LR Sec2, Q11 - If the needle of an industrial sewing machine

[hainanxie]

This one also bothers me a lot.

I choose answer B instead of D and dont see any reason why I am wrong.

In the question stem, Line 7-9 clearly says that it would be inefficient to hire additional employees for monitoring job and line 10 arrives with a conclusion that a software shall be applied. I interpret it assumes employees perform only one type of work so the additional job wouldn't be taken care of by existing employees, or otherwise line 7-9 would just fail to be a fair premise of the conclusion that introduction of software is necessarily the solution.

Now, about Answer D. Not saying that it is cannot be true, I think the wearing out rates' predictability is not mentioned in the stem. I could think the reason of choosing D is the unpredictability makes the whole monitoring job valid. However, I cannot convince myself that answer D is better than B since B is directly mentioned in the question stem.

Anyway, I know my mind is screwed up. Please offer your kind help.

[dan]

Hi. Thanks for your post.

If I'm not mistaken, you're reading the argument as follows:

inefficient to hire new employees for the sole purpose of monitoring needles (companies won't hire new employees to monitor needles)

companies will employ a new automated device to monitor needles

thus, it must be true that the existing employees will not take on the task of monitoring needles. thus, existing employees will keep just their one current task.

Answer (B) seems to express this, so that's the answer you've chosen. Let's assume for a second that part of this is true. Existing employees will NOT take on the task of monitoring needles. Does this necessarily mean that existing employees (ALL existing employees) will have just one task? Not necessarily. Maybe I'm an existing employee, and I currently take out the trash, clean the bathrooms, sweep the factory floors, and wash the windows every week. I have multiple tasks. I'm a janitor, so I'm not responsible for things like monitoring the sewing needles. You're right to say that existing employees probably won't be monitoring needles in future versions of the factory (the automated device will do this), but we can't conclude that every employee will have just one task.

For inference questions, we want to choose the answer that is most provable given the information in the text.

(A) We have no way of knowing how frequently items will be ruined by faulty needles. People monitor the needles in traditional factories, and an automated device will monitor the needles in the new automated factories. The passage gives us no information on which approach is more effective. We might assume that the automated device will be more effective than human monitoring, but we can't prove this.
(B) Again, we have no way of knowing, given the information in the passage, whether employees at the new factories will have just one task. In fact, it's very possible (and likely) that a certain employee will be responsible for both cleaning the bathroom and taking out the trash!
(C) We know that traditional factories don't use automated equipment to monitor needles, but we don't know anything about other types of equipment they might use. Maybe they use automated equipment to punch employees' time cards, or automated equipment to package the apparel. We can't know without more information.
(D) This has to be true. Otherwise, there would be no need to monitor the needles! If the rate of wear were predictable, the factories could just replace the needles every month, say, or every two months (depending on the exact rate) and not have to worry about monitoring the needles.
(E) Given the fact that the new automated device is an acoustic device, it would be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the noise made by worn needles would be louder than a fresh needle. But we don't know that for sure. Acoustic devices don't necessarily measure just changes in volume. Perhaps this acoustic device measures wear using a some other property.

Hope this helps!

dan

[hainanxie]

Hi. Thanks for your post.

If I'm not mistaken, you're reading the argument as follows:

inefficient to hire new employees for the sole purpose of monitoring needles (companies won't hire new employees to monitor needles)

companies will employ a new automated device to monitor needles

thus, it must be true that the existing employees will not take on the task of monitoring needles. thus, existing employees will keep just their one current task.

Answer (B) seems to express this, so that's the answer you've chosen. Let's assume for a second that part of this is true. Existing employees will NOT take on the task of monitoring needles. Does this necessarily mean that existing employees (ALL existing employees) will have just one task? Not necessarily. Maybe I'm an existing employee, and I currently take out the trash, clean the bathrooms, sweep the factory floors, and wash the windows every week. I have multiple tasks. I'm a janitor, so I'm not responsible for things like monitoring the sewing needles. You're right to say that existing employees probably won't be monitoring needles in future versions of the factory (the automated device will do this), but we can't conclude that every employee will have just one task.

For inference questions, we want to choose the answer that is most provable given the information in the text.

(A) We have no way of knowing how frequently items will be ruined by faulty needles. People monitor the needles in traditional factories, and an automated device will monitor the needles in the new automated factories. The passage gives us no information on which approach is more effective. We might assume that the automated device will be more effective than human monitoring, but we can't prove this.
(B) Again, we have no way of knowing, given the information in the passage, whether employees at the new factories will have just one task. In fact, it's very possible (and likely) that a certain employee will be responsible for both cleaning the bathroom and taking out the trash!
(C) We know that traditional factories don't use automated equipment to monitor needles, but we don't know anything about other types of equipment they might use. Maybe they use automated equipment to punch employees' time cards, or automated equipment to package the apparel. We can't know without more information.
(D) This has to be true. Otherwise, there would be no need to monitor the needles! If the rate of wear were predictable, the factories could just replace the needles every month, say, or every two months (depending on the exact rate) and not have to worry about monitoring the needles.
(E) Given the fact that the new automated device is an acoustic device, it would be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the noise made by worn needles would be louder than a fresh needle. But we don't know that for sure. Acoustic devices don't necessarily measure just changes in volume. Perhaps this acoustic device measures wear using a some other property.

Hope this helps!

dan

It helped.

The statement of "...inefficient... to hire people for the sole purpose..." does not necessarily mean current employees only perform one type of task. Its inefficient and it could be caused by a lot of reasons. Say, current employees are busy enough to just handle their work and could not be trained for monitoring task. Your example explains it well too.

Thanks, Dan.