Question:

It takes a particular talent to be a successful business manager. Business courses can help people to solve management problems, but such courses can do so only for those people with managerial talent. Such people should take business courses to acquire ideas that they can subsequently use to good advantage if management problems happen to arise.
If the statements above are true, which of the following must also be true on the basis of them?

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Be very precise with conditional logic. A statement like "X happens only if Y is true" translates to "If X happened, then Y must be true" (X \(\rightarrow\) Y). It does not mean "If Y is true, then X will happen." Correctly identifying the direction of the logic is key to solving these problems.
Updated On: Oct 1, 2025
  • People who are helped by business courses in solving management problems also have managerial talent.
  • People who are already skilled at solving management problems are unlikely to benefit from business courses.
  • Most ideas that are used successfully in solving management problems are those acquired in business courses.
  • People who lack managerial talent are more likely to take business courses than are people who have managerial talent.
  • Those people who have never taken business courses are unable to solve management problems when such problems arise.
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The Correct Option is A

Solution and Explanation

Step 1: Understanding the Concept:
This is a "must be true" or inference question. We need to find a conclusion that is a logically necessary consequence of the premises given. The key is to analyze the conditional statements provided in the text.
Step 2: Detailed Explanation:
Let's break down the logic from the passage:
- Premise 1: Business courses can help solve problems.
- Premise 2 (The crucial one): "...such courses can do so only for those people with managerial talent."
This "only for" or "only if" structure creates a conditional statement. It means that if someone is helped by a business course, they must necessarily be someone with managerial talent. We can write this as:
If (Helped by Business Course) \(\rightarrow\) Then (Has Managerial Talent).
Now let's evaluate the options based on this logic:
- (A) This statement is a perfect restatement of our derived conditional statement: "People who are helped... also have managerial talent." Since the premise guarantees this relationship, this statement must be true.
- (B) This contradicts the passage. The passage states that people with talent should take courses to acquire ideas, implying they are likely to benefit.
- (C) The passage says courses are a source of useful ideas, but it never claims they are the source for most ideas. This is an unsupported generalization.
- (D) The passage provides no information about who is more or less likely to take courses. It only discusses who can benefit from them and who should take them.
- (E) This is an extreme conclusion. The passage does not state that business courses are the only way to learn to solve problems. A person with talent might be able to solve problems without ever taking a course.
Step 3: Final Answer:
The statement in (A) is a direct logical consequence of the premise that business courses can help only people with managerial talent.
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