If the budget does not allow for more dairy inspectors to be hired, most of the large dairies in the central valley w...

shunhe on December 27, 2019

Hi @Ryan-Mahabir,

We need something here that logically compels the conclusion, so let's diagram what we have in the stimulus. The first sentence tells us the following:

BAMDI = budget allows for more dairy inspectors to be hired
MFS = most of the large dairies in the Central Valley will meet federal standards governing the disposal of natural wastes

~BAMDI - > ~MFS

The second sentence gives us ~BAMDI.

The conclusion is that most of the district's drinking water is likely to become polluted (DDWP).

We have ~BAMDI, and that gives us ~MFS. Now we need something connecting ~MFS and DDWP, and this is exactly what (D) gives us. Diagramming (D) gives us

~MFS - > DDWP

And so we can make the chain

~BAMDI - > ~MFS - > DDWP

And since we have ~BAMDI, we can conclude DDWP.

(E) is incorrect because it is too strong. (E) has a requirement that NONE of the large dairies meets federal standards (in other words, ALL of them DO NOT meet federal standards), whereas the stimulus only requires that MOST large dairies do not meet federal standards. Hope this helps!

Anna20 on July 21, 2020

Why did you not diagram the most quantifier here? I am not sure I am following why D is the correct answer here?

Thanks @Shunhe!

shunhe on July 28, 2020

Hi @Anna2020,

Thanks for the question! I didn’t diagram the most quantifier here and put it in a term because the “most” here is in a conditional. Recall the sentence:

Most of the district’s drinking water is likely to become polluted if most of the large dairies in the central valley do not meet federal standards for the disposal of natural wastes.

So if we wanted to diagram out the most and diagram the conditional, it would look something like

(Large dairies in central valley —most—> ~Meet federal standards) —> (Drinking water —most—> Polluted)

Which is honestly just kind of nasty and unnecessarily complicated. So that’s why I just wrote out “most.”

(D) is correct because we know we can’t hire more dairy inspectors. And we know if we can’t hire more dairy inspectors, most of the large dairies won’t meet the federal standards. And then if (D) is true, then that allows us to conclude that most of the district’s drinking water will likely be polluted, which is the conclusion we want to reach. So (D) is the assumption that allows the conclusion to follow logically.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.