SECTION IV
Time 35 minutes 25 Questions
Directions: The questions in this section are based on the reasoning contained in brief statements or passages.
1. A major art theft from a museum was remarkable in that the pieces stolen clearly had been carefully selected. The criterion for selection, however, clearly had not been greatest estimated market value. It follows that the theft was specifically carried out to suit the taste of some individual collector for whose private collection the pieces were destined.
The argument tacitly appeals to which one of the following principles?
(A) Any art theft can, on the evidence of the selection of pieces stolen, be categorized as committed either at the direction of a single known individual or at the direction of a group of known individuals.
(B) Any art theft committed at the direction of a single individual results in a pattern of works taken and works left alone that defies rational analysis.
(C) The pattern of works taken and works left alone can sometimes distinguish one type of art theft from another.
(D) Art thefts committed with no preexisting plan for the disposition of the stolen works do not always involve theft of the most valuable pieces only.(C)
(E) The pattern of works taken and works left alone in an art theft can be particularly damaging to the integrity of the remaining collection.
2. The teeth of some mammals show “growth rings” that result from the constant depositing of layers of cementum as opaque bands in summer and translucent bands in winter. Cross sections of pigs teeth found in an excavated Stone Age trash pit revealed bands of remarkably constant width except that the band deposited last, which was invariably translucent, was only about half the normal width.
The statements above most strongly support the conclusion that the animals died
(A) in an unusually early winter
(B) at roughly the same age
(C) roughly in midwinter
(D) in a natural catastrophe(C)
(E) from starvation
3. The United States has never been a great international trader. It found most of its raw materials and customers for finished products within its own borders. The terrible consequences of this situation have become apparent, as this country now owes the largest foreign debt in the world and is a playground for wealthy foreign investors. The moral is clear: a country can no more live without foreign trade than a dog can live by eating its own tail.
In order to advance her point of view, the author does each of the following EXCEPT:
(A) draw on an analogy
(B) appeal to historical fact
(C) identify a cause and an effect
(D) suggest a cause of the current economic situation(E)
(E) question the ethical basis of an economic situation
4. Giselle: The government needs to ensure that the public consumes less petroleum. When things cost more, people buy and use less of them. Therefore, the government should raise the sales tax on gasoline, a major petroleum product.
Antoine: The government should not raise the sales tax on gasoline. Such an increase would be unfair to gasoline users. If taxes are to be increased, the increases should be applied in such a way that they spread the burden of providing the government with increased revenues among many people, not just the users of gasoline.
As a rebuttal of Giselle’s argument, Antoine’s response is ineffective because
(A) he ignores the fact that Giselle does not base her argument for raising the gasoline sales tax on the government’s need for increase revenues
(B) he fails to specify how many taxpayers there are who are not gasoline users
(C) his conclusion is based on an assertion regarding unfairness, and unfairness is a very subjective concept
(D) he mistakenly assumes that Giselle wants a sales tax increase only on gasoline(A)
(E) he makes the implausible assumption that the burden of increasing government revenues can be more evenly distributed among the people through other means besides increasing the gasoline sales tax
5. A government agency publishes ratings of airlines, ranking highest the airlines that have the smallest proportion of late flights. The agency’s purpose is to establish an objective measure of the relative efficiency of different airlines’ personnel in meeting published flight schedules.
Which one of the following, if true, would tend to invalidate use of the ratings for the agency’s purpose?
(A) Travelers sometimes have no choice of airlines for a given trip at a given time.
(B) Flights are often made late by bad weather conditions that affect some airlines more that others.
(C) The flight schedules of all airlines allow extra time for flights that go into or out of very busy airports.
(D) Airline personnel are aware that the government agency is monitoring all airline flights for lateness.(B)
(E) Flights are defined as “late” only if they arrive more that fifteen minutes past their scheduled arrival time, and a record is made of how much later than fifteen minutes they are.
11. Every week, the programming office at an FM radio station reviewed unsolicited letters from listeners who were expressing comments on the station’s programs. One week, the station received 50 letters with favorable comments about the station’s news reporting and music selection and 10 letters with unfavorable comments on the station’s new movie review segment of the evening program. Faced with this information, the programming director assumed that if some listeners did not like the movie review segment, then there must be other listeners who did like it. Therefore, he decided to continue the movie review segment of the evening program.
Which on e of the following identifies a problem with the programming director’s decision process?
(A) He failed to recognize that people are more likely to write letters of criticism than of praise.
(B) He could not properly infer from the fact that some listeners did not like the movie review segment that some others did.
(C) He failed to take into consideration the discrepancy in numbers between favorable and unfavorable letters received.
(D) He failed to take into account the relation existing between the movie review segment and the news.(B)
(E) He did not wait until he received at least 50 letters with unfavorable comments about the movie review segment before making his decision.
12. “Though they soon will, patients should not have a legal right to see their medical records. As a doctor, I see two reasons for this. First, giving them access will be time-wasting because it will significantly reduce the amount of time that medical staff can spend on more important duties, by forcing them to retrieve and return files. Second, if my experience is anything to go by, no patients are going to ask for access to their records anyway.”
Which one of the following, if true, establishes that the doctor’s second reason does not cancel out the first?
(A) The new law will require that doctors, when seeing a patient in their office, must be ready to produce the patient’s records immediately, not just ready to retrieve them.
(B) The task of retrieving and returning files would fall to the lowest-paid member of a doctor’s office staff.
(C) Any patients who asked to see their medical records would also insist on having details they did not understand explained to them.
(D) The new law does not rule out that doctors may charge patients for extra expenses incurred specifically in order to comply with the new law.(A)
(E) Some doctors have all allowing their patients access to their medical records, but those doctors’ patients took no advantage of this policy.
责任编辑：mman
