Logical Reasoning

PT138 · S3 · Q10 Fishery officials are still

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Fishery officials are still considering options for eliminating Lake Davis's population of razor-toothed northern pike, a fierce game fish that could threaten salmon and trout populations if it slips into the adjoining river system.

Problem

If the razor-toothed pike slips out of Lake Davis and into the adjoining river, it could threaten local salmon and trout population.

Possible Solutions

Can't inject a disease that only kills pike. Can't drain the lake. Adding poison hasn't been ruled out, but it outraged local residents when they did it recently, so not a popular or likely solution.

Causal Relationship

Poison —c→ tainted water —c→ hurt tourism

Evaluate

There didn't seem to be any particular tension between ideas or overlap. I organized my understanding with the Problem / Solution framework, but I would head to these answers with a very fuzzy sense of what I want.

Goal

It's probably most likely that the correct answer restates a truism that you can get from the causal ideas at the end. I'm guessing trap answers might try to bait me into saying something too strong about the possible solutions.

10.

Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the information above?

  1. Draining the lake would not

    Unsupported

    All we know about drained lake is "ruled out". Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't cause the tourism economy to suffer. Common sense probably suggests that if the tainted water hurt tourism four years ago, the tourists must be kinda interested in coming to use the water. So a drained lake likely would hurt tourism.

    1% picked this

  2. Four years ago was the

    Too Strong: the only

    This is the ol' Only One Mentioned = Only One trap. Just because we only talked about poisoning the lake four years ago, that doesn't mean four years ago is the only time we poisoned the lake. (I don't mean to brag, but .... we've poisoned that lake a ton!)

    3% picked this

  3. Correct

    The poison added to the

    Why this is right

    Given that the problem of "how do we get the pike out of this lake, before they escape into the river system" still exists, we can assume that the poison didn't do the job in eradicating the pike. If we were thinking, "maybe the poison rid the lake of the pike 4 years ago, but then 2 years ago the pike was reintroduced." Sure. You're right. That's possible. But it's not probable. It's pretty rare for a fish species to completely vanish from an ecosystem, but then come back at a problematic level just a couple years later. And check the question stem: it's Most Supported, so it doesn't have to be perfect. This synthesizes ideas (the way correct answers are supposed to) by combining "we're still mulling over solutions" with "4 years ago, we tried poison".

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

    80% picked this

  4. Four years ago, fishery officials

    Too Strong: none other than X

    This is the ol' Only One Mentioned = Only One trap Poison was the only solution mentioned from 4 years ago, but that doesn't mean that the only solution tried 4 years ago was poison.

    2% picked this

  5. Salmon and trout populations in

    Too Strong: essential

    We can infer that salmon and trout populations have some value, since we are mulling over solutions in an attempt to save them. But we don't have any evidence that they're essential to the local economy.

    13% picked this

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