Personnel officer: The exorbitant cost of our health-insurance benefits reflects the high dollar amount of medical expenses incurred by our employees. Employees who are out of shape, as a group, have higher doctor bills and longer hospital stays than do their colleagues who are fit. Therefore, since we must reduce our health-insurance costs, we should offer a rigorous fitness program of jogging and weight lifting to all employees, and require employees who are out of shape to participate. The conclusion reached by the personnel officer depends on which of the following assumptions?
A. A person who is fit would receive a routine physical checkup by a doctor less regularly than would a person who is out of shape.
B. The medical expenses incurred by employees who are required to participate in the fitness program would be less than those incurred by employees who are not required to participate.
C. The strenuous activities required of out-of-shape employees by the program would not by themselves generate medical expenses greater than any reduction achieved by the program.
D. The fitness program would serve more employees who are out of shape than it would employees who are fit.
E. The employees who participate in the fitness program would be away from work because of illness less than would the employees who do not participate.
If you negate C, you have: The strenuous activities required of out-of-shape employees by the program WOULD by themselves generate medical expenses greater than any reduction achieved by the program.
If so, it beats the purpose of the employer to use fitness group as a means to reduce medical cost. Thus, when you negate C, the conclusion falls apart. C is the necessary assumption.
B) is not necessary. The whole paragraph builds on the hypothesis that employee with an active life style would incur less in medical bills.
B) compares employee who are "required" to participated in the fitness program against who are not, neither of which has been mentioned in the passage.
Necessary assumption is a must-be-true type of questions, which would not allow NEW evidence.
B) is new evidence. Thus, B) could not be the correct answer.
In addition, even if B) is negated, the conclusion of the passage could still be correct. When you negate B), you have: The medical expenses incurred by employees who are required to participate in the fitness program would be NO less than those incurred by employees who are not required to participate. So what! This condition or constraint is meaningless to the conclusion since iff these out-of-shape employees improve their health and thus reduce their medical bills, the total insurance cost for the company can be reduced. So the conclusion still holds.
In an attempt to reduce the crime rate, the governor is getting tough on criminals and making prison conditions harsher.Part of this effort has been to deny inmates the access they formerly had to college-level courses.However, this action is clearly counter to the governor's ultimate goal, since after being released from prison, inmates who had taken such courses committed far fewer crimes overall than other inmates.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
A. Not being able to take college-level courses while in prison is unlikely to deter anyone from a crime that he or she might otherwise have committed.
B. Former inmates are no more likely to commit crimes than are members of the general population.
C. The group of inmates who chose to take college-level courses were not already less likely than other inmates to commit crimes after being released.
D. Taking high school level courses in prison has less effect on an inmate's subsequent behavior than taking college-level courses does.
E. The governor's ultimate goal actually is to gain popularity by convincing people that something effective is being done about crime.
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发表于 2011-5-29 12:10:59
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