GWD-TN-14-2.
Press Secretary: Our critics claim that the President’s recent highway project cancellations demonstrate a vindictive desire to punish legislative districts controlled by opposition parties. They offer as evidence the fact that 90 percent of the projects canceled were in such districts. But all of the canceled projects had been identified as wasteful in a report written by respected nonpartisan auditors. So the President’s choice was clearly motivated by sound budgetary policy, not partisan politics.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the press secretary’s argument depends?
A. Canceling highway projects was not the only way for the President to punish legislative districts controlled by opposition parties.
B. The scheduled highway projects identified as wasteful in the report were not mostly projects in districts controlled by the President’s party.
C. The number of projects canceled was a significant proportion of all the highway projects that were to be undertaken by the government in the near future.
D. The highway projects canceled in districts controlled by the President’s party were not generally more expensive than the projects canceled in districts controlled by opposition parties.
E. Reports by nonpartisan auditors are not generally regarded by the opposition parties as a source of objective assessments of government projects.
GWD-TN-14-15.
Fact: Asthma, a bronchial condition, is much less common ailment than hay fever, an allergic inflammation of the nasal passages.
Fact: Over 95 percent of people who have asthma also suffer from hay fever.
If the information given as facts above is true, which of the following must also be true?
A. Hay fever is a prerequisite for the development of asthma.
B. Asthma is a prerequisite for the development of hay fever.
C. Those who have neither hay fever nor asthma comprise less than 5 percent of the total population.
D. The number of people who have both of these ailments is greater than the number of people who have only one of them.
E. The percentage of people suffering from hay fever who also have asthma is lower than 95 percent
GWD-TN-14-30.
In a study conducted in Pennsylvania, servers in various restaurants wrote “Thank you” on randomly selected bills before presenting the bills to their customers. Tips on these bills were an average of three percentage points higher than tips on bills without the message. Therefore, if servers in Pennsylvania regularly wrote “Thank you” on restaurant bills, their average income from tips would be significantly higher than it otherwise would have been.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument relies?
A. The “Thank you” messages would have the same impact on regular patrons of a restaurant as they would on occasional patrons of the same restaurant.
B. Regularly seeing “Thank you” written on their bills would not lead restaurant patrons to revert to their earlier tipping habits.
C. The written “Thank you” reminds restaurant patrons that tips constitute a significant part of the income of many food servers.
D. The rate at which people tip food servers in Pennsylvania does not vary with how expensive a restaurant is.
E. Virtually all patrons of the Pennsylvania restaurants in the study who were given a bill with “Thank you” written on it left a larger tip than they otherwise would have.
GWD-TN-15-4.
Which of the following most logically completes the passage?
Appendicitis (inflammation of the appendix) is potentially fatal; consequently, patients with symptoms strongly suggesting appendicitis almost always have their appendix removed. The appropriate surgery is low-risk but performed unnecessarily in about 20 percent of all cases. A newly developed internal scan for appendicitis is highly accurate, producing two misdiagnoses for every 98 correct diagnoses. Clearly, using this test, doctors can largely avoid unnecessary removals of the appendix without, however, performing any fewer necessary ones than before, since ______.
A. the patients who are correctly diagnosed with this test as not having appendicitis invariably have medical conditions that are much less serious than appendicitis
B. the misdiagnoses produced by this test are always instances of attributing appendicitis to someone who does not, in fact, have it
C. all of the patients who are diagnosed with this test as having appendicitis do, in fact, have appendicitis
D. every patient who is diagnosed with this test as having appendicitis has more than one of the symptoms generally associated with appendicitis
E. the only patients who are misdiagnosed using this test are patients who lack one or more of the symptoms that are generally associated with appendicitis
GWD-TN-15-38.
Because it was long thought that few people would watch lengthy televised political messages, most televised political advertisements, like commercial advertisements, took the form of short messages. Last year, however, one candidate produced a half-hour-long advertisement. During the half hour the advertisement was aired, a substantial portion of the viewing public tuned into the advertisement. Clearly, then, many more people are interested in watching lengthy televised political messages than was previously thought.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
A. The candidate’s ratings improved significantly as a result of the half-hour-long political advertisement.
B. Political advertisements have become increasingly influential in determining voters’ decisions at the polls.
C. Many people would appreciate the opportunity to become better acquainted with political candidates’ views on current political issues.
D. Most people who are interested in political issues watch television regularly.
E. Most of the viewers who tuned in to the candidate’s half-hour-long advertisement last year did not change channels after the first few minutes.
GWD-TN-17-10.
Lawmaker: Raising taxes is not the only means of reducing government debt. The government’s stockpile of helium is worth 25 percent more, at current market prices, than the debt accumulated in acquiring and storing it. Therefore, by selling the helium, the government can not only pay off that debt but reduce its overall debt as well.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
A. The government has no current need for helium.
B. Twenty-five percent of the debt the government has accumulated in stockpiling helium is not an insignificant portion of the government’s total debt.
C. It is not in the lawmaker’s interest to advocate raising taxes as a means of reducing government debt.
D. Attempts to sell the government’s helium will not depress the market price of helium by more than 25 percent.
E. The government will not incur any costs in closing its facilities for stockpiling helium.
GWD-TN-17-19.
Excavations of the Roman city of Sepphoris have uncovered numerous detailed mosaics depicting several readily identifiable animal species: a hare, a partridge, and various Mediterranean fish. Oddly, most of the species represented did not live in the Sepphoris region when these mosaics were created. Since identical motifs appear in mosaics found in other Roman cities, however, the mosaics of Sepphoris were very likely created by traveling artisans from some other part of the Roman Empire.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
A. The Sepphoris mosaics are not composed exclusively of types of stones found naturally in the Sepphoris area.
B. There is no single region to which all the species depicted in the Sepphoris mosaics are native.
C. No motifs appear in the Sepphoris mosaics that do not also appear in the mosaics of some other Roman city.
D. All of the animal figures in the Sepphoris mosaics are readily identifiable as representations of known species.
E. There was not a common repertory of mosaic designs with which artisans who lived in various parts of the Roman Empire were familiar.
GWD-TN-17-29.
Educational Theorist:
Recent editorials have called for limits on the amount of homework assigned to children. They point out that free-time activities play an important role in childhood development and that large amounts of homework reduce children’s free time, hindering their development. But the average homework time for a ten year old, for example, is little more than 30 minutes per night. Clearly, therefore, there is no need to impose the limits these editorials are calling for.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the educational theorist’s argument relies?
A. The free-time activities that ten year olds engage in most are all approximately equally effective at fostering development
B. Regularly doing homework assignments improves children’s academic performance.
C. Individual teachers are not the best judges of how much homework to assign the children they teach
D. In most schools, if not all, the homework assignments given are of a length that does not diverge widely from the average.
E. Free-time activities rarely teach children skills or information that they can use in their academic work.
GWD-TN-18-8.
Political advocacy groups have begun to use information services to disseminate information that is then accessed by the public via personal computer. Since many groups are thus able to bypass traditional news sources, whose reporting is selective, and to present their political views directly to the public, information services present a more balanced picture of the complexities of political issues than any traditional news source presents.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument above depends?
A. Information services are accessible to enough people to ensure that political advocacy groups can use these services to reach as large a percentage of the public as they could through traditional news sources.
B. People could get a thorough understanding of a particular political issue by sorting through information provided by several traditional news sources, each with differing editorial biases.
C. Information on political issues disseminated through information services does not come almost entirely from advocacy groups that share a single bias.
D. Traditional news sources seldom report the views of political advocacy groups accurately.
E. Most people who get information on political issues from newspapers and other traditional news sources can readily identify the editorial biases of those sources.、
