GMAT Verbal Section : GMAT Sample Critical Reasoning Questions

66. By analyzing the garbage of a large number of average-sized households, a group of modern urban anthropologists has found that a household discards less food the more standardized-made up of canned and prepackaged foods-its diet is. The more standardized a household's diet is, however, the greater the quantities of fresh produce the household throws away.

    Which of the following can be properly inferred from the passage?

    1. An increasing number of households rely on a highly standardized diet.
    2. The less standardized a household's diet is, the more nonfood waste the household discards.
    3. The less standardized a household's diet is, the smaller is the proportion of fresh produce in the household's food waste.
    4. The less standardized a household's diet is, the more canned and prepackaged foods the household discards as waste.
    5. The more fresh produce a household buys, the more fresh produce it throws away.

    Answer : C

    Questions 67-68 are based on the following.

    In the past, teachers, bank tellers, and secretaries were predominantly men; these occupations slipped in pay and status when they became largely occupied by women. Therefore, if women become the majority in currently male-dominated professions like accounting, law, and medicine, the income and prestige of these professions will also drop.

67. The argument above is based on
    1. another argument that contains circular reasoning
    2. an attempt to refute a generalization by means of an exceptional case
    3. an analogy between the past and the future
    4. an appeal to popular beliefs and values
    5. an attack on the character of the opposition.

    Answer : C

68. Which of the following, if true, would most likely be part of the evidence used to refute the conclusion above?
    1. Accountants, lawyers, and physicians attained their current relatively high levels of income and prestige at about the same time that the pay and status of teachers, bank tellers, and secretaries slipped.
    2. When large numbers of men join a female-dominated occupation, such as airline flight attendant, the status and pay of the occupation tend to increase.
    3. The demand for teachers and secretaries has increased significantly in recent years, while the demand for bank tellers has remained relatively stable.
    4. If present trends in the awarding of law degrees to women continue, it will be at least two decades before the majority of lawyers are women.
    5. The pay and status of female accountants, lawyers, and physicians today are governed by significantly different economic and sociological forces than were the pay and status of female teachers, bank tellers, and secretaries in the past.

    Answer : E

69. An electric-power company gained greater profits and provided electricity to consumers at lower rates per unit of electricity by building larger-capacity more efficient plants and by stimulating greater use of electricity within its area. To continue these financial trends, the company planned to replace an old plant by a plant with triple the capacity of its largest plant.

    The company's plan as described above assumed each of the following EXCEPT:

    1. Demand for electricity within the company's area of service would increase in the future.
    2. Expenses would not rise beyond the level that could be compensated for by efficiency or volume of operation, or both.
    3. The planned plant would be sufficiently reliable in service to contribute a net financial benefit to the company as a whole.
    4. Safety measures to be instituted for the new plant would be the same as those for the plant it would replace.
    5. The tripling of capacity would not result in insuperable technological obstacles to efficiency.

    Answer : D

70. Of the countries that were the world's twenty largest exporters in 1953, four had the same share of total world exports in 1984 as in 1953. Theses countries can therefore serve as models for those countries that wish to keep their share of the global export trade stable over the years.

    Which of the following, if true, casts the most serious doubt on the suitability of those four countries as models in the sense described?

    1. Many countries wish to increase their share of world export trade, not just keep it stable.
    2. Many countries are less concerned with exports alone than with he balance between exports and imports.
    3. With respect to the mix of products each exports, the four countries are very different from each other.
    4. Of the four countries, two had a much larger, and two had a much smaller, share of total world exports in 1970 than in 1984.
    5. The exports of the four countries range from 15 percent to 75 percent of the total national output.

    Answer : D