62% of baseball fans believe their favorite team will win the World Series within the next five years. But, of course, only one team can win the World Series each year, so, in a league with 30 teams, at most 5, or 16.7%, will actually win. Clearly, many of these fans’ championship expectations for their favorite teams will go unmet.

In evaluating the argument, it would be most useful to determine which of the following?

The infection of manufacturing lines with bacteria is a serious safety risk that many food manufacturers spend millions of dollars per year to prevent. Because sterilizing stainless steel containers with chemical sterilizers is expensive to do every day, some analysts have recommended installing UV lamps that can effectively sterilize the stainless steel containers without affecting food production. The lamp costs the same as one month’s supply of chemical sterilizers to sterilize the same number of stainless steel containers.

In deciding whether the change would be effective in decreasing the cost of food sterilization, it would be most useful to determine which of the following?

In Acadia National Park, there is a large network of gravel carriage roads that are closed to vehicular traffic but open to a variety of other uses. In an attempt to substantially limit the damage that occurs to the carriage roads from overuse during the course of a year, park officials are imposing strict rules during the spring season. From March 15th to May 1st, when the roads are especially soft and more easily damaged, horses and bikes will be prohibited from all carriage roads, and walkers and runners will only be allowed on certain sections.

In assessing whether the park officials' plan to limit the damage to the carriage roads will be successful, it would be most useful to know which of the following?

Restaurateur: If San Francisco wants to retain its thriving restaurant industry, then we must defeat the newly proposed increase in the city dining tax. In cities across the country that have enacted a similarly high tax, within three years nearly 35% of all restaurants have gone out of business.

To better evaluate the argument above, it would be most useful to answer which of the following questions?

Mice treated with certain statins intended to decrease blood pressure also experienced drug-induced toxic myopathy, also known as muscular degeneration. Scientists hypothesize that this may have occurred because the statins cause an over-activation of creatine kinases, which are known to cause muscular degeneration.

Which of the following experiments would yield the most useful results for analyzing the scientists’ hypothesis?

Because of extreme congestion in the city of Nobi, it typically takes close to one hour to commute at rush hour to the downtown business area by car from the neighboring suburbs that are only ten to fifteen miles away. Recently, the city installed separate bus lanes that connect these suburbs to the downtown area and that allow buses to move unimpeded during rush hour. With these new lanes, commuters from the suburbs will now be able to use the bus to reach the downtown area during rush hour in considerably less time than they could previously by driving their cars.

Which of the following would be most important to know in evaluating the argument above?

Over the past twenty years in the U.S., the average number of hours per week that people spend at work has increased from approximately 41 hours to nearly 52 hours. It is thought that this change has played an important role in the corresponding increase in average body mass index for working Americans over the same period. The increased time at work does not allow people as much time to exercise and engage in healthy activities that help reduce weight.

Which of the following questions would be most useful to answer in determining whether the increased workweek is an important cause of the increase in average body mass index over the past twenty years?