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 KelseyWoods
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#84435
Hi Leon!

Answer choice (E) states: "We can be confident that the cornmeal used at Matteo’s Trattoria is healthful and organic, since cornmeal is among the ingredients used in preparing meals there; whenever a meal is prepared at Matteo’s Trattoria, only healthful, organic ingredients are used."

Let's start by diagramming the last clause: "whenever a meal is prepared at Matteo’s Trattoria, only healthful, organic ingredients are used." "Whenever" is a sufficient indicator and "only" is a necessary indicator. So the statement would be diagrammed as:

meal prepared at Matteo's Trattoria :arrow: healthful, organic ingredients

For the rest of the argument, the author takes a premise, and says that it is sufficient to draw a conclusion. So we would diagram it as:

cornmeal is among the ingredients used in preparing meals there :arrow: cornmeal used at Matteo’s Trattoria is healthful and organic

As noted in the explanation above, this is similar to the stimulus but has a key difference in the conclusion. A conclusion that matched the stimulus would have been something like "at least some cornmeal is healthful and organic" rather than just that the cornmeal used at Matteo's is healthful and organic.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey
 tetsuya0129
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#84563
It's surely helpful! Thank you, Kelsey!
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 pmuffley
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#92834
Hello! I just want to be clear that in order for the parallel reasoning to be correct, the time frame has to be matched between the stimulus and the correct answer choice? Answer choice C was ruled out because the time frame being referenced was not correct.

Ex stimulus conclusion: I will eat tacos tomorrow.

Ex answer choice conclusion: She ate cookies yesterday.

Regardless of the rest of the answer choice, I could rule this out because of the time frame reference? I do not recall seeing this in the LRB, so I want to make sure what you said is correct.

I thought that this example would actually be ok because the logical force of both arguments match.
 Adam Tyson
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#92849
While it's true that the correct answer to a Parallel Reasoning question will usually have the same temporal relationships as the stimulus, pmuffley, that is not an essential element of paralleling the argument. The real problem with answer C has nothing to do with time and everything to do with the strength and type of claims being made.

The conclusion is answer C appears to match that of the stimulus, but the premises do not. For example, "every shop is capable of doing good mechanical work" indicates only what those shops could do (they are capable), whereas the corresponding premise in the stimulus is "Any item on display at Furniture Labyrinth is well crafted," which indicates what is guaranteed (and not just what could occur). That alone is enough to eliminate this answer, but the other premises also fail to match. The premise in answer C that says "she can have her car worked on at any of several shops in the city" is also about mere possibility, and does not guarantee that she will have any work done, or that she will have it done in the city instead of elsewhere, and also only deals with "several" which is an uncertain amount, while the corresponding premise in the stimulus is "halogen lamps from most major manufacturers are on display at Furniture Labyrinth," which guarantees that there are such lamps on display and that they are from most (more than half) manufacturers rather than just several.

Focus on the strength and type of language in the premises and conclusions and be sure they match. While temporal elements of past, present, and future might raised some concerns, they are not always determinative of what makes a good or bad answer.
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 pmuffley
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#92889
Thank you!!

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