12. After graduating from high school, people rarely multiply fractions or discuss ancient Rome, but they are confronted daily with decisions relating to home economics. Yet whereas mathematics and history are required courses in the high school curriculum, home economics is only an elective, and few students choose to take it.
Which of the following positions would be best supported by the considerations above?
(A) If mathematics and history were not required courses, few students would choose to take them.
(B) Whereas home economics would be the most useful subject for people facing the decisions they must make in daily life, often mathematics and history can also help them face these decisions.
(C) If it is important to teach high school students subjects that relate to decisions that will confront them in their daily lives, then home economics should be made an important part of the high school curriculum.
(D) Mathematics, history, and other courses that are not directly relevant to a person’s daily life should not be a required part of the high school curriculum.
(E) Unless high schools put more emphasis on nonacademic subjects like home economics, people graduating from high school will never feel comfortable about making the decisions that will confront them in their daily lives.
13. Houses built during the last ten years have been found to contain indoor air pollution at levels that are, on average, much higher than the levels found in older houses. The reason air-pollution levels are higher in the newer houses is that many such houses are built near the sites of old waste dumps or where automobile emissions are heavy.
Which of the following, if true, calls into question the explanation above?
(A) Many new houses are built with air-filtration systems that remove from the house pollutants that are generated indoors.
(B) The easing of standards for smokestack emissions has led to an increase in air-pollution levels in homes.
(C) New houses built in secluded rural areas are relatively free of air pollutants.
(D) Warm-weather conditions tend to slow down the movement of air, thus keeping pollution trapped near its source.
(E) Pressboard, an inexpensive new plywood substitute now often used in the construction of houses, emits the pollutant formaldehyde into the house.
14. The most important aspect of moviemaking is conveying a scene’s rhythm. Conveying rhythm depends less on the artistic quality of the individual photographic images than on how the shots go together and the order in which they highlight different aspects of the action taking place in front of the camera.
If the statements above are true, which of the following must be true on the basis of them?
(A) The artistic quality of the individual photographic image is unimportant in movie photography.
(B) Photographers known for the superb artistic quality of their photographs are seldom effective as moviemakers.
(C) Having the ability to produce photographs of superb artistic quality does not in itself guarantee having the ability to be a good moviemaker.
(D) Movie photographers who are good at their jobs rarely give serious thought to the artistic quality of the photographs they take.
(E) To convey a scene’s rhythm effectively, a moviemaker must highlight many different aspects of the action taking place.
15. Human beings can see the spatial relations among objects by processing information conveyed by light. Scientists trying to build computers that can detect spatial relations by the same kind of process have so far designed and built stationary machines. However, these scientists will not achieve their goal until they produce such a machine that can move around in its environment.
Which of the following, if true, would best support the prediction above?
(A) Human beings are dependent on visual cues from motion in order to detect spatial relations.
(B) Human beings can often easily detect the spatial relations among objects, even when those objects are in motion.
(C) Detecting spatial relations among objects requires drawing inferences from the information conveyed by light.
(D) Although human beings can discern spatial relations through their sense of hearing, vision is usually the most important means of detecting spatial relations.
(E) Information about the spatial relations among objects can be obtained by noticing such things as shadows and the relative sizes of objects.
16. In a study of the effect of color on productivity, 50 of 100 factory workers were moved from their drab workroom to a brightly colored workroom. Both these workers and the 50 who remained in the drab workroom increased their productivity, probably as a result of the interest taken by researchers in the work of both groups during the study.
Which of the following, if true, would cast most doubt upon the author’s interpretation of the study results given above?
(A) The 50 workers moved to the brightly colored room performed precisely the same manufacturing task as the workers who remained in the drab workroom.
(B) The drab workroom was designed to provide adequate space for at most 65 workers.
(C) The 50 workers who moved to the brightly colored workroom were matched as closely as possible in age and level of training to the 50 workers who remained in the drab work-room.
(D) Nearly all the workers in both groups had volunteered to move to the brightly colored workroom.
(E) Many of the workers who moved to the brightly colored workroom reported that they liked the drab workroom as well as or better than they liked the brightly colored workroom.
17. Not Scored
18. Manager: Accounting and Billing are located right next to each other and the two departments do similar kinds of work; yet expenditures for clerical supplies charged to Billing are much higher. Is Billing wasting supplies?
Head of Billing: Not at all.
Which of the following, if true, best supports the position of the Head of Billing?
(A) There are more staff members in Accounting than in Billing.
(B) Two years ago, expenditures in Accounting for clerical supplies were the same as were expenditures that year in Billing for clerical supplies.
(C) The work of Billing now requires a wider variety of clerical supplies than it did in the past.
(D) Some of the paper-and-pencil work of both Accounting and Billing has been replaced by work done on computers.
(E) Members of Accounting found the clerical supplies cabinet of Billing more convenient to go to for supplies than their own department’s cabinet.
19. Most geologists believe oil results from chemical transformations of hydrocarbons derived from organisms buried under ancient seas. Suppose, instead, that oil actually results from bacterial action on other complex hydrocarbons that are trapped within the Earth. As is well known, the volume of these hydrocarbons exceeds that of buried organisms. Therefore, our oil reserves would be greater than most geologists believe.
Which of the following, if true, gives the strongest support to the argument above about our oil reserves?
(A) Most geologists think optimistically about the Earth’s reserves of oil.
(B) Most geologists have performed accurate chemical analyses on previously discovered oil reserves.
(C) Ancient seas are buried within the Earth at many places where fossils are abundant.
(D) The only bacteria yet found in oil reserves could have leaked down drill holes from surface contaminants.
(E) Chemical transformations reduce the volume of buried hydrocarbons derived from organisms by roughly the same proportion as bacterial action reduces the volume of other complex hydrocarbons.
20. The wild mouflon sheep of the island of Corsica are direct descendants of sheep that escaped from domestication on the island 8,000 years ago. They therefore provide archaeologists with a picture of what some early domesticated sheep looked like, before the deliberate selective breeding that produced modern domesticated sheep began.
The argument above makes which of the following assumptions?
(A) The domesticated sheep of 8,000 years ago were quite dissimilar from the wild sheep of the time.
(B) There are no other existing breeds of sheep that escaped from domestication at about the same time as the forebears of the mouflon.
(C) Modern domesticated sheep are direct descendants of sheep that were wild 8,000 years ago.
(D) Mouflon sheep are more similar to their forebears of 8,000 years ago than modern domesticated sheep are to theirs.
(E) The climate of Corsica has not changed at all in the last 8,000 years. |
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