Reading: Asking The Right Questions

What are the descriptive assumptions?

I. Decide whether the following statements are true or false about assumptions:
1. An assumption is a point that the author tries to prove.
2. All arguments require assumptions.
II. Find assumptions in the following situations.
1. Moby Dick is a whale. So Moby Dick is a mammal.
Conclusion: Moby Dick is the mammal.
Reason: Moby Dick is a whale
Assumption: Whales are mammal.
2. There is nothing wrong with talking on a mobile phone during lectures. Other students do it
all the time.
Conclusion: Talking on mobile phone during lecture is totally acceptable.
Reason: Students do it all the time.
Assumption: talking on the phone must be beneficial to the lectures.
3. Traces of ammonia have been found in Mars' atmosphere. So there must be life on Mars.
Conclusion: Life on Mars is possible.
Reasons: Traces of ammonia have been found in Mars' atmosphere.
Assumption: Ammonia is a sign of life
4. Giving students a failing grade will damage their self-confidence. Therefore, we should not
fail students.
Conclusion: Students should not be failed.
Reason: Giving students a failing grade will damage their self-confidence.
Assumption: Self-confidence is important to students.
5. You should buy a gun because you are living alone in the woods.
Conclusion: Buying a gun is necessary.
Reasons: You are living alone in the woods.
Assumption: Living alone in the woods is dangerous.
III. Find the assumptions in the following cases
1. Two years ago, a wolf pack was relocated to Bilford Island. Although the local rabbit
population has decreased drastically since the relocation, the wolves are not to blame for this
decrease. Our study shows that the unprecedented number of recent rabbit deaths is due to the
myxoma virus.

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2. A program instituted in a particular state allows parents to prepay their children’s future
college tuition at current rates. The program then pays the tuition annually for the child at any of
the state’s public colleges in which the child enrolls. Parents should participate in the program as
a means of decreasing the cost for their children’s college education.

3. A senator, concerned about the high mortality rate of children shot by other children,
introduced legislation that would require manufacturers to install childproof locks on all
handguns.

4. Most people could be musical geniuses if they practiced hard enough. A psychologist
interested in whether genius is mainly hard work rather than inspiration has examined
the lives of 76 composers. Most of them had at least a decade of painstaking training
before they wrote any masterpieces. Mozart, for example, was drilled incessantly by
his father in techniques of composition before he composed his first work of genius at
the age of 12.

5. Depressed? Take an antidepressant. That's a solution offered to way too many of our children
and adolescents, and for some, it's a killer recommendation. Recent studies suggest that there are
at least 3 million children suffering from depression in the United States. Despite concerns that
have been raised, doctors have been prescribing alarming numbers of antidepressants, such as
Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft. And some of these kids are responding to the drugs with the urge to
kill. Kip Kinkel was taking Prozac when he killed his parents and killed two other students at a
high school in Oregon. Eric Harris was under the influence of Luvox, an antidepressant
medication, when he shot students at Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado. Other researchers
have found a high incidence of the use of anti-depressants in the histories of murder/suicides
involving women and their children. It's time for physicians to be much more cautious in their
willingness to prescribe antidepressant medicines.

6. Who invented cooking? Since cooking requires heat, the first cooks must have used
fire. Until recently, there was no evidence of fire having been used earlier than
200,000 years ago. But now, reliable scientific evidence has shown that the ancestors

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of Homo Sapiens were lighting fires almost 400,000 years ago. So cooking must have
been invented at that time.

IV. Choose the correct answers

1. Reducing class sizes in our school district would require hiring more teachers. However, there
is already a shortage of qualified teachers in the region. Although students receive more
individualized instruction when classes are smaller, education suffers when teachers are
underqualified. Therefore, reducing class sizes in our district would probably not improve overall
student achievement.
Which one of the following is an assumption required by the educator's argument?
A- Class sizes in the school district should be reduced only if doing so would improve overall
student achievement.
B- At least some qualified teachers in the school district would be able to improve the overall
achievement of students in their classes if class sizes were reduced.
C- Students place a greater value on having qualified teachers than on having smaller classes.
D- Hiring more teachers would not improve the achievement of any students in the school
district if most or all of the teachers hired were underqualified.
E- Qualified teachers could not be persuaded to relocate in significant numbers to the educator's
region to take teaching jobs.

2. Syndicated political columnists often use their newspaper columns to try to persuade readers
to vote a certain way. However, their efforts to persuade voters rarely succeed, for by the time
such a column appears, nearly all who will vote in the election will have already made a decision
about which candidate to vote for.
Which one of the following is an assumption required by the argument?
A- Syndicated columnists influence the votes of most of their readers who have not yet decided
which candidate to vote for.
B- The attempts of syndicated political columnists to persuade readers to vote a certain way in an
election can instead cause them to vote a different way.
C- People who regularly read columns by syndicated political columnists mainly read those
written by columnists with whom they already largely agree.
D- Regular readers of columns by syndicated political columnists are less likely to be persuaded
to vote a certain way by such columns than are people who seldom read such columns.
E- People rarely can be persuaded to change their minds about which candidate to vote for once
they have made a decision.

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3. Theater managers will not rent a film if they do not believe it will generate enough total
revenue—including food-and-beverage concession revenue—to yield a profit. Therefore, since
film producers want their films to be shown as widely as possible, they tend to make films that
theater managers consider attractive to younger audiences.
Which one of the following is an assumption required by the argument?
A- Adults consume less of the sort of foods and beverages sold at movie concession stands than
do either children or adolescents.
B- Movies of the kinds that appeal to younger audiences almost never also appeal to older
audiences.
C- Food-and-beverage concession stands in movie theaters are usually more profitable than the
movies that are shown.
D- Theater managers generally believe that a film that is attractive to younger audiences is more
likely to be profitable than other films.
E- Films that have an appeal to older audiences almost never generate a profit for theaters that
show them.

4. One-year-olds ordinarily prefer the taste of sweet food to that of salty food. Yet if one feeds
a one-year-old salty food rather than sweet food, then over a period of about a year he or she will
develop a taste for the salty flavor and choose to eat salty food rather than sweet food. Thus, a
young child's taste preferences can be affected by the type of food he or she has been exposed to.
Which one of the following is an assumption required by the argument?
A- Two-year-olds do not naturally prefer salty food to sweet food.
B- A child's taste preferences usually change between age one and age two.
C- Two-year-olds do not naturally dislike salty food so much that they would not choose it over
some other foods.
D- The salty food fed to infants in order to change their taste preferences must taste pleasant.
E- Sweet food is better for infant development than is salty food.

5. A large number of drivers routinely violate highway speed limits. Since driving at speeds that
exceed posted limits is a significant factor in most accidents, installing devices in all cars that prevent
those cars from traveling faster than the speed limit would prevent most accidents.
Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
A- A person need not be a trained mechanic to install the device properly.
B- Most accidents are caused by inexperienced drivers.
C- A driver seldom needs to exceed the speed limit to avoid an accident when none of the other drivers
involved are violating the speed limit.
D- Most drivers who exceed the speed limit do so unintentionally.
E- Even if the fines for speed-limit violations were increased, the number of such violations would still
not be reduced.

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6. Singing in the Rain Umbrella Corp. plans to institute a marketing campaign in which it sells
umbrellas at the exits of subway stations during rainy weather. The umbrellas will be sold at a price
that is slightly higher than normal. The company thinks the sales of these higher - priced umbrellas
will be greater than normal sales of umbrellas, because the purchasers of these umbrellas will be
forced to buy them if they do not want to get wet.

The author assumes which of the following about the purchasers of the umbrellas in predicting the
sales of the umbrellas?
A- Customers who do not feel immediate pressure to purchase will not do so.
B- Normally priced umbrellas are not profitable for singing in the Rain Umbrellas Corp.
C- Very few people buy Singing in the Rain’s normally priced umbrellas.
D- Singing in the Rain Umbrellas Corp. will have to stop selling normally priced umbrellas when it
starts selling higher priced umbrellas.
E- Most potential customers of Singing in the Rain’s higher priced umbrellas will not have acquired an
umbrella previously.

7. In an effort to reduce the amount of fat and the number of calories that they consume, many
citizens of the United States are making significant changes in their diets. For them staying in shape
and looking fit now take precedence over eating foods that are filling and that taste good. It is likely
that if they maintain these new priorities with consistent regard for other health issues, the length and
quality of their lives will increase significantly.
Which one of the following is an assumption upon which the argument is based?

A- Eating foods that are filling and tastes good is inconsistent with staying in shape and looking fit.
B- Controlling the quality of one’s life requires more than mere dietary adjustments.
C- A combination of diet and exercise is necessary if one wishes to stay in shape and look fit.
D- Many citizens of the United States have only recently discovered the importance of diet to living a
longer, healthier life.
E- Staying in shape and looking good are current goals for most citizens of the United States

8. A mail order company recently had a big jump in clothing sales after hiring a copywriter and a
graphic artist to give its clothing catalog a magazine-like format designed to appeal to a more upscale
clientele. The company is now planning to launch a housewares catalog using the same concept.
The company’s plan assumes that:
A- Other housewares catalogs with magazine-like formats do not already exist.
B- An upscale clientele would be interested in a housewares catalog.
C- The same copywriter & graphic artist could be employed for both the clothing & housewares
catalogs.
D- A magazine-like format requires a copywriter and a graphic artist.
E- Customers to whom the old clothing catalog appealed would continue to make purchases from
catalogs with the new format.
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Reading: Asking The Right Questions