* press secretary

[RonPurewal]

in the analogy above:
qualified applicant = project identified as wasteful
admitted applicant = cancelled project
project in president's region = indian applicant

[750plus]

if that's still not clear, here's an analogy:

MBA admissions officer: It's true that 90 percent of the students we admitted this year are Indian. However, this doesn't show any favoritism, since all of those students were well qualified for admission.

this is probably easier to think about (if only because it doesn't have nearly as many words).
for the result above to be fair, about 90 percent of all the qualified applicants should be indian, too.
if 50 percent (or fewer) of the qualified applicants are indian, then the result above would be solid grounds for the accusation that indians were unfairly favored.

Great Analogy Ron. That helps.

I have understood the situation now and I could connect with option B even without negating. I literally read the argument multiple times.

Option B says "The scheduled highway projects identified as wasteful in the report were NOT mostly projects in districts controlled by the president's party. "

In other words, the projects identified as wasteful were mostly the projects in districts controlled by the opposition conveying that the President is fair.
This assumption should hold so as to show that the President did not have any vindictive desire.

I hope I'm correct this time.

[750plus]

I have one more question regarding option D. I'm posting the question again so that you don't have to scroll again.

Press Secretary: Our critics claim that the president's recent highway project cancellations demonstrate a vindictive desire to punish legislative districts controlled by opposition parties. They offer as evidence the fact that 90 percent of the projects cancelled were in such districts. But all of the canceled projects had been identified as wasteful in a report written by respected nonpartisan auditors. So the president's choice was clearly motivated by sound budgetary policy, not partisan politics.

Which of the following is an assumption on which the press secretary's argument depends?

D. The highway projects canceled in districts controlled by the president's party were not generally more expensive than the projects canceled in districts controlled by opposition parties.

Please confirm that is this option is working in the opposite direction ?

If I negate option D, The highway projects cancelled in districts controlled by the president's party were generally more expensive than the projects cancelled in districts controlled by opposition parties.

Since the projects that were cancelled in the President's district were more expensive, this shows that he was clearly motivated by sound budgetary policy.

Please confirm.

Warm Regards
Rajat Gugnani

[tim]

Sort of. At any rate, negating D doesn't ruin the conclusion as we'd expect with an answer choice that was a necessary assumption.

[RonPurewal]

If I negate option D, The highway projects cancelled in districts controlled by the president's party were generally more expensive than the projects cancelled in districts controlled by opposition parties.

Since the projects that were cancelled in the President's district were more expensive, this shows that he was clearly motivated by sound budgetary policy.

the argument is about the number of projects cancelled, not the cost of those projects. so, cost is irrelevant.

if you negate this choice ... it's still irrelevant.

[BrandenF768]

This was a devilish problem for me, but this is how I think of it: cancelled projects is a subset of wasteful projects. Understanding that the two sets are not one in the same is the key. Then, to be unbiased, the ratio of wasteful president projects to wasteful opposing projects should be equivalent to the ratio of cancelled president projects to cancelled opposing projects.

Ron - pls confirm.

[RonPurewal]

yep, that's the idea.

if you found this "devilish", that's probably just because there are lots and lots of words and you didn't take the time to INTUITIVELY understand what's going on in the problem.

if you personalize the situation in this problem—e.g., put YOURSELF on the side that's having an excessively high proportion of projects unfairly cancelled—then the issue should become plain pretty quickly.

as always, that's the most important key to CR—to apprehend the situation in a PERSONAL way that allows you to use YOUR EVERYDAY HUMAN INTUITION to understand the issues and the consequences of stuff.
(in other words, if this stuff affects YOU—if YOU are the one who's being treated unfairly—then you most certainly will not find it "devilish" to understand EXACTLY what the issue is.)

[RichaChampion]

According to to me Option D -

This option is talking about expensive Vs Non expensive not about the %ages of project cancellations or wasteful Vs NonWasteful. A project, which is expensive and yet nonwasteful may be a great project. This couldn't be an assumption.

Ron sir I know that D is not the answer. Can you please help me in negating D and then help me remove it -

The highway projects canceled in districts controlled by the President's party were not generally more expensive than the projects canceled in districts controlled by opposition parties.

Please also confirm If I am going in the right direction -

I used this logic to eliminate Option E -
This is related to the passages authors argument/opinion, but we are concerned about Press secretaries argument.

[RonPurewal]

negating choice D is straightforward: just change "were not generally more expensive" to "were generally more expensive".

no matter what, this statement is clearly irrelevant to the argument, because it makes no difference whether the projects were expensive.
the argument is framed only in terms of the percentages of all projects cancelled (e.g., "40 out of 50 = 80%"); dollar values do not enter into this reasoning at any point.

[yulongw540]

After I read the instructor's explanations, I understand that B is the best answer. But after I read last several posts in this thread, I came up some thoughts about D.

The conclusion is "So the president's choice was clearly motivated by sound budgetary policy, not partisan politics.".

I think the conclusion means that the president cancelled all these projects because they don't have enough money. Let's say:

cancelled projects in president's districts combined(10% of the total cancelled projects) costs X
all the other cancelled projects combined(90% of the total cancelled projects) costs Y

So if X is higher than Y, can I infer that the cancellation choice is clearly based on the budgetary policy? (because the president wants to save money so he cancelled the most expensive projects no matter where the project is located).

If my above inference is correct, then negating choice D is strengthening the argument, thus choice D weakens the argument.

[RonPurewal]

the argument has nothing to do with some projects costing more than other projects.

the argument is based on the idea that "the cancelled projects ... were wasteful".
they're just saying "We eliminated everything that was an unnecessary waste of money". (it makes no difference whether they wasted a lot of money or only a little.)

so, comparisons like the one in D are irrelevant.

[RichaChampion]

The point is that the 90% statistic would represent a possible bias, unless 90% of all the wasteful projects were in those districts. I.e., if the cancellation of those projects were at all out of proportion with their presence in those districts, then an accusation of bias would be justified.

I also though on the line of Prethinking. If we are following this logic then we even do not need to consider Option E as a contender.
Reasoning: The correct option must be able to add a missing premise that is able to fill the missing information that what was the %age of wasteful projects in the districts that are not controlled by President and his party. if this was high then that would confirm that there is no bias.
Right? Option E is unable to answer this question.

[RonPurewal]

it's easier to eliminate E by just noticing that it goes the WRONG WAY!

the evidence presented here was gathered/reported by nonpartisan auditors. thus, the argument is obviously stronger if EVERYONE accepts these auditors' conclusions.

choice E says that someone is REJECTING the conclusions drawn by nonpartisan auditors. since the whole argument is based on those people's conclusions, such a rejection could only work against the argument!
it's obviously not helpful—let alone NECESSARY, as assumptions must be.

there's no point in thinking further than that. clearly, an ASSUMPTION can't work AGAINST the argument!

[AlongkornB111]

it's easier to eliminate E by just noticing that it goes the WRONG WAY!

the evidence presented here was gathered/reported by nonpartisan auditors. thus, the argument is obviously stronger if EVERYONE accepts these auditors' conclusions.

choice E says that someone is REJECTING the conclusions drawn by nonpartisan auditors. since the whole argument is based on those people's conclusions, such a rejection could only work against the argument!
it's obviously not helpful—let alone NECESSARY, as assumptions must be.

there's no point in thinking further than that. clearly, an ASSUMPTION can't work AGAINST the argument!

Ron, can you please elaborate more on this? I narrowed the answer down to B and E, and I ended up picking E.

Negating E seems to destroy the argument. If the nonpartisan auditor is not credible, then the cancelled projects may not be wasteful thus the president's choice IS motivated by politics. If the nonpartisan auditor IS credible, then the cancelled projects are not wasteful thus the president's choice is not motivated by politics.

Isn't the whole point of negating trying to reject/shatter the conclusion?


that Reports by nonpartisan auditors are not generally regarded by the opposition parties as a source of objective assessment of government projects.

[RonPurewal]

you've got this backward.

choice E (as provided) states that the auditors are NOT regarded as credible by all parties.

if you negate this option, that means all parties DO find these auditors credible.

__

perhaps you just didn't notice the word "not" in choice E?
DON'T READ TOO FAST!
SLOW DOWN!