25 Minutes 16 Questions
1. A company is considering changing its policy concerning daily working hours. Currently, this company requires all employees to arrive at work at 8 a.m. The proposed policy would permit each employee to decide when to arrive—from as early as 6 a.m. to as late as 11 a.m.
The adoption of this policy would be most likely to decrease employees’ productivity if the employees’ job functions required them to
(A) work without interruption from other employees
(B) consult at least once a day with employees from other companies
(C) submit their work for a supervisor’s eventual approval
(D) interact frequently with each other throughout the entire workday(D)
(E) undertake projects that take several days to complete
2. The amount of time it takes for most of a worker’s occupational knowledge and skills to become obsolete has been declining because of the introduction of advanced manufacturing technology (AMT). Given the rate at which AMT is currently being introduced in manufacturing, the average worker’s old skills become obsolete and new skills are required within as little as five years.
Which of the following plans, if feasible, would allow a company to prepare most effectively for the rapid obsolescence of skills described above?
(A) The company will develop a program to offer selected employees the opportunity to receive training six years after they were originally hired.
(B) The company will increase its investment in AMT every year for a period of at least five years.
(C) The company will periodically survey its employees to determine how the introduction of AMT has affected them.
(D) Before the introduction of AMT, the company will institute an educational program to inform its employees of the probable consequences of the introduction of AMT.(E)
(E) The company will ensure that it can offer its employees any training necessary for meeting their job requirements.
3. Installing scrubbers in smokestacks and switching to cleaner-burning fuel are the two methods available to Northern Power for reducing harmful emissions from its plants. Scrubbers will reduce harmful emissions more than cleaner-burning fuels will. Therefore, by installing scrubbers, Northern Power will be doing the most that can be done to reduce harmful emissions from its plants.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
(A) Switching to cleaner-burning fuel will not be more expensive than installing scrubbers.
(B) Northern Power can choose from among various kinds of scrubbers, some of which are more effective than others.
(C) Northern Power is not necessarily committed to reducing harmful emissions from its plants.
(D) Harmful emissions from Northern Power’s plants cannot be reduced more by using both methods together than by the installation of scrubbers alone.(D)
(E) Aside from harmful emissions from the smokestacks of its plants, the activities of Northern Power do not cause significant air pollution.
4. Some anthropologists study modern-day societies of foragers in an effort to learn about our ancient ancestors who were also foragers. A flaw in this strategy is that forager societies are extremely varied. Indeed, any forager society with which anthropologists are familiar has had considerable contact with modern nonforager societies.
Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the criticism made above of the anthropologists’ strategy?
(A) All forager societies throughout history have had a number of important features in common that are absent from other types of societies.
(B) Most ancient forager societies either dissolved or made a transition to another way of life.
(C) All anthropologists study one kind or another of modern-day society.
(D) Many anthropologists who study modern-day forager societies do not draw inferences about ancient societies on the basis of their studies.(A)
(E) Even those modern-day forager societies that have not had significant contact with modern societies are importantly different from ancient forager societies.
5. Mayor: In each of the past five years, the city has cut school funding and each time school officials complained that the cuts would force them to reduce expenditures for essential services. But each time, only expenditures for nonessential services were actually reduced. So school officials can implement further cuts without reducing any expenditures for essential services.
Which of the following, if true, most strongly supports the mayor’s conclusion?
(A) The city’s schools have always provided essential services as efficiently as they have provided nonessential services.
(B) Sufficient funds are currently available to allow the city’s schools to provide some nonessential services.
(C) Price estimates quoted to the city’s schools for the provision of nonessential services have not increased substantially since the most recent school funding cut.
(D) Few influential city administrators support the funding of costly nonessential services in the city’s schools.(B)
(E) The city’s school officials rarely exaggerate the potential impact of threatened funding cuts.
6. 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 advertisement’s 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 doctor’s prescription.(D)
(E) In clinical trials Novex has been found more effective than competing brands of painkillers that have been on the market longer than Novex.
7. A report that many apples contain a cancer-causing preservative called Alar apparently had little effect on consumers. Few consumers planned to change their apple-buying habits as a result of the report. Nonetheless, sales of apples in grocery stores fell sharply in March, a month after the report was issued.
Which of the following, if true, best explains the reason for the apparent discrepancy described above?
(A) In March, many grocers removed apples from their shelves in order to demonstrate concern about their customers’ health.
(B) Because of a growing number of food-safety warnings, consumers in March were indifferent to such warnings.
(C) The report was delivered on television and also appeared in newspapers.
(D) The report did not mention that any other fruit contains Alar, although the preservative is used on other fruit.(A)
(E) Public health officials did not believe that apples posed a health threat because only minute traces of Alar were present in affected apples.
8. A new law gives ownership of patents—documents providing exclusive right to make and sell an invention—to universities, not the government, when those patents result from government-sponsored university research. Administrators at Logos University plan to sell any patents they acquire to corporations in order to fund programs to improve undergraduate teaching.
Which of the following, if true, would cast most doubt on the viability of the college administrators’ plan described above?
(A) Profit-making corporations interested in developing products based on patents held by universities are likely to try to serve as exclusive sponsors of ongoing university research projects.
(B) Corporate sponsors of research in university facilities are entitled to tax credits under new federal tax-code guidelines.
(C) Research scientists at Logos University have few or no teaching responsibilities and participate little if at all in the undergraduate programs in their field.
(D) Government-sponsored research conducted at Logos University for the most part duplicates research already completed by several profit-making corporations.(D)
(E) Logos University is unlikely to attract corporate sponsorship of its scientific research.