Logical Reasoning

PT117 · S4 · Q3 Beginning in the 1950s, popular

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Beginning in the 1950s, popular music was revolutionized by the electrification of musical instruments, which has enabled musicians to play with increased volume.

Facts

causal (by, which has enabled, because, increased)

electrical >> play w/ >> avg # of musicians instruments more volume per band decreased

pivot (nevertheless)

electrical >> greater # of professional instruments musicians

Evaluate

The #1 thing we read for on Most Supported is Cause / Effect relationships, and we got four of them here.

There's a causal chain, and then a pivot that creates a mathy tension between two different things caused by electrification: 1. fewer musicians per band 2. more musicians overall

When we see a Pivot creating a mathy tension, the correct answer usually addresses / resolves that tension.

If we have fewer musicians in each band nowadays, how can also have more musicians total?

We would need there to be more bands than before.

Maybe there used to be 10 ppl / band, and there were 80 bands, giving us 800 musicians.

If we only have 5 ppl / band now and want to end up with 1000 musicians (some larger number), then we'd need 200 bands.

Goal

The correct answer will probably reward us for understanding the causal chain between electrified instruments and fewer people per band, or it'll test this mathy inference that there are more bands.

3.

Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the statements above, if those statements are true?

  1. The number of amateur musicians

    Unsupported

    The only thing we know about the present day is in regards to professional musicians and bands. The stimulus says nothing about amateurs increasing or decreasing. We can't infer their numbers from the given information.

    2% picked this

  2. Most professional musicians are able

    Unsupported

    The stimulus says nothing about whether musicians can play multiple types of instruments. The premises are about volume and band size, not about individual musicians' instrument repertoires. We have no support for the idea that anyone can play more than one instrument.

    1% picked this

  3. The number of professional musicians

    Unsupported

    The stimulus says the average number of musicians per band has decreased. It's certainly possible that some bands had an uptick in members, but it's also possible that every band stayed the same size or got smaller. We have no evidence suggesting that some bands got bigger.

    18% picked this

  4. Correct

    The total number of professional

    Why this is right

    This was the mathy inference we predicted. It's technically a pretty flawed inference, for a couple reasons: 1) the average number of musicians per band has gone down, but we don't know how that plays out with professional vs. amateur bands. It's possible that the decrease has come strictly from amateur bands getting smaller, which would screw up our inference. 2) the fact that there are more professional musicians nowadays doesn't tell us whether there are more pro musicians in bands vs. doing solo stuff. It's possible that the uptick in number of pro musicians has been entirely among solo artists, and not at all among those in bands. That would also screw up our inference. But it's still the most supported answer. If we knew for a fact, "avg number of members per pro band" and "more pro musicians in bands than before", then we would know this answer is 100% derivable, Must Be True. Since they used sloppy wording, they use the squishier task of Most Supported.

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

    75% picked this

  5. Many professional musicians play in

    Unsupported

    Out of Scope (more than one band) We don't have any info suggesting that anyone plays in more than one band. They might, but there's no info here nudging in that direction.

    3% picked this

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