#7 - Baxe Interiors, one of the largest interior design

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Question #7: Must Be True. The correct answer choice is (E)

The stimulus indicates that Baxe Interiors is a very large design company with a near monopoly on
corporate design business. It also indicates that other, smaller companies may offer better designs,
but that corporate managers prefer to do business with very large companies that are unlikely to go
bankrupt. This implies that design quality is not necessarily the most important factor for an interior
design company to have a near monopoly in the corporate market.

Answer choice (A): While it is certainly possible that there are other very large design companies
beside Baxe, there is no support for this conclusion in the stimulus. For example, if other large
companies existed, why would Baxe maintain a near monopoly? Also, since other large companies
are not mentioned here, we cannot inferior anything about the quality of their designs.

Answer choice (B): All three sentences in this stimulus refer to design work in the corporate market.
While the stimulus explains why Baxe maintains a monopoly in this market, it does not offer any
reason to believe that Baxe also does not dominate other market categories.

Answer choice (C): Although the stimulus indicates that several small design companies have
produced award-winning designs and Baxe has not, we cannot overgeneralize here. It is not
necessarily true that most small companies produce designs superior to those of Baxe or even that
most designs from the award-winning companies are superior.

Answer choice (D): We have no basis for this belief from the stimulus. Corporate managers may or
may not be aware of the existence of superior designs (also, the phrase “much better” is a red flag),
but there desire to work with financially stable companies could outweigh their desire for the best
designs.

Answer choice (E): This is the correct answer choice. We know that at least some of the designs
from several small companies have been deemed superior to any of those from Baxe Interiors. We
also know that Baxe currently holds a near monopoly on the corporate market and one possible
explanation for this monopoly. Together, these statements support this answer choice.

[lhd33]

Hi,

For some reason, on this question, I just can't wrap my head around why the answer is definitively E. The website lists this question as a sufficient-necessary question, but I don't see how exactly, so maybe that's where I'm missing something. When I did the question, I narrowed down the answer to between D and E, but chose the wrong answer.

Thanks!

[jeff.wren]

Hi lhd33,

The question stem in question #7 indicates that it is essentially a must be true question. Although technically the answer doesn't have to be 100% true the way a standard must be true question does, we are still looking for the answer that is best supported by the information in the stimulus.

The stimulus starts off by stating that Baxe Interiors is one of the largest interior deign companies and that it has a near monopoly on the corporate market. These statements will come into play later.

This stimulus does involve conditional reasoning, and one clue to the presence of conditional reasoning is the necessary indicator word "only." This word appears twice. While the word "only" doesn't automatically mean that there is conditional reasoning, it often can be used to express a conditional relationship.

Here, the statement that corporate managers solicit designs only from companies that they believe are unlikely to go bankrupt is conditional and can be diagrammed:

CMSD -> CUGB (if corporate managers solicit designs from a company, then they believe that company is unlikely to go bankrupt)

The stimulus continues that they believe only very large companies are unlikely to go bankrupt, which can be diagrammed:

CUGB -> VLC (if they believe the company is unlikely to go bankrupt, then it is a very large company)

These conditional statements link together to tell us that corporate managers only solicit designs from very large companies. Small companies are out-of-luck, even if they have better designs.

Now the stimulus also mentions that there are several small companies that have won prestigious awards, while Baxe Interiors has not. This implies that these companies may actually have superior designs to Baxe, which comes into play later in answer (E).

Because these small companies cannot enter the corporate market even if they have superior designs (based on the conditional statements above), the superior designs (of these small companies) do not currently threaten Baxe's near monopoly. This is expressed in answer (E).

The problem with answer (D) is that nowhere in the stimulus is it stated (or even implied) that the corporate managers are unaware that there are superior designs than Baxe. In fact, the stimulus states the corporate managers only consider very large companies because the managers are worried that small companies might go bankrupt. It is possible that the corporate managers are entirely aware that there are superior designs, they just may not care as much about the quality as they care about the risk that the company will go bankrupt.

While answer (D) seems more likely to be true in the "real world" because you would expect that the corporate managers would choose superior designs if they knew about them, that isn't supported by the facts here.

I hope this helps.

Best,
Jeff

[lhd33]

Thank you for the detailed explanation! I now see what I did wrong!