RC Question 7 Explanation
DISCUSSION: This question asks about the final paragraph. You should reread that paragraph before answering a question like this. The paragraph is short, and rereading is much faster than reading the first time. You can probably reread it in 10 seconds, and then you’ll have all the relevant information fresh in your mind as you answer.
The final paragraph says that perfume executives are cheapening classic perfume recipes so that they can make more profits. This is one possible reason that perfumes are not taken seriously as an art form.
___________
- The final paragraph only mentions customers to say that perfume executives hope that customers won’t notice the recipes are worse (lines 52-54). There is zero support for the idea that customers don’t know the names of perfumes.
- CORRECT. This is likely true. The perfume executives have made perfumes worse while increasing profits. So it seems as though profits may actually be a reverse indicator.
- This doesn’t have to be true. Modern perfumes are worse, but maybe customers don’t actually care.
- We don’t know anything about past perfumers. The fact that current perfume makers are bad doesn’t mean that past perfume makers were good. And “never” tamper is a very strong statement. All it would take is one example of past tampering to disprove this answer.
- This isn’t supported at all. The author never mentions perfume price ranges. Perfumes cost less to produce, but that tells us nothing about how much perfumes are sold for.
Does “indicator” really mean positively correlated? Wouldn’t any nonzero correlation make quality a valid indicator?
That’s a good question. By your line of reasoning, being a “good indicator” should also include the possibility that there’s a negative correlation, i.e. the more profitable a perfume is, the lower its quality. So, being profitable is a “good indicator” of quality in that we know the perfume is likely to be of poor quality.
One response is that the passage actually does not give us enough information to posit a non-zero correlation. All we know is that in some instances (namely, an unspecified number of formulas whose relative profitability we do not know), perfume companies tamper with formulas in an “effort” to increase profits. We don’t even know if they’re successful. So, (B) is correct in that the passage suggests that the nature of the relationship between profitability and quality is ambiguous. There are potentially very profitable perfumes whose formulas have been tampered with.