IMAT 2020 Q8 [Parallel Reasoning]

People who take their holidays in Las Vegas love to gamble. Gerry will be going to France for his holiday so he must not like gambling.

Which one of the following most closely parallels the reasoning used in the above argument?

A. People who eat a lot of sweets have rotten teeth. You eat a lot of sweets, so your teeth must be rotten.

B. People who live in the city hate traffic jams. You live in the country so you must like traffic jams.

C. You have to find the password to complete the game. You haven’t finished the game yet so you can’t have found the password.

D. You always walk when you are visiting your sister. You are not visiting your sister so that’s why you are taking the car.

E. In England cars are driven on the left side of the road. We are driving on the left, so we must be in England.

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Summary Steps:

  1. Read over the argument and break it into actions and reactions.
  2. Assign each part a variable.
  3. Simplify expression with variables.
  4. Put each answer option into the same variable format and see which are the most similar.
  5. Eliminate and solve.

Let’s first try and simplify this into a sweet and simple general statement using variables. (Let X = people who take their holidays in Vegas, and Y = gambling). People who do X, love Y. Because you do not do X, you must not like Y.

Now let’s do the same for all our answers.

A. People who eat a lot of sweets have rotten teeth. You eat a lot of sweets, so your teeth must be rotten.

(let X= people who eat lots of sweets, and Y = rotten teeth). People who do X, have Y. Because you do X, you have Y. This does not match our reasoning from above and therefore it cannot be correct.

B. People who live in the city hate traffic jams. You live in the country so you must like traffic jams.

(let X = living in city, let Y= traffic jams). People who do X, hate Y. You don’t do X, so you must love Y. This is the closest reasoning to our original question. The situation is the exact same because it gives us a set guideline with X and Y here, and then it says that because you don’t do X, you must have the opposite relation between X and Y than originally defined. Therefore B is correct.

C. You have to find the password to complete the game. You haven’t finished the game yet so you can’t have found the password.

(let X = finding the password, let Y= finishing the game). You need to have X to do Y. You did not do Y so you don’t have X. This does not match our logic or structure so C is incorrect.

D. You always walk when you are visiting your sister. You are not visiting your sister so that’s why you are taking the car.

(let Y = walking, let X = visiting your sister). You do Y when you do X. You are not doing X so you are not doing Y. It does not follow the logic and therefore this cannot be correct.

E. In England cars are driven on the left side of the road. We are driving on the left, so we must be in England.

(let X = England, let Y = driving on the left side of the road). When in X, you do Y. We are doing Y, so we must be in X. This does not follow the same reasoning and therefore must be incorrect.

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