Corporate Officer: Last year was an unusually poor one for our pharmaceutical division, which has traditionally contributed about 70 percent of the corporation’s profits. It is therefore encouraging that there is the following evidence that the chemical division is growing stronger: it contributed 25 percent of the corporation’s profit up from 10 percent the previous year. On the basis of the facts stated which of the following is the best critique of the evidence presented above? (A) The increase in the chemical division’s contribution to corporation profits could have resulted largely from the introduction of a single, important new product. (B) In multi-divisional corporations that have chemical divisions, over half of the corporation’s profits usually come from chemicals (C) The percentage of the corporation’s profits attributable to the chemical division could have increased even if that division’s performance had not improved. (D) The information cited does not make it possible to determine whether the 25 percent share of profits cited was itself an improvement over the year before. (E) The information cited does not make it possible to compare the performance of the chemical and pharmaceutical divisions in terms of the percent of total profits attributed to each.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 08:52:56 +0000