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- gatesantonio
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Vinny Gambini
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Q3 - Engine noise from boats travelling through killer whale
I guess everybody seems to understand this questions but I am stuck on it. Could I please get an explanation for why C follows logically please....
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- eliot_howington
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Vinny Gambini
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Re: Q3 - Engine noise from boats travelling through killer whale
I mostly used POE to get rid of some of the wrong choices for this question: A,D & E.
A) is obviously wrong because the stimulus has nothing to do with the age of the killer whales.
D) is also wrong because it says in the stimulus that the killer whales do not seem to behave differently around the boats.
E) is wrong because its completely irrelevant.
That leaves you with B and C. In the stimulus it states that the boats can be loud enough to damage the whales hearing which MAY affect their ability to communicate, leaving C as the correct choice. You can still rule out B as the correct answer choice though, because of the stated fact that the whales don't appear to change their behavior because of the boats. Thus they wouldn't change their communication because of the boats, proving B incorrect.
Hope that helped!
A) is obviously wrong because the stimulus has nothing to do with the age of the killer whales.
D) is also wrong because it says in the stimulus that the killer whales do not seem to behave differently around the boats.
E) is wrong because its completely irrelevant.
That leaves you with B and C. In the stimulus it states that the boats can be loud enough to damage the whales hearing which MAY affect their ability to communicate, leaving C as the correct choice. You can still rule out B as the correct answer choice though, because of the stated fact that the whales don't appear to change their behavior because of the boats. Thus they wouldn't change their communication because of the boats, proving B incorrect.
Hope that helped!
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- christine.defenbaugh
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Atticus Finch
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Re: Q3 - Engine noise from boats travelling through killer whale
Thanks for posting gatesantonio!
Because this is essentially an inference question, I think eliot_howington has some great thoughts here on using a Wrong-to-Right strategy. Remember, correct answers for inference questions tend to be unpredictable, but fully supportable. As a result, we're usually not going to walk into our answer choices knowing what we want to find - instead, we'll have to hold each answer choice up to the information that we have and determine if we can support it fully or not!
Also, take care to remember that we don't have to prove our incorrect answers false, or contradicted - as long as we can't support them directly, that's good enough to eliminate them!
So, first stop for us is to sort out our stimulus information:
While we might not have predicted (C) beforehand, it is fully supportable. Boat noise may impair whale hearing, and since whale communication relies on their hearing (squeals/screams), then it may well be that boat noise can impair the ability to communicate!
Let's take a quick spin through the remaining answers:
(A) This might be tempting, since the hearing damage occurs over time - thus, it's reasonable to conclude that older whales might have worse hearing than younger whales. However, there's nothing in the stimulus about being "able to tolerate" the engine noise. Do older, more deaf whales have more difficulty "tolerating" the engine noise? No idea!
(B) There's nothing in the stimulus that tells us when whales are more or less likely to communicate.
(D) There's no information about what killer whales prefer, just that they don't seem to behave differently.
(E) We have no information on what makes whales more or less successful at finding food.
As you can see, all of the wrong answers bring up things that we just don't have any information about! Only (C) sticks close to the information we're given directly.
Does this help clear things up a bit?
Because this is essentially an inference question, I think eliot_howington has some great thoughts here on using a Wrong-to-Right strategy. Remember, correct answers for inference questions tend to be unpredictable, but fully supportable. As a result, we're usually not going to walk into our answer choices knowing what we want to find - instead, we'll have to hold each answer choice up to the information that we have and determine if we can support it fully or not!
Also, take care to remember that we don't have to prove our incorrect answers false, or contradicted - as long as we can't support them directly, that's good enough to eliminate them!
So, first stop for us is to sort out our stimulus information:
- 1) Boat noise = 100-3000 Hz
2) whales communicate through screams and squeals
3) the acoustical ranges of #1 and #2 overlap
4) killer whales don't behave differently around boats
5) boat noise can damage whale hearing over time
While we might not have predicted (C) beforehand, it is fully supportable. Boat noise may impair whale hearing, and since whale communication relies on their hearing (squeals/screams), then it may well be that boat noise can impair the ability to communicate!
Let's take a quick spin through the remaining answers:
(A) This might be tempting, since the hearing damage occurs over time - thus, it's reasonable to conclude that older whales might have worse hearing than younger whales. However, there's nothing in the stimulus about being "able to tolerate" the engine noise. Do older, more deaf whales have more difficulty "tolerating" the engine noise? No idea!
(B) There's nothing in the stimulus that tells us when whales are more or less likely to communicate.
(D) There's no information about what killer whales prefer, just that they don't seem to behave differently.
(E) We have no information on what makes whales more or less successful at finding food.
As you can see, all of the wrong answers bring up things that we just don't have any information about! Only (C) sticks close to the information we're given directly.
Does this help clear things up a bit?
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