If There Are Two Gaps in the Argument? Forum

[lawyerdude]

In PT #57, #17 in the 3rd section talks about buying a watch at a Jewelry Store and expecting it to follow a policy of a department store, despite the fact that it wasn't. In the argument, there were two different gaps: 1) that the jewelry store wasn't a department store and 2) that there was a missing element in the policy that the consumer did not apply to his situation, thereby rendering the conclusion false. In cases like this, where there is more than one gap in logic, do you simply have to narrow in on the one the test writers are solving with their assumption question? I spent a ton of time looking for that specific gap, and it was the wrong one to focus on. Any suggestions?

[TopHatToad]

You'll kill yourself on time if you do that. For every necessary assumption question, there are tons of unstated assumptions; you just got tripped up on a problem that had two very obvious ones. Here's what I recommend-- identify the first missing assumption you can, and check the answer choices for it. If you can't find that particular one, rather than scouring the passage again and blowing precious minutes, just go through the answer choices. Throw out the obviously bad ones, and apply the negation test on the rest. D becomes very obvious as the right answer that way.