Logical Reasoning

PT117 · S2 · Q17 The tiny hummingbird weighs little

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The tiny hummingbird weighs little, but its egg is 15 percent of the adult hummingbird’s weight.

Statements

We're usually scanning Statements for Conditional / Causal / Math-y / Pivot language as a clue to what claims they want us to synthesize.

Here we see a bunch of comparative relationships that are Math-y.

Vol / Weight Egg % of weight H-bird: tiny / little 15% Goose: much bigger 4% Ostrich: even bigger 1.6%

We can definitely see a certain relationship her — as the volume and weight of the adult gets bigger, the egg as a percentage of weight gets smaller.

Goal

Look for some safely worded answer that reinforces this inverse correlation between the volume/weight of the bird and the % of the bird's weight that its egg is.

17.

Which one of the following propositions is best illustrated by the statements above?

The eggs of different bird
Out of Scope
Out of Scope: ratio of egg weight/volume We are only told the ratio of the egg's weight to the adult's weight/volume. This answer choice is about the ratio of the egg's volume to the egg's weight. We don't have any idea, for example, with hummingbird eggs what the ratio of volume to weight would be.
13% picked this
The smaller and lighter the
Too Strong Defies Common Sense
According to this answer, a hummingbird's egg is larger and heavier than an ostrich's egg. If you've ever seen an ostrich's egg, you'll know it's bigger than 10 hummingbirds, let alone 1 hummingbird egg. The relationship we were looking for was, the smaller and lighter the average adult members of a bird species are, the bigger the ratio of egg weight to adult's weight.
8% picked this
Correct
The ratio of egg weight
Why this is right
This reflects the continuum we were presented with. Percent's are the same as ratios. If I say that my rent is 35% of my income, then the ratio of my rent to my income is 35 : 100. smaller birds ------------------- larger birds 15% 4% 1.6% hummingbird goose ostrich
Skill tested: Most Supported · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
75% picked this
The size of birds’ eggs
Out of Scope: size of eggs
We never talk about the size of eggs. We talk about the size of the adult hummingbird / goose / ostrich, but never the size of eggs. We only talk about the weight of eggs, as a proportion of the adult's weight. Weight and size are not the same thing. A bowling ball and a basketball are the same size, but they are two very different weights.
4% picked this
Bird species vary more in
Out of Scope: egg size
Just as we discussed with (D), this paragraph says nothing about egg size. For all we know, it never varies in size, only in weight (you can be the same size but have more weight if you are more dense, just like a bowling ball is heavier than a basketball, despite being about the same size).
0% picked this

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