Sharpen Your Logical Reasoning
The GMAT isn’t just about tricks; it’s also about intuitive thinking. The secret to scoring high in CR is to practice habitually “understanding the question and then being able to swap out the main subject with a similar story from everyday life, while maintaining the underlying logic.”
For example:
Lyme disease is caused by a bacterium transmitted to humans by deer ticks. Generally, deer ticks pick up the bacterium while in the larval stage by feeding on infected white-footed mice. However, certain other species on which the larvae feed do not harbor the bacterium. If the population of these other species were increased, more of the larvae would be feeding on uninfected hosts, so the number of ticks acquiring the bacterium would likely decline.
Key takeaway: Transmission of Lyme disease
Main subjects: Lyme disease, parasite, animals
What concepts in everyday life have this kind of relationship?
In Taiwan, the closest analogy is “dengue fever,” “vector mosquitoes,” and “drainage ditches.”
Once you grasp this subject-actor relationship, you can quickly translate the passage in your mind to (please compare with the English text above):
Dengue fever is transmitted to humans by viruses carried by vector mosquitoes. Vector mosquitoes contract the virus from stagnant water where they develop. However, some water sources where mosquitoes breed are clean and virus-free. Therefore, if the number of clean water sources increases, more mosquitoes will breed in clean water, leading to a decline in the vector mosquito population.
At this point, you can use this analogous story to identify logical gaps:
Who says that an increase in clean water sources leads to an increase in *uninfected* mosquitoes? This is a misinterpretation of the analogy. Is there a relationship between the number of drainage ditches (hosts) and the number of mosquitoes (parasites)?
B. Whether the size of the deer tick population is currently limited by the availability of animals for the tick’s larval stage to feed on
不確定自己現在幾分？
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The correct answer points out the logical gap between the “number of hosts” and the “number of parasites.”
Similarly, when you’ve practiced CR to the point of obsession, you’ll find yourself intuitively connecting everyday events or news to GMAT questions.
Consider this current event:
Local businesses in Beitou are scattering cherry blossoms to attract Pokémon GO players. The large number of players has caused traffic congestion in Beitou, leading to complaints. Some netizens question this as a double standard: attracting players with blossoms while complaining about the congestion caused by the large player base.
The argument against this being a double standard is:
The businesses are scattering the blossoms, and the residents are complaining.
They are not the same group of people, therefore, it is not a double standard.
If you can successfully make this connection, it means you possess the intuitive judgment needed for high CR scores.
In an experiment, each volunteer was allowed to choose between an easy task and a hard task and was told that another volunteer would do the other task. Each volunteer could also choose to have a computer assign the two tasks randomly. Most volunteers chose the easy task for themselves and under questioning later said they had acted fairly. But when the scenario was described to another group of volunteers, almost all said choosing the easy task would be unfair. This shows that most people apply weaker moral standards to themselves than to others.
Which of the following is an assumption required by this argument?
(A) At least some volunteers who said they had acted fairly in choosing the easy task would have said that it was unfair for someone else to do so.
