Historian: In the Drindian Empire, censuses were conducted annually to determine the population of each village. Village census records for the last half of the 1600s are remarkably complete. This very completeness makes one point stand out; in five different years, villages overwhelmingly reported significant population declines. Tellingly, each of those five years immediately followed an increase in a certain Drindian tax. This tax, which was assessed on villages, was computed by the central government using the annual census figures. Obviously, whenever the tax went up, villages had an especially powerful economic incentive to minimize the number of people they recorded; and concealing the size of a village's population from government census takers would have been easy. Therefore, the reported declines probably did not happen.

In the historian's argument, the two portions in boldface play which of the following roles?

Environmental organizations want to preserve the land surrounding the Wilgrinn Wilderness Area from residential development. They plan to do this by purchasing that land from the farmers who own it. That plan is ill-conceived: if the farmers did sell their land, they would sell it to the highest bidder, and developers would outbid any other bidders. On the other hand, these farmers will never actually sell any of the land, provided that farming it remains viable. But farming will not remain viable if the farms are left unmodernized, and most of the farmers lack the financial resources modernization requires. And that is exactly why a more sensible preservation strategy would be to the farmers to modernize their farms to the extent needed to maintain viability.

In the reasoning above, the two boldface portions play which of the following roles?

Press Secretary: Our critics claim that the president's recent highway project cancellations demonstrate a vindictive desire to punish legislative districts controlled by opposition parties. They offer as evidence the fact that 90 percent of the projects canceled were in such districts. But all of the canceled projects had been identified as wasteful in a report written by respected nonpartisan auditors. So the president's choice was clearly motivated by sound budgetary policy, not partisan politics.

Which of the following is an assumption on which the press secretary's argument depends?

The cause of the wreck of the ship Edmund Fitzgerald in a severe storm on Lake Superior is still unknown. When the sunken wreckage of the vessel was found, searchers discovered the hull in two pieces lying close together. The storm's violent waves would have caused separate pieces floating even briefly on the surface to drift apart. Therefore, the breakup of the hull can be ruled out as the cause of the sinking.

Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

When a city experiences a sharp decline in population, the city's tax revenues, which pay for such city services as police protection and maintenance of water lines, also decrease. The area to be policed and the number and length of the water lines to be maintained, however, do not decrease. Attempting to make up the tax revenue lost by raising tax rates is not feasible, since higher tax rates would cause even more residents to leave.

The information given most strongly supports which of the following general claims?

Pretzel vendor: The new license fee for operating a pretzel stand outside the art museum is prohibitively expensive. Charging typical prices, a vendor would need to sell an average of 25 pretzels per hour to break even. At my stand outside city hall, I average only 15 per hour. Therefore, I could not break even running a pretzel stand outside the art museum, much less turn a profit.

Which of the following, if true, most strongly supports the pretzel vendor's argument?

Correctly measuring the productivity of service workers is complex. Consider, for example, postal workers: they are often said to be more productive if more letters are delivered per postal worker. But is this really true? What if more letters are lost or delayed per worker at the same time that more are delivered?

The objection implied above to the productivity measure described is based on doubts about the truth of which of the following statements?

In a study conducted in Canada, servers in various restaurants wrote "Thank you" on randomly selected bills before presenting the bills to their customers. Tips on these bills were an average of three percentage points higher than tips on bills without the message. Therefore, if servers in Canada regularly wrote "Thank you" on restaurant their average income from tips would be significantly higher than it otherwise would have been.

Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument relies?

The technological conservatism of bicycle manufacturers is a reflection of the kinds of demand they are trying to meet. The only cyclists seriously interested in innovation and willing to pay for it are bicycle racers. Therefore, innovation in bicycle technology is limited by what authorities will accept as standard for purposes of competition in bicycle races.

Which of the following is an assumption made in drawing the conclusion above?

Consumer advocate: It is generally true, at least in this state, that lawyers who advertise a specific service charge less for that service than lawyers who do not advertise. It is also true that each time restrictions on the advertising of legal services have been eliminated, the number of lawyers advertising their services has increased and legal costs to consumers have declined in consequence. However, eliminating the state requirement that legal advertisements must specify fees for specific services would almost certainly increase rather than further reduce consumers' legal costs. Lawyers would no longer have an incentive to lower their fees when they begin advertising and if no longer required to specify fee arrangements, many lawyers who now advertise would increase their fees.

In the consumer advocate's argument, the two portions in boldface play which of the following roles?