AMERICAN-ENGLISH ACADEMY

GMAT Critical Reasoning -2

Joseph Priestley, Sr. Verbal

1. Most archaeologists have held that people first reached the Americas less than 20,000
years ago by crossing a land bridge into North America. But recent discoveries of human
shelters in South America dating from 32,000 years ago have led researchers to speculate that
people arrived in South America first, after voyaging across the Pacific, and then spread
northward.
Which of the following, if it were discovered, would be pertinent evidence against the
speculation above?
A. A rock shelter near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, contains evidence of use by human
beings19,000 years ago.
B. Some North American sites of human habitation predate any sites found in South America.
C. The climate is warmer at the 32,000-year-old South American site than at the oldest known
North American site.
D. The site in South America that was occupied 32,000 years ago was continuously occupied
until 6,000 years ago.
E. The last Ice Age, between 11,500 and 20,000 years ago, considerably lowered worldwide sea
levels

2. Treatment for hypertension forestalls certain medical expenses by preventing strokes and heart
disease. Yet any money so saved amounts to only one-fourth of the expenditures required to treat
the hypertensive population. Therefore, there is no economic justification for preventive
treatment for hypertension.
Which of the following, if true, is most damaging to the conclusion above?
(A) The many fatal strokes and heart attacks resulting from untreated hypertension cause
insignificant medical expenditures but large economic losses of other sorts.
(B) The cost, per patient, of preventive treatment for hypertension would remain constant even if
such treatment were instituted on a large scale.
(C) In matters of health care, economic considerations should ideally not be dominant.
(D) Effective prevention presupposes early diagnosis, and programs to ensure early diagnosis are

costly.
(E) The net savings in medical resources achieved by some preventive health measures are
smaller than the net losses attributable to certain other measures of this kind
3. In the past most airline companies minimized aircraft weight to minimize fuel costs. The safest
airline seats were heavy, and airlines equipped their planes with few of these seats. This year the
seat that has sold best to airlines has been the safest onea clear indication that airlines are
assigning a higher priority to safe seating than to minimizing fuel costs.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument above?
(A) Last years best-selling airline seat was not the safest airline seat on the market.
(B) No airline company has announced that it would be making safe seating a higher priority this
year.
(C) The price of fuel was higher this year than it had been in most of the years when the safest
airline seats sold poorly.
(D) Because of increases in the cost of materials, all airline seats were more expensive to
manufacture this year than in any previous year.
(E) Because of technological innovations, the safest airline seat on the market this year weighed
less than most other airline seats on the market.
4. Crops can be traded on the futures market before they are harvested. If a poor corn harvest is
predicted, prices of corn futures rise; if a bountiful corn harvest is predicted, prices of corn
futures fall. This morning meteorologists are predicting much-needed rain for the corn-growing
region starting tomorrow. Therefore, since adequate moistures essential for the current crops
survival, prices of corn futures will fall sharply today.
Which of the following, if true, most weakens the argument above?
(A) Corn that does not receive adequate moisture during its critical pollination stage will not
produce a bountiful harvest.
(B) Futures prices for corn have been fluctuating more dramatically this season than last season.
(C) The rain that meteorologists predicted for tomorrow is expected to extend well beyond the
corn-growing region.
(D) Agriculture experts announced today that a disease that has devastated some of the corn crop
will spread widely before the end of the growing season.
(E) Most people who trade in corn futures rarely take physical possession of the corn they trade.
5. In the arid land along the Colorado River, use of the river's water is strictly controlled: farms
along the river each have a limited allocation that they are allowed to use for irrigation. But the
trees that grow in narrow strips along the rivers banks also use its water. Clearly, therefore, if

farmers were to remove those trees, more water would be available for crop irrigation
Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?
a. The trees along the rivers banks shelter it from the sun and wind, thereby greatly reducing the
amount of water lost through evaporation
b. Owners of farms along the river will probably not undertake the expense of cutting down trees
along the banks unless they are granted a greater allocation of water in return
c. Many of the tree species currently found along the rivers banks are specifically adapted to
growing in places where tree roots remain constantly wet.
d. The strip of land where trees grow along the rivers banks would not be suitable for growing
crops if the trees were removed.
e. The distribution of water allocations for irrigation is intended to prevent farms father upstream
from using water needed by farms father downstream
6. Some economists view the Kennedy-Johnson tax cut of 1964, which radically reduced
corporate and individual taxes, as the impetus for the substantial prosperity enjoyed by the
United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the claim that the tax cut of 1964 was the
impetus for economic prosperity?
(A) Modernized, more productive factories were built in the late 1960s as a result of the funds
made available by the tax cut.
(B) Improved economic conditions in Western Europe and Japan resulted in substantially
increased demand for United States manufactured goods in the late 1960s.
(C) The tax cut of 1964 contained regulations concerning tax shelters that prompted investors to
transfer their savings to more economically productive investments.
(D) Personal income after taxes rose in the years following 1964.
(E) In the late 1960s, unemployment was relatively low compared with the early 1960s.
7. Advertisement: For sinus pain, three out of four hospitals give their patients Novex. So when
you want the most effective painkiller for sinus pain, Novex is the one to choose.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously undermines the advertisements argument?
(A) Some competing brands of painkillers are intended to reduce other kinds of pain in addition
to sinus pain.
(B) Many hospitals that do not usually use Novex will do so for those patients who cannot
tolerate the drug the hospitals usually use.
(C) Many drug manufacturers increase sales of their products to hospitals by selling these
products to the hospitals at the lowest price the manufacturers can afford.

(D) Unlike some competing brands of painkillers, Novex is available from pharmacies without a
doctors prescription.
(E) In clinical trials Novex has been found to be more effective than competing brands of
painkillers that have been on the market longer than Novex.

8. Guitar strings often go deadbecome less responsive and bright in toneafter a few weeks
of intense use. A researcher whose son is a classical guitarist hypothesized that dirt and oil, rather
than changes in the material properties of the string, were responsible.

Which of the following investigations is most likely to yield significant information that would
help evaluate the researchers hypothesis?
(A) Determining whether a metal alloy is used to make the strings used by classical guitarists
(B) Determining whether classical guitarists make their strings go dead faster than do folk
guitarists
(C) Determining whether identical lengths of string, of the same gauge, go dead at different rates
when strung on various brands of guitars
(D) Determining whether a dead string and a new string produce different qualities of sound
(E) Determining whether smearing various substances on new guitar strings causes them to go
dead
9. Business Analyst: National Motors began selling the Luxora-its new model of sedan-in June.
Last week, National released sales figures for the summer months of June, July, and August that
showed that by the end of August only 80,000 Luxoras had been sold. Therefore, National will
probably not meet its target of selling 500,000 Luxoras in the models first twelve months.
Which of the following would be most useful to establish in order to evaluate the analysts
prediction?
A. Whether new-car sales are typically lower in the summer months than at any other time of the
year
B. Whether National Motors currently produces more cars than any other automaker
C. Whether the Luxora is significantly more expensive than other models produced by National
Motors

D. Whether National Motors has introduced a new model in June in any previous year
E. Whether National Motors will suffer serious financial losses if it fails to meet its sales goal for
the Luxora
10. The emission of sulfur dioxide when high-sulfur coal is burned is restricted by law. New
coal-burning plants usually comply with the law by installing expensive equipment to filter
sulfur dioxide from their emissions. These new plants could save money by installing instead less
expensive cleaning equipment that chemically removes most sulfur from coal before combustion.

Which of the following, if known, would be most relevant to evaluating the claim above
about how new coal-burning plants could save money?
A. Whether existing oil-burning plants are required to filter sulfur dioxide from their emissions
B. Whether the expense of installing the cleaning equipment in a new plant is less than the
expense of installing the cleaning equipment in an older plant
C. Whether the process of cleaning the coal is more expensive than the process of filtering the
emissions
D. Whether lawful emissions of sulfur dioxide from coal-burning plants are damaging the
environment
E. Whether existing plants that use the filtering equipment could replace this equipment with the
cleaning equipment and still compete with new plants that install the cleaning equipment
11.Community activist: If Morganville wants to keep its central shopping district healthy, it
should prevent the opening of a huge SaveAll discount department store on the outskirts of
Morganville. Records from other small towns show that whenever SaveAll has opened a store
outside the central shopping district of a small town, within five years the town has experienced
the bankruptcies of more than a quarter of the stores in the shopping district.
The answer to which of the following would be most useful for evaluating the community
activists reasoning?
A. Have community activists in other towns successfully campaigned against the opening of a
SaveAll store on the outskirts of their towns?
B. Do a large percentage of the residents of Morganville currently do almost all of their shopping
at stores in Morganville?
C. In towns with healthy central shopping districts, what proportion of the stores in those
districts suffer bankruptcy during a typical five-year period?
D. What proportion of the employees at the SaveAll store on the outskirts of Morganville will be
drawn form Morganville?
E. Do newly opened SaveAll stores ever lose money during their first five years of operation?

12. In the aftermath of a worldwide stock-market crash, Country T claimed that the severity of
the stock- market crash it experienced resulted from the accelerated process of denationalization
many of its industries underwent shortly before the crash.
Which of the following, if it could be carried out, would be most useful in an evaluation of
Country Ts assessment of the causes of the severity of its stock-market crash?
(A)Calculating the average loss experienced by individual traders in Country T during the crash
(B) Using economic theory to predict the most likely date of the next crash in Country T
(C) Comparing the total number of shares sold during the worst days of the crash in Country T to
the total number of shares sold in Country T just prior to the crash
(D) Comparing the severity of the crash in Country T to the severity of the crash in countries
otherwise economically similar to Country T that have not experienced recent denationalization
(E) Comparing the long-term effects of the crash on the purchasing power of the currency of
Country T to the immediate, more severe short-term effects of the crash on the purchasing power
of the currency of Country T
13. Although custom prosthetic bone replacements produced through a new computer-aided
design process will cost more than twice as much as ordinary replacements, custom replacements
should still be cost-effective. Not only will surgery and recovery time be reduced, but custom
replacements should last longer, thereby reducing the need for further hospital stays.
Which of the following must be studied in order to evaluate the argument presented above?
(A) The amount of time a patient spends in surgery versus the amount of time spent recovering
from surgery
(B) The amount by which the cost of producing custom replacements has declined with the
introduction of the new technique for producing them
(C) The degree to which the use of custom replacements is likely to reduce the need for repeat
surgery when compared with the use of ordinary replacements
(D) The degree to which custom replacements produced with the new technique are more
carefully manufactured than are ordinary replacements
(E) The amount by which custom replacements produced with the new technique will drop in
cost as the production procedures become standardized and applicable on a larger scale

14.A certain mayor has proposed a fee of five dollars per day on private vehicles entering the
city, claiming that the fee will alleviate the city's traffic congestion. The mayor reasons that,
since the fee will exceed the cost of round-trip bus fare from many nearby points, many people
will switch from using their cars to using the bus.
Which of the following statements, if true, provides the best evidence that the mayor's reasoning
is flawed.
A. Projected increases in the price of gasoline will increase the cost of taking a private vehicle
into the city.
B. The cost of parking fees already makes it considerably more expensive for most people to take
a private vehicle into the city than to take a bus
C. Most of the people currently riding the bus do not own private vehicles
D. Many commuters opposing the mayor's plan have indicated that they would rather endure
traffic congestion than pay a five-dollar-per-day-fee
E. During the average workday, private vehicles owned and operated by people living within the
city account for 20% of the city's traffic congestion.
15. Reviewer: The book Arts Decline argues that European painters today lack skills that were
common among European painters of preceding centuries. In this the book must be right, since
its analysis of 100 paintings, 50 old and 50 contemporary, demonstrates convincingly that none
of the contemporary paintings are executed as skillfully as the older paintings.
Which of the following points to the most serious logical flaw in the reviewer's argument?
(A) The paintings chosen by the book's author for analysis could be those that most support the
book's thesis.
(B) There could be criteria other than the technical skill of the artist by which to evaluate a
painting.
(C) The title of the book could cause readers to accept the book's thesis even before they read the
analysis of the paintings that supports it.
(D) The particular methods currently used by European painters could require less artistic skill
than do methods used by painters in other parts of the world.
16. Consumer health advocate: Your candy company adds caffeine to your chocolate candy
bars so that each one delivers a specifed amount of caffeine. Since caffeine is highly addictive,
this indicates that you intend to keep your customers addicted.
Candy manufacturer: 0ur manufacturing process results in there being less caffeine in each
chocolate candy bar than in the unprocessed cacao beans from which the chocolate is made.

The candy manufacturer's response is flawed as a refutation of the consumer health advocate's
argument because it
(A) fails to address the issue of whether the level of caffeine in the candy bars sold by the
manufacturer is enough to keep people addicted
(B) assumes without warrant that all unprocessed cacao beans contain a uniform amount of
caffeine
(C) does not specify exactly how caffeine is lost in the manufacturing process
(D) treats the consumer health advocate's argument as though it were about each candy bar rather
than about the manufacturer's candy in general
(E) merely contradicts the consumer health advocate's conclusion without giving any reason to
believe that the advocate's reasoning is unsound.
17. An eyeglass manufacturer tried to boost sales for the summer quarter by offering its
distributors a special discount if their orders for that quarter exceeded those for last years
summer quarter by at least 20 percent. Many distributors qualified for this discount. Even with
much merchandise discounted, sales increased enough to produce a healthy gain in net profits.
The manufacturer plans to repeat this success by offering the same sort of discount for the fall
quarter.
Which of the following, if true, most clearly points to a flaw in the manufacturers plan to repeat
the successful performance of the summer quarter?
(A) In general, a distributors orders for the summer quarter are no higher than those for the
spring quarter.
(B) Along with offering special discounts to qualifying distributors, the manufacturer increased
newspaper and
radio advertising in those distributorss sales areas.
(C) The distributors most likely to qualify for the manufacturers special discount are those
whose orders were
unusually low a year earlier.
(D) The distributors how qualified for the manufacturerss special discount were free to decide
how much of that
discount to pass on to their own customers.
(E) The distributorss ordering more goods in the summer quarter left them overstocked for the
fall quarter.
18. Businesses are suffering because of a lack of money available for development loans. To help
businesses, the government plans to modify the income-tax structure in order to induce
individual taxpayers to put a larger portion of their incomes into retirement savings accounts,
because as more money is deposited in such accounts, more money becomes available to
borrowers.
Which of the following, if true, raises the most serious doubt regarding the effectiveness of the
governments plan to increase the amount of money available for development loans for
businesses?

(A) When levels of personal retirement savings increase, consumer borrowing always increases
correspondingly.
(B) The increased tax revenue the government would receive as a result of business expansion
would not offset the loss in revenue from personal income taxes during the first year of the plan.
(C) Even with tax incentives, some people will choose not to increase their levels of retirement
savings.
(D) Bankers generally will not continue to lend money to businesses whose prospective earnings
are insufficient to meet their loan repayment schedules.
(E) The modified tax structure would give all taxpayers, regardless of their incomes, the same tax
savings for a given increase in their retirement savings.
19. The average normal infant born in the United States weighs between 12 and 14 pounds at the
age of three months. Therefore, if a three-month-old child weighs only 10 pounds, its weight
gain has been below the United States average.
Which of the following indicates a flaw in the reasoning above?
(A) Weight is only one measure of normal infant development.
(B) Some three-month-old children weigh as much as 17 pounds.
(C) It is possible for a normal child to weigh 10 pounds at birth.
(D) The phrase below average does not necessarily mean insufficient.
(E) Average weight gain is not the same as average weight.
20. Certain messenger molecules fight damage to the lungs from noxious air by telling the
muscle cells encircling the lungs airways to contract. This partially seals off the lungs. An
asthma attack occurs when the messenger molecules are activated unnecessarily, in response to
harmless things like pollen or household dust.
Which of the following, if true, points to the most serious fl aw of a plan to develop a medication
that would prevent asthma attacks by blocking receipt of any messages sent by the messenger
molecules referred to above?
(A) Researchers do not yet know how the body produces the messenger molecules that trigger
asthma attacks.
(B) Researchers do not yet know what makes one persons messenger molecules more easily
activated than anothers.
(C) Such a medication would not become available for several years, because of long lead times
in both development and manufacture.
(D) Such a medication would be unable to distinguish between messages triggered by pollen and
household dust and messages triggered by noxious air.

(E) Such a medication would be a preventative only and would be unable to alleviate an asthma
attack once it had started.