Q11 - If the needle on an

[weiyichen1986]

Hey, i was down to C and D on this one, but the idea of rates kinda make me eliminate D...the stimulus didnt mentation anything about the wear out rates though i am so confused now

[giladedelman]

This is a tricky one!

So here's why (D) is supported. We know that in traditional factories, the human operators monitor the needles and replace them when they wear out. But in the more automated factories, it doesn't make sense to hire people just for that purpose. As a solution to this problem, factories are apparently going to start using this device to detect when a needle wears out.

What that means is, we don't know when a needle is going to wear out. If the wear-out rate were predictable, then we wouldn't need human monitors or fancy acoustic devices -- we would just replace them whenever they reached their expiration dates. So the fact that the needles need to be monitored this way supports the notion that they wear out at unpredictable rates.

(A) is incorrect because there's no comparison made between the mistake rate of the two different kinds of factories.

(B) is unsupported; we have no idea how many tasks each employee will perform.

(C) is out because we can't say traditional factories don't use any automated equipment. Maybe they have automated button-applying machines, or something -- we have no idea!

(E) is just totally out of scope. We don't know anything about noise levels.

Does that clear this one up for you?

[griffin.811]

As I was making my way to this page, it hit me that D was correct. But why is E out of scope?

An acoustic device would need to pick up on sound to alert someone that the needle needs to be changed. So you would think there would be only 2 options, either A: when the needle is damaged it makes a louder noise, or B: when damaged the needle makes a softer noise. The latter doesnt seem likely because workers probably wouldn't be able to hear the device in a factory with a ton of machines going at once.

The only way I can see this as not supported is if instead of making a louder noise, it just makes a different noise. but at the same decible level.

[patrice.antoine]

An acoustic device would need to pick up on sound to alert someone that the needle needs to be changed.

Would it? Is this information supported or even mentioned in the stimulus or are you using outside information?

I know its tempting but we should strictly stick to what information is provided in the stimulus when dealing with most strongly supported/inference questions.

The stim only speaks of new acoustic device' ability to detect wear. How they go about doing so is the least of our concern. As a result (E) is out of scope/irrelevant.

[griffin.811]

Hey Patrice!

I think in this case though, assuming that the acoustic device determines wear via some means of sound is warranted, and not outside the scope of what we should be able to assume.

I checked some other sources, and they seem to be pretty much in line with the reasons I stated for E, not louder, but diff pitch, tone, etc...

Instructors, what do you think?

[ohthatpatrick]

I agree that (E) is within scope. In fact, my prediction of where I thought the answer choice might come from was something like
"The sound of a badly worn needle is qualitatively different from that of a new needle".

There must be a variation in sound in order for an acoustic device to detect a change.

But, as you pointed out, we don't have to assume LOUDER. It could be softer or the same volume but somehow different (higher/lower pitch, for example).

We also wouldn't have to assume the smooth continuum that (E) describes "as more worn, increasingly loud".

Good dissection, everyone.

[ChandlerB747]

After going through the posts, I still don't really get it. Although I did actually get this one right, it hasn't dawn on me why (D) should be the most supported. I agree that (D) fills in the gap, but is it really supported?

[ohthatpatrick]

Does it help it make more sense if you rephrase
"which is most supported" into

"which answer is most provable, based on the available facts?"
"which answer captures something that was implied by the facts?"
"which answer can you best derive from the available facts?"

You should NOT be using/thinking things like "fill the gap" on an Inference question. We're not reading or evaluating an argument on Inference questions. Coincidentally, this passage DOES have a "therefore", but it is still described by the question stem as "information", not "argument/reasoning".

The correct answer doesn't NEED to do anything, other than be (close to) provable from the available facts.

From the fact that factories have either relied on a human inspector or an acoustic device to monitor needles in order to figure out when each needle has gone bad, we can infer/derive that we do NOT already KNOW IN ADVANCE when each needle will go bad.

If needles wore out at predictable rates, we wouldn't need inspectors and detectors; we would only need a calendar that says "needle 72 is due to run out in early April".

Since we DON'T already know in advance when a needle will go bad, they must NOT go bad at predictable rates.

[RobT906]

I agree that D is the most strongly supported. But I think I might be interpreting the word "rate" incorrectly, or LSAC is not being as precise as it should be. I understood rate to mean something like "5 needles wear out per day." If that's the case, it's possible that the rate of wear could be known, but we would still have to check to figure out which particular needles wore out. If "rate" was replaced with "time," it would make much more sense to me. Am I interpreting answer choice D correctly? Are "rate" and "time" synonyms in some sense? Anyone?