Logical Reasoning

PT136 · S2 · Q10 Computer manufacturers have sought

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Computer manufacturers have sought to make computer chips ever smaller, since decreasing the size of a computer's central processing unit (CPU) chip—without making that CPU chip any less sophisticated—will proportionally increase the speed of the CPU chip and the computer containing it.

Conclusion

Computers cannot currently be made significantly faster.

Evidence

Manufacturers have tried to make CPU chips smaller, because if you can make a CPU chip smaller without decreasing its sophistication, it makes the computer faster.

But currently CPU chips can't be made significantly smaller without decreasing their sophistication.

Evaluate

This would seem like a fairly airtight argument -- making CPU chips smaller makes computers faster, but we can't make them any smaller right now, so we can't make computers faster right now.

The only thing missing is restrictive wording like, . Maybe there's something else that could be done to CPU chips to make them faster (keep them same size but make them out of a different substance? put several of them operating in parallel?) or something else that could be done to computers to make them faster.

Goal

Look for an answer saying that making CPU chips smaller is the only way to make computers faster, or an answer ruling out some other way of making computers faster.

10.

Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

  1. Correct

    Computers cannot currently be made

    Why this is right

    If you didn't predict the assumption that "making CPU smaller is the only way to make computers faster", then you would deal with this the way we can deal with any conditional answer choice: write out how the rule would look and ask yourself if the author made that move. Unless = "if not", so this answer says CPU chips Computers cannot are not ? currently be made made smaller faster If that rule seems to match the argument core, then pick it. Here, the author definitely went from a premise about CPU chips not being able to be made smaller to a conclusion about computers not being able to be made faster.

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

    74% picked this

  2. Even if CPU chips are

    Too Strong

    The author is only claiming that the chips can't be made smaller without decreasing sophistication. She might totally agree that they can currently be made much smaller, as long as we decrease their sophistication.

    3% picked this

  3. If both the size and

    Out of Scope

    Out of Scope: decreasing size and sophistication The author never covered what would happen if both the size and the sophistication of a chip were decreased. Presumably, the overall effect on the speed of the chip would depend on how much we decreased the size vs. sophistication. If we decreased them both proportionately, the speed might be unchanged.

    17% picked this

  4. Few, if any, computer manufacturers

    Out of Scope: what manufacturers believe

    This argument is about whether computers currently can / can't be made significantly faster. The truth of that proposition has nothing to do with what quantity of manufacturers believe it to be true.

    1% picked this

  5. Increasing the sophistication of a

    Weakens

    This actually poses an alternative way to make computers faster, so this weakens the author's argument; she is assuming that making CPU chips smaller (but equally sophisticated) is the only way.

    6% picked this

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