The council of Durton, which wants to avoid overly depleting the surrounding forest through exports of lumber, is considering subsidizing the import of certain kinds of wood to offset partly the deforestation. Such a step could actually put the forest in more severe danger, since insects often get into wood and can be introduced as a highly destructive force into habitats where they are non-native. Moreover, in the vast majority of cases in which a lumber-exporting city has become a lumber-importing city, the forest surrounding that city has been wiped out a few years after the switch.

The answer to which of the following would be most useful for evaluating the argument above?

Callers to a customer help line frequently complained about the quality of service. Seventy percent of survey respondents cited the services agents' lack of knowledge of how to solve the problems they were calling about. To address the problem, management decided that each service agent should go through regular training. Each agent spent half a day each week in sessions covering how to respond to callers' problems. Nevertheless, after three months of training, the rate of caller complaints has not decreased.

Which of the following, if true, most helps to explain why the training failed to achieve its goal?

In early civilizations, the development of early calendar systems—motivated most often by the desire to improve crop production—often coincided with the advancement of mathematics and astronomy. Granted, the practice of studying celestial bodies also gave rise to astrology and religion, which often had the effect of slowing the progress of the former two areas. Nevertheless, the inhibiting effect of astrology and religion is unlikely to have a lasting impact on mathematical and astronomical progress. Therefore, in all likelihood, the advancement of agrarian science, by motivating the development of measuring seasons and time, led to improved understanding of mathematics and astronomy in early civilizations.

In the argument given, the two boldfaced portions play which of the following roles?

A small company with a radical four-day work week system is considering changing its policy. Currently, this company requires all employees to arrive at work in the company's office Monday through Thursday; they need not work Friday. The proposed policy would permit each employee every week to choose one day from Monday to Friday not to work.

The adoption of this policy would be most likely to decrease employees' productivity if the employees' job functions required them to

Domestic agriculture is struggling because agriculture from overseas is available at lower prices. Since improved agrarian technology would enable domestic farmers to produce agriculture at more competitive costs, to improve the competitiveness of domestic agriculture, the government plans to subsidize domestic farmers, because as it pays subsidies directly to these domestic farmers, the farmers will have the funds they need to invest in technology.

Which of the following, if true, raises the most serious doubt regarding the effectiveness of the government's plan to improve the competitiveness of domestic agriculture?

Company A provides a business software for which companies pay an annual subscription fee, which includes help support provided by Company A's team of account managers. To reduce the cost of providing help support to half of last year's cost, Company A has redesigned its product offering to include two variants. To achieve this, Company A plans this year to move enough of its clients into a cheaper subscription that includes no access to help support to reduce the number of account managers to half of last year's number.

Which of the following is required for the redesigned product offering to achieve its aim?

Springfield's city council wants to minimize the city's average yearly expenditures on its parking meters and so is considering replacing the coin-operated meters currently in use with roadside kiosks at which parking slips can be purchased via credit card. Since many of the coin-operated meters require replacement, the costs associated with the conversion to credit card kiosks would be minimal.

Which of the following would it be most useful to know in determining whether switching to roadside kiosks would be likely to help minimize Springfield's yearly maintenance costs?

Studies indicate that potential buyers of an expensive product are more likely to go through with their purchase if they have first made a purchase of a related product, such as a less expensive product sold by the same company in the same place. Psychologists attribute this behavior to commitment bias, in which people's present actions are influenced by a desire to act consistently with their past actions. A company that sells expensive products will increase sales of these items by first inducing customers to buy less expensive, easy-to-sell items.

Which of the following, if true, most strongly supports the recommendation above?

Nationside, an insurance company, is considering issuing a new policy to insure automobile drivers who are elderly and have a record of car accidents. If premiums for the new policy are inappropriately high for a potential customer, that customer will not opt for the new policy. Therefore, Nationside is concerned that the income from the policies would not be sufficient to pay for the claims that would be made.

Which of the following strategies would be most likely to maximize Nationside's profit margins from the new policy?

Dadaism, the avant-garde European artistic movement of the early twentieth century, a phenomenon in which the postwar economic and moral sentiments gave birth to art that appeared to reject logic and embrace chaos.

An estimated three in four sea turtles fall prey to hungry birds, fish, or other perils in their first year, but those that survive have life expectancies of decades and can live over a century.

According to the passage, theory B claims that which of the following is the primary function of the yawn?

According to the passage, both theory A and theory B attempt to describe how

The cost of production of a certain item increases, though not proportionally, with the number of units produced. Is the cost of production of 4,800 units less than $40,000?

1. The cost of producing 4,600 units is more than $30,000.
2. The cost of producing 4,700 units is more than $50,000.

What is the area of the circle above with center O?

1. The area of $\Delta OAB$ is 50.
2. The length of arc ACB is $15\pi$.