PrepTest 73, Logical Reasoning 2, Question 5
Transcript
Question five, when a question asked for the conclusion drawing an argument, we call that a conclusion question. And on those questions, our job is just to find the conclusion in the argument. In order to find the conclusion, we're looking for the thing that the rest of the argument is attempting to prove. And for us, that's gonna be found right there at the end of the first sentence.
Biodiversity does not require the survival of every currently existing species. Everything else when the argument is explaining why or why not that is true. The first part of that sentence is a little bit of an admission or a piece that's not quite counter evidence but something that might cause you to think the other way. So, okay, biodiversity is indispensable to the survival of Earth, but that doesn't mean that you need every currently existing species to survive.
Then the next two bits are evidence, yes, for there to be life on Earth, various ecological niches must be filled, but lots of those niches could be filled by more than one species, and that's the argument. We have the conclusion, a piece of counter evidence, and then two pieces of evidence meant to prove the conclusion. So we go to the answer choices.
We're just looking for the conclusion that we identified. When we hit answer choice A, well, answer choice A is almost exactly a direct quote. It's just the second half of the sentence as a sentence. Biodiversity does not require the survival of every currently existing species. So A's our answer, why are the others wrong? B is a piece of evidence.
We're not looking for the evidence, we're looking for the conclusion. C, that was that almost counter evidence, not the conclusion itself, but something that might cause you to think that the conclusion wasn't true. D, another piece of evidence, many niches can be filled by more than one species. Which is why biodiversity doesn't require the survival of every currently existing species.
And then answer choice E is actually something the author never said. The author never said anything about the species that's the most indispensible for biodiversity. We know that biodiversity is indispensable, there was no species that was the most indispensible. So if it was never said, it can't be the conclusion.
Our conclusion was answer choice A.
Read full transcriptBiodiversity does not require the survival of every currently existing species. Everything else when the argument is explaining why or why not that is true. The first part of that sentence is a little bit of an admission or a piece that's not quite counter evidence but something that might cause you to think the other way. So, okay, biodiversity is indispensable to the survival of Earth, but that doesn't mean that you need every currently existing species to survive.
Then the next two bits are evidence, yes, for there to be life on Earth, various ecological niches must be filled, but lots of those niches could be filled by more than one species, and that's the argument. We have the conclusion, a piece of counter evidence, and then two pieces of evidence meant to prove the conclusion. So we go to the answer choices.
We're just looking for the conclusion that we identified. When we hit answer choice A, well, answer choice A is almost exactly a direct quote. It's just the second half of the sentence as a sentence. Biodiversity does not require the survival of every currently existing species. So A's our answer, why are the others wrong? B is a piece of evidence.
We're not looking for the evidence, we're looking for the conclusion. C, that was that almost counter evidence, not the conclusion itself, but something that might cause you to think that the conclusion wasn't true. D, another piece of evidence, many niches can be filled by more than one species. Which is why biodiversity doesn't require the survival of every currently existing species.
And then answer choice E is actually something the author never said. The author never said anything about the species that's the most indispensible for biodiversity. We know that biodiversity is indispensable, there was no species that was the most indispensible. So if it was never said, it can't be the conclusion.
Our conclusion was answer choice A.
