Logical Reasoning

PT105 · S1 · Q16 In a town containing a

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In a town containing a tourist attraction, hotel and restaurant revenues each increased more rapidly over the past year than did revenue from the sale of passes to the attraction, which are valid for a full year.

Curious Fact

How come the revenue at our town's hotels and restaurants have gone up more than the revenues at our town's tourist attraction?

Author's Explanation/Hypothesis

The people visiting the tourist attraction are illicitly selling or sharing the passes with others.

Evaluate

It might take a sec to process what this whole story is describing. It starts with the assumption that if people come to our town and stay at our hotel and eat at our restaurants, they will surely visit our tourist attraction as well, right?

Since the revenue is at the hotels / restaurants is going up more than the revenue at the tourist attraction (and since the people are assuming that anyone going to the former would also go to the latter), they are thinking to themselves,

And that's how they arrive at the causal explanation that people who visit the tourist attraction are then selling or sharing their passes (which are good for a year) with others.

Goal

Since we're trying to find four answers that Weaken, we want them to either suggest an Alternate Explanation for the Curious Fact or we want them to lower the plausibility of the storyline that visitors are sharing / selling their passes.

(maybe people don't want to see the tourist attraction that much / maybe locals have started to spend more money at the hotels and restaurants), or (the passes have a photo on them, so it's hard to get in with someone else's pass).

16.

Each of the following, if true, helps to undermine the hypothesis of those in charge of the tourist attraction EXCEPT:

  1. During the past year other

    Alternate Explanation

    This gives us a way to explain why revenue is higher for hotels/restaurants than for this one tourist attraction: people coming to this town (spending money at hotels and restaurants) are now choosing to visit these new tourist attractions instead.

    5% picked this

  2. Those possessing passes made more

    Alternate Explanation

    This gives us a way to explain why revenue is higher for hotels/restaurants than for this one tourist attraction: people who had passes visited the town multiple times this year, each time, spending money at hotels and restaurants but only giving money to the tourist attraction the first time, when they bought their yearly pass.

    15% picked this

  3. While the cost of passes

    Alternate Explanation

    This gives us a way to explain why revenue is higher for hotels/restaurants than for this one tourist attraction: people coming to this town are still spending money on the hotels, restaurant, and the tourist attraction, but since the hotels and restaurants raised their prices, a person this year who visits the town, stays at a hotel, eats at restaurants, and visits the attractions is spending a bigger share of their money on the hotel / restaurants, since those prices have gone up.

    9% picked this

  4. Correct

    The local board of tourism

    Why this is right

    Since we're trying (primarily) to find Alternate Explanations to explain this difference between hotel/restaurant revenues and tourist attraction revenue, being told about something that didn't change isn't useful to us. We need a change to explain a change.

    Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    62% picked this

  5. Each pass contains a photograph

    Undermines Plausibility of Author's Story

    It's common on EXCEPT questions, that of the four answers we're eliminating, 3 of them work a certain way and the 4th one works a different way. A, B, and C gave us alternate explanations for the curious fact. E is undermining the plausibility of the author's explanation. It's not very plausible that people are selling or sharing their passes with others if it's hard to get into the tourist attraction with someone else's pass (since the gatekeepers check the photo on the ID to see if it matches the person using it).

    9% picked this

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