Here are the ten official questions which are discussed in detail in the Critical Reasoning - II module at the end of the Plan/Strategy Questions section. Shout out in the comments section if you have any doubts in the explanations.
Plan/Strategy Question No. 1
Scientists are discussing ways to remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by increasing the amount that is absorbed by plant life. One plan to accomplish this is to establish giant floating seaweed farms in the oceans. When the seaweed plants die, they will be disposed of by being burned for fuel.
Which of the following, if true, would indicate the most serious weakness in the plan above?
(A) Some areas of ocean in the Southern Hemisphere do not contain sufficient nutrients to support large seaweed farms.
(B) When a seaweed plant is burned, it releases an amount of carbon dioxide comparable to the amount it has absorbed in its lifetime.
(C) Even if seaweed farms prove effective, some people will be reluctant to switch to this new fuel.
(D) Each year about seven billion tons of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere but only about five billion tons are absorbed by plant life.
(E) Seaweed farms would make more money by farming seaweed to sell as nutritional supplements than by farming seaweed to sell as fuel.
Plan/Strategy Question No. 2
A city plans to attract new citizens with new housing and new facilities such as parks, recreation centers, and libraries. One component of the city's plan is to require that developers seeking permission to build this new housing provide these additional facilities at no cost to the city.
Which of the following, if true, would point to a possible flaw in the city's plan?
(A) Developers would pass along their costs to the buyer; thereby raising the cost of housing units beyond the ability of likely purchasers to afford them.
(B) Light, nonpolluting industries have located in the area, offering more jobs and better-paying jobs than do the more established industries in the area.
(C) Other towns and cities nearby have yet to embark on comparable plans to attract new citizens
(D) Most developers see the extra expense of providing municipal facilities as simply one of the many costs of doing business.
(E) Studies show that purchasers of new houses, especially first-time buyers, rank recreational resources as an important factor in deciding to buy a particular house.
Plan/Strategy Question No. 3
Automobile emissions are a significant source of air pollutants, and cars over five years old typically generate significantly greater amounts of pollutants than newer cars. In Torinia, which has recently built its first automobile manufacturing plant, most cars are over five years old. Aiming to boost Torinia's economy and reduce air pollution, the government plans to introduce incentives for Torinians to scrap their old cars every five years and replace them with new ones.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously undermines the likelihood that the planned incentives, if implemented, will achieve both of the cited aims?
(A) Without the implementation of the planned incentives, most Torinians who own an old car would be unlikely to buy a new car.
(B) Torinia's automobile plant manufactures car models that typically generate smaller amounts of air pollutants than most similarly sized car models manufactured elsewhere.
(C) The new cars produced in Torinia are not likely to be exported to other countries.
(D) The largest source of atmospheric pollutants in Torinia is not automobile emissions, but emissions from power plants.
(E) The manufacture and the scrapping of cars each generate significant amounts of air pollutants.
Plan/Strategy Question No. 4
State tax officials, having had considerable success in persuading delinquent individuals to pay their back taxes through the incentive of reduced penalties, plan to adopt a similar approach in order to collect past due taxes from corporations.
The state tax plan outlined above assumes that
(A) federal tax officials will not attempt to collect back taxes in the same manner
(B) stiff fines are not the only way to collect past due corporate taxes
(C) corporations tend to be delinquent in their taxes for the same length of time that individual taxpayers are
(D) past due taxes cannot be collected without a reduction in penalties
(E) penalties for delinquent corporations will have to be reduced by the same percentage as were penalties for delinquent individuals
Plan/Strategy Question No. 5
Tireworld’s marketing plan previously centered around numerous costly marketing campaigns targeted to individual states. This year Tireworld executives plan to switch to a more cost-efficient nationwide marketing campaign. In this way, they hope to increase overall company profits merely by spending less on their marketing.
Which of the following, if true, indicates a flaw in the executive’s plan to increase overall company profits?
(A) Many tire companies that are smaller than Tireworld have used nationwide campaigns to increase their profits.
(B) Regional climatic conditions and local competition are extremely important factors in marketing tires.
(C) During the last two years, Tireworld has sold ten percent of its tires to the military.
(D) Many tires are bought only in emergency situations, in which brand preferences are of little concern.
(E) Statewide tire-marketing campaigns often employ radio-advertisement stars in order to promote products.
Plan/Strategy Question No. 6
In the last two years alone, nearly a dozen of Central University’s most prominent professors have been lured away by the higher salaries offered by competing academic institutions. In order to protect the school’s ranking, Central University’s president has proposed increasing tuition by 10% and using the extra money to offer more attractive compensation packages to the most talented and well-known members of its faculty.
Which of the following provides the most persuasive argument against the university president’s proposed course of action?
(A) It is inevitable that at least some members of the faculty will ultimately take jobs at other universities, regardless of how much Central University offers to pay them.
(B) Other universities are also looking for ways to provide higher salaries to prominent members of the faculty.
(C) Central University slipped in the last year’s ranking of regional schools.
(D) The single most important factor in ranking a university is its racial and socioeconomic diversity.
(E) The president of Central University has only been in office for 18 months and has never managed such a large enterprise.
Plan/Strategy Question No. 7
The general availability of high-quality electronic scanners and color printers for computers has made the counterfeiting of checks much easier. In order to deter such counterfeiting, several banks plan to issue to their corporate customers checks that contain dots too small to be accurately duplicated by any electronic scanner currently available; when such checks are scanned and printed, the dots seem to blend together in such a way that the word “VOID” appears on the check.
A questionable assumption of the plan is that
(A) in the territory served by the banks the proportion of counterfeit checks that are made using electronic scanners has remained approximately constant over the past few years.
(B) most counterfeiters who use electronic scanners counterfeit checks only for relatively large amounts of money.
(C) the smallest dots on the proposed checks cannot be distinguished visually except under strong magnification.
(D) most corporations served by these banks will not have to pay more for the new checks than for traditional checks.
(E) the size of the smallest dots that generally available electronic scanners are able to reproduce accurately will not decrease significantly in the near future.
Plan/Strategy Question No. 8
Twelve years ago and again five years ago, there were extended periods when the Darfir Republic's currency, the pundra, was weak: its value was unusually low relative to the world's most stable currencies. Both times a weak pundra made Darfir's manufactured products a bargain on world markets, and Darfir's exports were up substantially. Now some politicians are saying that, in order to cause another similarly sized increase in exports, the government should allow the pundra to become weak again.
Which of the following, if true, provides the government with the strongest grounds to doubt that the politicians' recommendation, if followed, will achieve its aim?
(A) Several of the politicians now recommending that the pundra be allowed to become weak made that same recommendation before each of the last two periods of currency weakness.
(B) After several decades of operating well below peak capacity, Darfir's manufacturing sector is now operating at near-peak levels.
(C) The economy of a country experiencing a rise in exports will become healthier only if the country's currency is strong or the rise in exports is significant.
(D) Those countries whose manufactured products compete with Darfir's on the world market all currently have stable currencies.
(E) A sharp improvement in the efficiency of Darfir's manufacturing plants would make Darfir's products a bargain on world markets even without any weakening of the pundra relative to other currencies.
Plan/Strategy Question No. 9
Which of the following, if true, most logically completes the passage?
A recent poll found that over 80 percent of the residents of Nalmed Province favored a massive expansion of the commuter rail system as a means of significantly reducing congestion on the province’s highways and were willing to help pay for the expansion through an increase in their taxes. Nevertheless, the poll results indicate that expansion of the rail system, if successfully completed, would be unlikely to achieve its goal of easing congestion, because __________.
(A) most people in favor of expanding the rail system reported less congestion during their highway commute as the primary benefit they would experience
(B) of the less than 20 percent of residents not counted as favoring the expansion, about half claimed to have no opinion one way or the other
(C) the twice-daily periods of peak congestion caused by people commuting in cars have grown from about an hour each to almost two and a half hours each in the past 20 years
(D) expanding the commuter rail system will require the construction of dozens of miles of new rail bed
(E) the proposed expansion to the commuter rail system will make it possible for some people who both live and work at suburban locations to commute by rail
Plan/Strategy Question No. 10
Insect infestations in certain cotton-growing regions of the world have caused dramatic increases in the price of cotton on the world market. By contrast, the price of soybeans has long remained stable. Knowing that cotton plants mature quickly, many soybean growers in Ortovia plan to cease growing soybeans and begin raising cotton instead, thereby taking advantage of the high price of cotton to increase their income significantly, at least over the next several years.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the plan’s chances for success?
(A) The cost of raising soybeans has increased significantly over the past several years and is expected to continue to climb.
(B) Tests of a newly developed, inexpensive pesticide have shown it to be both environmentally safe and effective against the insects that have infested cotton crops.
(C) In the past several years, there has been no sharp increase in the demand for cotton and for goods made out of cotton.
(D) Few consumers would be willing to pay significantly higher prices for cotton goods than they are now paying.
(E) The species of insect that has infested cotton plants has never been known to attack soybean plants.
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