, when the previous store closures occurred, new stores took their place. the argument assumes that, should these new stores close within 5 years, still more new stores will take their place.

anything that casts doubt on this assumption - i.e., that makes it LESS likely that even more new stores will spring up to take the place of the old ones - will weaken the argument.

this is what (b) does.
if the new stores were discount stores, that's why they were able to compete with colson's. however, since spendless is a big discount store, even these discount stores won't be able to compete with it.

[philanderer.lover]

Hi Ron,

I am still not clear why B is the correct one and not E.....The conclusion of the arg is locations will not stay vacant for long.....i m confused still....

Also does this question touches the concept of circular reasoning also...

Please advise

Regards,
Phil

[sarfrazyusuf]

[quote="philanderer.lover"]Hi Ron,

I am still not clear why B is the correct one and not E.....The conclusion of the arg is locations will not stay vacant for long.....i m confused still....

Here is why I think E cannot be the correct answer:


If you notice there is a subtle scope shift in E. While the first line of the argument talks about 'the discount stores in Goreville’s central shopping district' option E talks about 'many stores' which may or may not be discount stores. There is nothing to suggest that these stores selling unique merchandise will shut down but that only the discount stores will shut down leading to vacant locations.

Once you reach this far B gives you an excellent reason why new stores (read discount stores) will not open at these vacant locations.

Cheers!

[philanderer.lover]

Hi Sarfraz,

Thankyou for the perspective.

Can you please also explain why B is correct??

Warm Regards,
Phil

[sarfrazyusuf]

Hi Sarfraz,

Thankyou for the perspective.

Can you please also explain why B is correct??

Warm Regards,
Phil

Same explanations as Ron's.

See the argument basically says this:

5 yrs back a non-discount store opened which led to several stores shutting down (must be selling similar products as the argument says they couldn't compete with Colson). But a new store opened everytime an existing store shut down.

Based on this evidence the author concludes that the same trend will continue now, when Spendless has opened.

But option B gives you a reason why the new stores that opened 5 yrs back managed to survive (because they were discount stores as compared to Colsons which was a non-discount store); it's obvious the same reason will not apply in the current case since Spendless is itself a discount store so why will more new discount stores open if the existing ones are unable to compete with Spendless.

Cheers!

[RonPurewal]

Hi Sarfraz,

Thankyou for the perspective.

Can you please also explain why B is correct??

Warm Regards,
Phil

Same explanations as Ron's.

See the argument basically says this:

5 yrs back a non-discount store opened which led to several stores shutting down (must be selling similar products as the argument says they couldn't compete with Colson). But a new store opened everytime an existing store shut down.

Based on this evidence the author concludes that the same trend will continue now, when Spendless has opened.

But option B gives you a reason why the new stores that opened 5 yrs back managed to survive (because they were discount stores as compared to Colsons which was a non-discount store); it's obvious the same reason will not apply in the current case since Spendless is itself a discount store so why will more new discount stores open if the existing ones are unable to compete with Spendless.

Cheers!

nice explanation.

[karanrob]

Hi Sarfraz,

Old thread, but for a new reader, thought I would share my understanding on this.

I treat CR passages as people talking to each other. Try to sniff out what conclusion is being reached.

This passage the author is trying to simply say that the "stores will not stay vacant for long as Colson's will rent/buy them". If we need to weaken this, we need to show that "Colson's has no effect on these stores ".

I say this before attempting any weaken question in CR. -- "MY ANSWER CHOICE WILL PROVE THE ASSUMPTION MADE IN THIS ARGUMENT TO BE IN-CORRECT".

Answer B clearly says that post Colson's opening, all the stored that have opened in the central district have been Discount stores.
1. Discount stores are not threatened by Colson's (Since Colson's is a non-discount store).
2. These new discount stores are OBVIOUSLY not threatened by the discount stores (Maybe they have lowered their prices/or/location works for them.

This means that these new stores will not be vacant at all.

Another way to understand - Cause and effect are not related (This is what the answer can show to weaken the argument) and this is what answer B does.

[jnelson0612]

Thanks, everyone! Good discussion.

[gmatwork]

Two questions -

How to keep things straight when handling such a confusing passage? Any tips?

Any thoughts on A and C, please?

So the underlying (mistaken) assumption is - what happened in the past will hold true in the future and that there will be demand for new stores over the next five years as well? ?

What about non-discount stores opening up and filling up the vacancies over the next five years .....wouldn't that mean that vacancies will still be filled up....although as mentioned in (B) there are already a lot of discount stores so possibility of opening new discount stores doesn't look so good BUT non-discount stores can still fill up the vacancies. (B) never addresses that. I am not comfortable with that.




Thanks.

[tim]

your first question is a little generic; as such, i would refer you to our CR strategy guide as well as Foundations of Verbal, both of which provide excellent suggestions for how to deal with CR passages in general..

you're right that the underlying assumption is that what happened last time will happen this time. no matter what the context of the problem, you should immediately be thinking "what if something were different this time around?"; that will lead you straight to the correct answer..

B doesn't have to answer EVERY possible scenario that could occur; it just needs to cast doubt on the argument..

you asked for any thoughts on A and C; i'll defer on that until you ask a specific question about them.. :)

[yqren2002]

Personally I think this question itself is not a good one.

Yes I did choose B but actually I guessed...

I agree the underlying assumption is that what happened past will happen in the future. But the argument simply says that "those locations will not stay for vacant because new stores have opened to replace old ones closed since Colson opened". Does the argument say which *type* of new stores will open in those locations??

I don't see any reason to make further assumption that only *discount* stores will open there.

However, I do admit B is better than other options. Reasoning: old non-discounted stores could not compete with Colson so they were closed-->replaced with discounted stores-->current discounted stores will not be able to compete with Spendless so they will be closed-->therefore, if they are replaced with discounted stores again, new stores will fail similarly。

Although it's not supposed to get perfect answer for every question, this correct answer seems kind of far-fetched. I respect GMAT OG, OA and it's explanations. But again, I don't think this question is precisely designed :)

[RonPurewal]

hi,

it appears that you may be misunderstanding the task at hand. this is a problem about strengthening/weakening arguments, not a problem about "assumptions".
in strengthening/weakening problems, you are given choices essentially out of nowhere, and asked to take them as true for the purpose of evaluating their impact on the argument. this task is substantively different from dealing with assumptions, which are statements that must be true for the argument to work.

Does the argument say which *type* of new stores will open in those locations??

this is one thing that makes me think you are misunderstanding the task itself.

you are correct that the original argument says nothing about which type of stores have been opening.
this is precisely why the correct answer choice is useful -- because it provides information to fill in that particular gap.

I don't see any reason to make further assumption that only *discount* stores will open there.

"assumptions" are irrelevant here. if the answer choice actually says that discount stores have been opening, then, ipso facto, we know that discount stores have been opening.

However, I do admit B is better than other options. Reasoning: old non-discounted stores could not compete with Colson so they were closed-->replaced with discounted stores-->current discounted stores will not be able to compete with Spendless so they will be closed-->therefore, if they are replaced with discounted stores again, new stores will fail similarly。

this is the exact reasoning required to solve the problem. so, at this point, i think it's pretty much certain that the problem is your misunderstanding the task itself on a fundamental level.

see the points above -- if you can "re-wire" your mind to think of this genre of problems in the right way, your reasoning here indicates that you should be quite good at them.

Although it's not supposed to get perfect answer for every question, this correct answer seems kind of far-fetched. I respect GMAT OG, OA and it's explanations. But again, I don't think this question is precisely designed :)

it's quite well-designed, and not at all "far-fetched". in fact, you just explained exactly how it works, and there is nothing implausible or improbable in your explanation.