RC Question 17 Explanation
DISCUSSION: When a question mentions a specific paragraph, you should quickly reread/skim that paragraph and decide on the purpose of the paragraph, before reading the answers.
This will take a bit more time, but it will let you answer the question much faster.
The fourth paragraph shows that the pin factory idea was not rejected because it was wrong. Rather it was because the math was hard.
___________
- Nonsense. There is no theory that attempts to resolve the tension between the pin factory and the invisible hand. This definitely isn’t mentioned in the fourth paragraph.
- CORRECT. Close enough. It was mathematically difficult to model the pin factory, and that is why the idea was ignored.
- Nonsense. The word intuition isn’t even mentioned in the passage, let alone the fourth paragraph.
- The third paragraph mentions the tensions between the two assumptions. But no paragraphs mention the tensions between modeling the two different assumptions.
- There’s no argument against an economic assumption given anywhere in the passage. The author accepts both the pin factory and invisible hand as true, without questioning them.
Hmm I picked D here because at the beginning of the the paragraph the author states “the assumption of diminishing returns dominated economic theory, with the Pin Factory de-emphasized.” And then at the end of the fourth paragraph it mentions “And the economics of diminishing returns lend themselves readily to elegant formalism, while those of increasing returns–the Pin Factory–are notoriously hard to represent mathematically.”
This sounds to me like the “tensions resulting from attempts to model two competing economic assumptions,” as it states in D, rather than the singular focus on “modeling a particular economic assumption, as it states in B.
You state in your explanation that “no paragraphs mention the tensions between modeling the two different assumptions.” Would this not be considered tensions from modeling the two different assumptions?
It’s a question of emphasis. In paragraph 4 the point was that the pin factory was barely even considered as a model. Diminishing returns were dominant.
So there was no active tension in modelling. Diminishing returns had won (for now) and people were NOT trying to model the pin factory.
Hmm for this one I decided that it was not B as it B never explained the difficulty, it merely stated that there was a difficulty in mathematically modeling the Pin Factory method. I chose C because I understood the passage to be saying that the intuition as to why they went with the diminishing returns is because it had the least mathematical resistance.
Fair. The paragraph doesn’t go into any detail in explaining the difficulty, but it does provide some level of explanation of the difficulty: increasing returns are hard to represent mathematically.
Looking at (C), I think it’s important to ask yourself, what exactly are the intuitions, and what is the economic assumption that the answer choice is referring to. Paragraph 4 doesn’t even mention or hint at any intuitions — so how can the paragraph be outlining the intuitions supporting a particular economic assumption?
Just as a general note: when it comes to questions like these, you need to be able to very clearly point to the specific words or phrases in the paragraph (or passage, if the question is asking you to look at the entire passage) that equate to the more general concepts or terms in the answer choice.
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