Data InsightsTwo-Part Analysis

Free GMAT Two-Part Analysis Practice Question

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Two managers at a commercial pear orchard review a report that the blocks enrolled in the new weekly scouting program recorded many more cases of pear scab this season than the blocks that were not scouted.

Esposito: The scouting is finding disease we used to miss. The scouted blocks turned up far more scab cases, so the program is exposing a problem that was there all along and going uncaught.

Farouk: I am not sure the scouted blocks really have more scab. Inspecting a block every week is bound to catch more cases simply because someone is looking harder and more often. The same disease may just be getting spotted earlier and more often in the scouted blocks, not actually be more common there.

In the table, select the claim that Esposito and Farouk actually disagree about, and select the finding that, if established, would settle that disagreement in Farouk's favor. Make only two selections, one in each column.

Claim Esposito and Farouk actually disagree about: . Finding that would settle the disagreement in Farouk's favor: .

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Answer & Explanation

Correct answer

1: The scouted blocks actually have more pear scab than the unscouted blocks. · 2: By end of harvest, the scouted and unscouted blocks lost the same share of their fruit to scab.

Esposito and Farouk agree on the report's case counts but split on what they mean. The two columns ask you to pin the real point of disagreement and then to find the one fact that would resolve it.

The disagreement. both managers accept that the scouted blocks recorded more scab cases, and both accept that weekly inspection catches more cases than less frequent inspection does; Farouk says so and Esposito does not dispute it. What they actually divide on is whether the scouted blocks genuinely have more scab, or whether the higher count is just the product of looking harder. Esposito says the scouted blocks really have more disease; Farouk doubts it. That is the claim they disagree about, so it is the answer in the disagreement column.

The arbiter. The disagreement hangs on whether more recorded cases means more real disease or just more detection. The fact that would settle it for Farouk swaps the detection-dependent count for an outcome that does not depend on how hard anyone looked: by end of harvest, what share of each set of blocks' fruit was actually lost to scab? If the scouted and unscouted blocks lost the same share of their fruit, then the extra recorded cases were detection, not disease, because the real damage came out even once you stop counting inspections and start counting lost fruit. That vindicates Farouk by removing the looking-harder explanation from the outcome, so it is the answer in the column asking what would settle the dispute in Farouk's favor.

Watch the two pulls. The recorded-cases statement, that the scouted blocks turned up more cases, looks like the disagreement, but it is the shared starting point: neither manager disputes the count, so it cannot be what they argue over. And the weekly-inspection-catches-more statement is the basis of Farouk's doubt, also accepted by both, so it too is common ground rather than the disagreement. picking either as the claim they disagree about mistakes agreed ground for the dispute. For the settles-it-for-farouk selection, none of the remaining facts settles anything: that the program costs more per acre, or that neighboring orchards adopted similar scouting, says nothing about whether the scouted blocks truly have more scab once you measure damage the inspection effort cannot inflate.

The discipline: the disagreement in a dialogue is the claim the speakers take opposite positions on, not the data they share, and the finding that settles it is the one that measures the outcome with a yardstick the doubter's objection cannot touch, here harvest loss rather than detected cases.

Disagreement: whether the scouted blocks really have more scab. settles it for Farouk: both sets lost the same share of fruit by harvest.