John works five days each week except when on vacation or during weeks in which national holidays occur. Four days a ...

Farnoush on December 1, 2019

Why D?

Hi Could you please explain why it's D Thank you

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Skylar on December 2, 2019

@farnoushsalimian, happy to help!

We are told that John works five days each week- four at an insurance company and Fridays as a blacksmith- except when the week includes a vacation or a holiday. We are then told that there were no holidays or vacations last week, which implies that John had to have worked five hours. The argument then concludes that John worked in the insurance company on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of last week.

We should notice a bit of a jump there. The argument does not provide enough information for us to know that John spent Monday through Thursday at the insurance company. How do we know he didn't work during Saturday or Sunday instead? We are presented with a Strengthen with Necessary Premise question, so the correct answer will address this jump in logic. Remember that the negation of the correct answer will make the argument fall apart completely for these types of questions.

(A) is incorrect because it is irrelevant. We are told that John was not on a vacation last week, so the length of his vacations does not affect the conclusion regarding which days he spent working at the insurance company last week.
(B) is incorrect because it is out of the scope of the question. We are only concerned about which days John worked, not how long he worked on those days.
(C) is incorrect because the passage already told us that vacations and holidays did not impact John's week.
(D) is correct because it addresses the jump in logic and makes the passage fall apart when negated. When negated, it would be impossible for John to work Monday through Thursday at the insurance company, because he would be working more than five days in the week.
(E) is incorrect because the passage explicitly states that John works four days a week at an insurance company and Friday as a blacksmith, for a total of exactly five days each week.

Does this make sense? Please let us know if you have any additional questions and best of luck with your studies!