ARGUMENTS INTRODUCTION

　　An argument， as used on the GMAT， is a presentation of facts and opinions in

　　order to support a position. Many arguments will be fallacious. And many co

　　rrect answers will be false！ This often causes students much consternation；

　　they feel that the correct answer should be true. But the arguments are inte

　　nded to test your ability to think logically. Now logic is the study of the

　　relationships between statements， not of the truth of those statements. Bein

　　g overly concerned with finding the truth can be ruinous to your GMAT argume

　　nt score.

　　“2 OUT OF 5” RULE

　　Creating a good but incorrect answer-choice is much harder than developing t

　　he correct answer. For this reason， usually only one attractive wrong answer

　　-choice is presented. This is called the “2 out of 5” rule. That is， only tw

　　o of the five answer-choices will have any real merit. Hence， even if you do

　　n't fully understand an argument， you probably can still eliminate the three

　　fluff choices， thereby greatly increasing your odds of answering the questi

　　on correctly.

　　LOGIC I

　　Although in theory the argument questions are designed to be answered withou

　　t any reference to formal logic， the section is essentially a logic test. So

　　me knowledge of the fundamentals of logic， therefore， will give you a defini

　　te advantage. Armed with this knowledge， you should quickly notice that the

　　arguments are fundamentally easy and that most of them fallsintosa few basic

　　categories. In this section， we will study the logical structure of argumen

　　ts. In Logic II， we will symbolize and diagram arguments in much the same wa

　　y as we did with games.