3.7 - Agree / Disagree

Agree / Disagree questions put us in the middle of a dispute between speakers. Our job is to figure out their beef (or what they happen to agree about).

These questions involve multiple speakers. There's usually a claim made and some witty retort. Occasionally, both speakers' arguments are flawed.

The questions are usually framed like this:

• Kevin and Andy disagree over whether
• George and Jerry disagree with each other about which one of the following?
• The dialogue provides the most support that Sabrina and Amelia agree that

If you're feeling stuck, ask yourself "What could I ask these two where one would say X and the other would say Y?" The answer will reveal their point of disagreement.

Let's work through some examples.

Examples

June 2007 PrepTest, Section 2, Question 16

Here's June 2007 PrepTest, Section 2, Question 16:

Taylor: Researchers at a local university claim that 61 percent of the information transferred during a conversation is communicated through nonverbal signals. But this claim, like all such mathematically precise claims, is suspect, because claims of such exactitude could never be established by science.

Sandra: While precision is unobtainable in many areas of life, it is commonplace in others. Many scientific disciplines obtain extremely precise results, which should not be doubted merely because of their precision.

Peel away the extraneous bits of each argument and look for what they're principally bickering about.

Taylor says we could never scientifically establish mathematically precise results. Sandra concedes that some things can't be mathematically precise, but argues back that many areas of science get extremely precise results.

This is where they disagree. Taylor thinks precision is mathematically impossible. Sandra thinks precision isn't the unobtainium Taylor alleges.

June 2007 PrepTest, Section 3, Question 3

Let's try another. This one's June 2007 PrepTest, Section 3, Question 3:

Carolyn: The artist Marc Quinn has displayed, behind a glass plate, biologically replicated fragments of Sir John Sulston's DNA, calling it a "conceptual portrait" of Sulston. But to be a portrait, something must bear a recognizable resemblance to its subject.

Arnold: I disagree. Quinn's conceptual portrait is a maximally realistic portrait, for it holds actual instructions according to which Sulston was created.

Gotta love when the second speaker outright disagrees. It makes the digging that little bit easier. These two are beefing about what makes a portrait a portrait.

Carolyn says Quinn's art doesn't qualify. After all, whose DNA looks like them?

Arnold thinks it's the most portraity portrait of all—it contains Sulston's actual building blocks.

Thinking back to our clarifying question, if I'd asked these two what constitutes a portrait, Carolyn would say it needs to resemble its subject, whereas Arnold might say something like a portrait is the essence of its subject.

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That's all for Agree / Disagree questions. Next up, we're diving into Reasoning questions. See you there.