Logical Reasoning

PT18 · S4 · Q10 Almost all of the books published

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Almost all of the books published in the past 150 years were printed on acidic paper.

Statements

(Most) Almost all books from last 150 were printed on acidic paper.

(Every = left side) Acidic paper → Slowly destroys itself

(If = left side) Acidic books stored → slows down in cool / dry place deterioration

(Only = right side) De-acidify technique → Historical used significance

Evaluate

There are three conditionals an Almost All fact. Do any of the conditionals chain together? Do they have any overlapping ideas?

They're all about acidic paper, but not the exact same idea about acidic paper.

We can join the first two facts, for sure.

Almost all books → acidic paper → slowly from last 150 yrs destroys itself

We know almost all the books from the last 150 years are slowly destroying themselves, and the final two conditionals give us some potential remedies to this problem.

We can store them in a cool dry place and make the self-destruction take a little longer. And we might be able to de-acidify some of the historically significant ones.

But we know that, .

Goal

Look for a safely worded takeaway, based on our knowledge that almost all of these books are deteriorating, the non-significant ones are doomed, and some significant ones might be saved via de-acidification.

10.

If all of the statements in the passage above are true, which one of the following must also be true?

  1. Correct

    If a book was published

    Why this is right

    This sounds like what we were thinking. If it was published in the past 150 years, it's probably on acidic paper (almost all of them are). Acidic paper will deteriorate completely eventually. If it's not historically significant, then it's ineligible for the de-acidification rescue plan, so it's probably screwed.

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

    49% picked this

  2. Almost all of the books

    Too Strong: almost all

    We know that almost all these books are at risk of gradually destroying themselves, but we have a potential solution for some of them: deacidify. We're only doing that to historically significant ones, but let's say that 30% of them ... that would mean that around 70% of the books from the past 150 years will gradually destroy themselves, but 70% is no longer almost all. The fact that we don't know what proportion of these books are historically significant books, we're not sure how big a share of the "almost all" might be saved via de-acidification.

    35% picked this

  3. Almost all of the books

    Reversal

    We know that made of acidic paper ? gradually deteriorate This is trying to make that move backwards gradually deteriorate ? almost all acidic paper

    5% picked this

  4. If a book is of

    Opposite

    The conditional rule in the last sentence allows us to say not historically ? won't be deacidified significant This answer is trying to illegally flip these ideas and say is historically ? will be deacidified significant

    10% picked this

  5. Books published on acidic paper

    Too Strong: all the same rate

    Given that we heard about the possibility that books stored in a cool, dry environment would deteriorate at a slower rate, there's no way we could speculate that books made in 1900 would all be at the same level. How they were used and how they were stored would introduce a lot of variation into how deteriorated they are.

    1% picked this

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